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Topic: Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp (Read 14721 times) |
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #120 on: 2009-07-17 14:24:56 » |
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Defending the indefensible settlements
To counter US opposition to Israel's settlements, Israel's American supporters are adopting a new, defensive strategy
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Authors: Richard Silverstein
Dated: 2009-07-13
A former insider at Aipac has spilled the beans on a major secret initiative by The Israel Project (TIP) designed to counter opposition in the US to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Douglas Bloomfield, former chief lobbyist for Aipac, writes that TIP, a group dedicated to promoting Israel's positive image among the US media and policymakers, has circulated a 140-page primer designed to prompt supporters in their exchanges with US journalists and key decision-makers when they are arguing in favour of the settlementsIf you can't convince 'em, accuse 'em. That's the advice from The Israel Project (TIP) for pro-Israel activist. … Rather than try to defend Israeli settlements, change the subject. If that doesn't work, try accusing those who advocate removing Jewish settlements of promoting "a kind of ethnic cleansing to move all Jews" from the West Bank. TIP calls that "the best settlement argument" in its 2009 Global Language Dictionary. [ Hermit : Or to summarize, if you can't be distracted you must be a Nazi ] You read the full document posted on Newsweek's site [PDF], [ Hermit : <------ Get your copy of the Spin Dictionary here ] and includes a preface by its author, the Republican pollster and spin doctor Frank Luntz. What is especially instructive about the document is that it concedes that Israel is on the defensive here in the US. It conveys a recognition that the new Obama administration policy on Israel has caused a sea change for the pro-Israel community. Instead of being on the offensive, always pressing its case, the lobby, perhaps for the first time, is in crisis mode. Bloomfield continues"The single toughest issue" to defend among Americans generally and American Jews in particular is settlements, says the manual, and "hostility towards them and towards Israeli policy that appears to encourage settlement activity. … Public opinion is hostile to the settlements – even among supporters of Israel." Groups like TIP are not known for paying very close attention to truth or facts, and they don't disappoint here, according to BloomfieldTIP says the "best argument" for settlements is this: Since Arabs citizens of Israel "enjoy equal rights," telling Jews they can't live in the Palestinian state "is a racist idea." [ Hermit : In case the loss of breath reading about the defence strategies for apartheid Israel dreamed up by these clowns has caused you to forget, choetspa had to be and is a Jewish word. In fact, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad just last week invited settlers to remain in the West Bank after it becomes part of a Palestinian state with full rights. Rabbi Menachem Froman, a founder of Gush Emunim who lives in Tekoa on the West Bank, advocates a similar approach.
What is unique about Froman's stance is his awareness that it is important for him to live in the West Bank as a Jew rather than as an Israeli. He sees what he is doing as a religious rather than political imperative. And his claim is that if you really believe in living on this land you will not care who rules you, since ultimately it is God and not a government that does so. The fact that Froman recently met with a senior US Middle East envoy in Washington indicates how open the Obama administration is to hearing hitherto marginal voices.
To indicate how closely American Jewish groups like TIP coordinate their message with Israel's diplomatic and intelligence agencies, Haaretz reports that Bibi Netanyahu met recently with the German foreign minister and in a masterful bit of guilt and manipulation told him that it was inconceivable to Israel that the West Bank could be "Judenrein".
Similarly, the false argument that dismantling settlements amounts to "ethnic cleansing" is a tried and true settler argument. It too involves grossly abusing the contemporary language of human rights in order to convert a simple political exercise (a territorial compromise with the Palestinians) into an act of racist violence against the people of Israel.
Bloomfield notes another specious argument in the TIP manual: "It falls back on the old and disproven argument that 'the settlements are necessary for the security of Israel.'"
By no measure can anyone claim that the settlements improve Israel's security. In fact, violence perpetrated by extremist settlers against Palestinians is a continuous source of friction, which forces thousands of IDF personnel to be stationed there to protect Jewish residents as they pursue their campaigns. Palestinians see the settlements and the occupation in general as painful reminders of their disenfranchisement. This in turn fuels acts of terrorist violence against settlers, which are often repaid in kind by Jewish extremists. Security? I think not.
Americans for Peace Now's Ori Nir places the issue in a broader context, also contradicting the TIP claim. "American Jews increasingly realise that settlements undermine Israel's ability to survive, long term, as a democratic Jewish state and that they undermine America's national security interest in a stable, peaceful Middle East," he told Bloomfield.
Barack Obama sees the settlements in this light, which is why he has made a full freeze a centrepiece of his policy. Generally, congressional Democrats, even those known to side with the Israel lobby in the past, have adopted the administration's position on the issue. All of which must be a painful reminder to TIP of how low its fortunes have sunk in the current domestic political environment.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #121 on: 2009-07-20 15:42:51 » |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/19/us-bingo-funding-israeli-settlements
Gambling with peace: how US bingo dollars are funding Israeli settlements
• California charity 'a barrier to West Bank resolution'
• Millionaire's foundation must be curbed, critics say
For the winning punters chancing their luck at Hawaiian Gardens' charity bingo hall in the heart of one of California's poorest towns, the big prize is $500. The losers walk away with little more than an assurance that their dollars are destined for a good cause.
But the real winners and losers live many thousands of miles away, where the profits from the nightly ritual of numbers-calling fund what critics describe as a form of ethnic cleansing by extremist organisations.
Each dollar spent on bingo by the mostly Latino residents of Hawaiian Gardens, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, helps fund Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in some of the most sensitive areas of occupied East Jerusalem, particularly the Muslim quarter of the old city, and West Bank towns such as Hebron where the Israeli military has forced Arabs out of their properties in their thousands.
'The majority of bingo customers don't realise where their money is going' Link to this audio
Over the past 20 years, the bingo hall has funnelled tens of millions of dollars in to what its opponents — including rabbis serving the Hawaiian Gardens area — describe as an ideologically-driven strategy to grab land for Israel, as well as contributing to influential American groups and thinktanks backing Israel's more hawkish governments.
But the bingo operation, owned by an American Jewish doctor and millionaire, Irving Moskowitz, has taken on added significance in recent weeks as President Barack Obama has laid down a marker to Israel in demanding an end to settlement construction, which the White House regards as a major obstacle to peace. "Moskowitz is taking millions from the poorest town in California and sending it to the settlements," said Haim Dov Beliak, a rabbi serving Hawaiian Gardens and one of the Jewish religious leaders in California who have campaigned to block the flow of funds to the settlers.
"The money Moskowitz puts in to the settlements has changed the game. Moskowitz has helped build a hardcore of the settler movement that may number 50-70,000.
"He's not paying for all of it but he puts the money up front for the vanguards that get things off the ground. That ties Israel's hands. That ties the hands of the Obama administration. If the administration wants to be serious about stopping the settlers it has to begin in Hawaiian Gardens."
Moskowitz is an 80-year-old retired doctor and orthodox Jewish millionaire who built a fortune buying and selling hospitals. In 1988 he also bought the faltering bingo hall in Hawaiian Gardens which, under California law, can only be run as not-for-profit operation so Moskowitz brought it under the wing of a charitable foundation he had established in his own name.
The foundation, which did not respond to requests for an interview, bills the bingo operation as of great benefit to the local community through donations to a number of groups, such as the Hawaiian Gardens food bank, as well as scholarships. It has also given money for disaster relief in Central America, Kosovo and parts of the US.
But tax returns show that the bulk of the donations go to what the foundation describes as "charitable support" to an array of organisations in Israel.
"The loss of many of Dr Moskowitz's relatives during the Holocaust strengthened his conviction that Israel must be maintained as a safe haven for Jewish people from all over the world. In Israel, the Foundation supports a wide array of religious, educational, cultural and emergency services organisations," the foundation says on its website.
What it does not say is that the focus of the donations is a number of Jewish organisations intent on claiming Palestinian territory for Israel and ensuring that occupied East Jerusalem remains in the Jewish state's hands.
Beliak calculates that the foundation has given Jewish settlers well over £100m, beginning with the construction 20 years ago of 133 houses on land confiscated from Palestinians by the Israeli government.
Beliak helped launch the Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens & Jerusalem to stop the flow of money from the bingo hall to the settlements. Its investigations of tax records show that the Moskowitz Foundation's donations include grants to Beit Hadassah, a militant Jewish settlement in the heart of the West Bank city of Hebron.
Thousands of Arabs have been forced from their homes and businesses around Beit Hadassah ostensibly for their own security after an American-born settler Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians nearby in 1994. Goldstein was himself shot dead and his grave is regarded as a shrine by some settlers. Moskowitz has made excuses for Goldstein's actions by blaming Palestinians for pushing him too far.
The foundation has also given more than £3.5m to Ateret Cohanim, a right wing group that houses Jews in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's old city. In other parts of East Jerusalem, Moskowitz has funded Jewish colonies situated to box in or cut off Palestinian neighbourhoods that fits in with a broader government strategy to ensure total Israeli control over the city.
"What Moskowitz pioneered was trying to break up the continuity of the Arab population centres in Jerusalem," said Beliak. "The consequences are radically different from just mom and pop buying a little piece of land. These are political statements and facts on the ground, and every [US] administration has allowed him to do this."
Among the most contentious of the organisations backed by Moskowitz is the City of David Foundation in the heart of an Arab neighbourhood of Jerusalem, where about 1,500 Palestinians are facing expulsion ostensibly in the name of archaeological preservation of a site where the organisation says King David established a city 3,000 years ago.
Four years ago, the City of David Foundation director, Doron Spielman, told the Guardian that "the goal of our organisation is to increase the presence of Jews in the neighbourhood as much as possible … We cannot trust that if this is an Arab neighbourhood, Jews will be safe here".
To that end Palestinians have been driven from their homes, sometimes at gunpoint, while others are fighting in the courts to cling on to their properties.
Moskowitz has made no secret of his hostility toward the Palestinians. He opposed the Oslo peace accords, likening them to the appeasement of the Nazis. In 1996 he told the Los Angeles Times that peace talks represented a "slide toward concessions, surrender, and Israeli suicide".
He was also an outspoken opponent of Ariel Sharon's removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip four years ago and provided the settlers with funds to fight the pullout.
Now Moskowitz is building a much bigger bingo hall in Hawaiian Gardens which will increase the flow of cash.
Beliak is particularly angered that the fundraising takes place without interference from the American authorities. In contrast, he says, Muslim charities which raise money to help Palestinians have been targeted for investigation, shut down and some of their administrators jailed because providing welfare to Gaza indirectly helps Hamas.
"After 2001 there was a whole discourse about how supposedly Muslims [in America] used these charitable donations to support violence.
"There was never ever in the US anything substantially that made that case. But here they did have a case where somebody was using money to support settlers, money that fosters extremism and violence, and they completely ignored it," said Beliak.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #122 on: 2009-08-15 02:12:47 » |
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UN official: Evidence that Israel abused human rights in Gaza
Source: Ha'Aretz
Authors: Not Attributed (Reuters)
Dated: 2009-08-15
There is significant evidence that Israeli forces violated international law and human rights in their invasion of Gaza between late December and mid-January, the United Nations human rights chief said on Friday.
A report by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay lambasted the "nearly total impunity" for the violations.
The already critical human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) deteriorated further during the war, she said in the report, the first of a series of periodic reports ordered by the UN Human Rights Council in January during Israel's "Operation Cast Lead."
The 34-page report is one of two - together with a forthcoming one by South African jurist Richard Goldstone who has been conducting hearings in Gaza - that will be presented to the council next month.
"Significant prima facie evidence indicates that serious violations of international humanitarian law as well as gross human rights violations occurred during the military operations of 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, which were compounded by the blockade that the population of Gaza endured in the months prior to Operation Cast Lead and which continues," Pillay said.
Pillay said rights violations included arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment, extrajudicial execution, forced eviction and home demolition, settlement expansion and related violence and restrictions on freedom of movement and expression.
"While these violations are of deep concern in their own right, the nearly total impunity that persists for such violations (regardless of the responsible duty bearer) is of grave concern, and constitutes a root cause for their persistence," the former South African high court judge said.
Pillay's recommendations included the following:- Israel should lift the blockade of Gaza and restrictions on movement in and out of the West Bank, which amount to illegal collective punishment.
- Allegations of violations of humanitarian law and human rights during the Gaza war should be investigated by independent bodies, and victims should have the right to reparations.
- Israel should tackle impunity for violations, and curb its use of the military justice system, which does not meet international standards.
- Israel should end the illegal expansion of settlements in the occupied territory, halt evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes, and end settler violence.
Unlike rulings of the UN Security Council, the findings and recommendations of the Human Rights Council are not binding.
Islamic and African countries, backed by Russia, China, Cuba and Nicaragua, currently have a majority on the 47-member council, which has spent more time on Israel/Palestine than on any other issue since being set up three years ago.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #123 on: 2009-08-21 04:47:04 » |
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[letheomaniac] The Russians are going to be pissed - organ trafficking is their turf. Seriously, WTF?
Source: Palestine Think Tank
Author: Gilad Atzmon
Dated: 20/8/09
Israeli trade in Palestinian body parts - the IDF: Israel's organ grinder
There is an old Jewish joke that tells the story of a dying Jewish merchant who calls his son to his sickbed just before he perishes. He tells him, "Listen to me Moisha'le, life is not just about money... you can also do gold and diamonds."
Monitoring Israeli and Jewish news reveals a devastating fact, it is not 'just' about money. It may also be about human organs. A few weeks ago we learned about a ring of American Rabbis who had been arrested in New Jersey upon suspicion of human organs trafficking (amongst many other crimes). Rabbi Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, we read, enticed "vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000." Not too bad, I thought to myself then. We are living in hard times, financial melt down, credit crunch, Wall Street is licking its wounds, the car industry is evaporating. Seemingly, kidney trafficking is still booming.
In fact, the ring of the Rabbi in New Jersey didn't take me by complete surprise. For years we have been hearing about Palestinians claiming that Israel is "deep into organ trafficking." We also learned that the family of Alastair Sinclair, a Scottish tourist who hanged himself in an Israeli jail, "was forced to bring suit for his return with missing body parts."
In 2002 the Tehran Times reported: "The Zionist state has tacitly admitted that doctors at the Israeli forensic institute at Abu Kabir had extracted the vital organs of three Palestinian teenage children killed by the Israeli Army nearly ten days ago. Zionist Minister of Health Nessim Dahhan said in response to a question by Arab member of the Zionist Parliament 'Knesset', Ahmed Teibi, on Tuesday that he couldn't deny that organs of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli forces were taken out for transplants or scientific research."
But now the news about Israeli trafficking of human organ is spreading to Western mainstream media. Ynet, the biggest Israeli online newspaper, reported today that "Leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet claimed in one of its articles that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians in order to trade in their organs."
A few weeks ago we had a debate here on PTT whether Zionism is a colonial apparatus or not. One of the Materialist arguments against the perception of Zionism as a colonial practice was that Palestine has never been too attractive economically; it lacks oil, gold or minerals. However, this may change now. People who specialise in organ theft may find Palestine to be heaven on earth. In the light of the latest vastly spreading accusations, the Jewish national project maybe is colonial after all.
Though the Israeli government denies the accusation, and I myself far from being qualified to know what the truth of the matter is, one cannot deny that we are facing here a shift of consciousness within the Western discourse. At the end of the day, after watching the Israeli army dumping great quantities of white phosphorous on a civilian population in broad daylight, after seeing Israelis gathering gleefully en masse on the hills around Gaza just to watch their military spreading death and physical suffering in a genocidal manner, after reading that 94% of the Israelis supported the IDF military campaign against the elderly, women and children, most of whom were refugees with nowhere to escape and seek further refuge, organ theft seems to be a 'light crime'.
Whether or not the Swedish paper's accusations are genuine is yet to be revealed. However, one fact has already been established: after so many years of Western inclination to dance to the relentless crying violin of the Jewish melancholic victim serenade, the Western media is now changing its appetite, it is willing to confront Jewish institutional crime.
Rather than talking about the rise of anti-Semitism, we better discuss the growth of Jewish institutional crime.
Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His CD, Exile, was named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. Please visit his web site: http://www.gilad.co.uk
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letheomaniac
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #124 on: 2009-08-21 05:09:35 » |
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[lethaomaniac] Didn't the Nazis shave the heads of their prisoners to use their hair to support the war effort? Seriously, WTF? 
Source: Palestine Think Tank
Author: Gilad Atzmon
Dated: 20/8/09
Isreali trade in Palestinian body parts - The IDF: Israel's organ grinder
There is an old Jewish joke that tells the story of a dying Jewish merchant who calls his son to his sickbed just before he perishes. He tells him, "Listen to me Moisha'le, life is not just about money... you can also do gold and diamonds."
Monitoring Israeli and Jewish news reveals a devastating fact, it is not 'just' about money. It may also be about human organs. A few weeks ago we learned about a ring of American Rabbis who had been arrested in New Jersey upon suspicion of human organs trafficking (amongst many other crimes). Rabbi Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, we read, enticed "vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000." Not too bad, I thought to myself then. We are living in hard times, financial melt down, credit crunch, Wall Street is licking its wounds, the car industry is evaporating. Seemingly, kidney trafficking is still booming.
In fact, the ring of the Rabbi in New Jersey didn't take me by complete surprise. For years we have been hearing about Palestinians claiming that Israel is "deep into organ trafficking." We also learned that the family of Alastair Sinclair, a Scottish tourist who hanged himself in an Israeli jail, "was forced to bring suit for his return with missing body parts".
In 2002 the Tehran Times reported: "The Zionist state has tacitly admitted that doctors at the Israeli forensic institute at Abu Kabir had extracted the vital organs of three Palestinian teenage children killed by the Israeli Army nearly ten days ago. Zionist Minister of Health Nessim Dahhan said in response to a question by Arab member of the Zionist Parliament 'Knesset', Ahmed Teibi, on Tuesday that he couldn't deny that organs of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli forces were taken out for transplants or scientific research."
But now the news about Israeli trafficking of human organ is spreading to Western mainstream media. Ynet, the biggest Israeli online newspaper, repoted today that "Leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet claimed in one of its articles that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians in order to trade in their organs." [letheomaniac] The article has since been removed
A few weeks ago we had a debate here on PTT whether Zionism is a colonial apparatus or not. One of the Materialist arguments against the perception of Zionism as a colonial practice was that Palestine has never been too attractive economically; it lacks oil, gold or minerals. However, this may cha
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #125 on: 2009-08-24 05:38:58 » |
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Aiding and Abetting War Crimes
The Israeli military tested new weapons in Gaza with U.S. support.
Sources: inthesetimes.com
Authors: Frida Berrigan
Dated: 2009-08-19
“You feel like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants.” That is how one Israeli soldier described Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) invasion of the Gaza Strip, which began in December 2008.
His is one of 54 testimonies collected by the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence in a 110-page report that paints a disturbing picture of urban warfare in one of the world’s most densely populated areas, where more than 1.5 million people occupy a narrow strip of land between Israel and the sea.
Another soldier, after recounting an incident in which his unit used civilians as human shields, described Gaza as a “moral twilight zone.”
It is an apt term for Gaza’s wholesale destruction: homes demolished by Caterpillar D9 bulldozers (manufactured in the United States and armored by Israeli Military Industries) and set afire by white phosphorus canisters (made by Pine Bluff Arsenal, a U.S. Army installation in Pine Bluff, Ark.). Save the Children, a U.K.-based NGO, estimated that more than 500,000 people were displaced during the war, and, a month after the ceasefire, 100,000 remained homeless. The Palestinian Economic Development Council puts a $1.9-billion price tag on rebuilding from the 22-day war. It noted that even under ideal circumstances the work could take five years.
The term also applies to the civilians killed: children cut down while playing, women and men killed as they tried to carry on their normal lives. Civilians were targeted by Cobra helicopters armed with high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) missiles (both made by Lockheed Martin), blasted by Strike missiles shot from Hermes drones (designed and manufactured in Israel) and caught in the crossfire as groups of soldiers advanced on firing militants. Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, says that of the 1,434 Palestinians killed in Gaza, 960 were civilians, including 121 women and 288 children.
Arms and dollars for the ‘moral twilight zone’
Israel—the largest recipient of U.S. military aid—has one of the most sophisticated and extensive military arsenals in the region. U.S.-origin weapons predominate and are an emblem of Washington’s close relationship with Tel Aviv. During George W. Bush’s presidency, Israel received more than $22 billion in military assistance from the United States. The bulk of this was in Foreign Military Financing (FMF), which are U.S. grants for weapons purchases. Now, FMF is on the rise. President Obama is following through on his predecessor’s promise to increase security assistance to $30 billion over the next 10 years.
In a review of the Gaza war published in February 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service listed U.S. weapons platforms used in Operation Cast Lead, including “F-15 and F-16 aircraft [and] Apache helicopters.” Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) list of the U.S. systems deployed by Israel is far more extensive, including Cobra helicopters and American-made High-Explosive, Dual-Purpose rockets and HEAT missiles.
In addition to these systems, human rights groups found evidence of Israel’s use of a wide array of controversial, experimental weapons systems.
White phosphorus
“Why fire phosphorus?” “Because it’s fun. Cool.“—Israeli soldier, to Breaking the Silence.
White phosphorus is designed to obscure the battlefield, increasing freedom of movement for the user. It can also be used as a weapon. The U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine notes that white phosphorous is “spontaneously flammable” and an “extremely toxic inorganic substance.” In Gaza, it was used to devastating effect used to burn down buildings. As one Israeli soldier told Breaking the Silence, “phosphorus was used as an igniter, simply to make it all go up in flames.”
One woman interviewed by HRW described what happened after she was hit by burning white phosphorus: “It burnt a hole and melted everything,” she said, pointing to her bandaged arm. The phosphorus ignites and burns on contact with oxygen, and continues burning until nothing is left or the oxygen supply is cut. According to medical personnel, the wounds sometimes began to burn again as they cleaned them.
In late January 2009, an Amnesty International investigation “found white phosphorus still smoldering in residential areas throughout Gaza days after the ceasefire came into effect on 18 January.” In the bombed courtyard of the Gaza headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, researchers found fragments of white phosphorus artillery shells and note that the “attack had caused a large fire, which destroyed tens of tons of humanitarian aid, including medicines, food and other non-food items.”
Deadly drones
Unlike much of Israeli military hardware, the Hermes and Heron drones are manufactured domestically, and both were used in Operation Cast Lead. In a joint assessment of Israeli drone attacks, B’Tselem, the Palestine Centre for Human Rights and Al Meza Centre for Human Rights found that Israel carried out 42 drone attacks in which 87 civilians were killed during the war.
Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst with HRW, describes how precise and discriminate the drones can be: “Drone operators can clearly see their targets on the ground and also divert their missiles after launch.” In a study of six specific IDF drone attacks during Operation Cast Lead, HRW found that 29 civilians were killed, including 8 children. According to their study, 5 of the 6 attacks were carried out in broad daylight, all of them in civilian areas far from the fighting and in “unlikely sites for launching rockets into Israel.” Given the drones’ high degree of precision, HRW asserts that “these attacks violated international humanitarian law.”
New weapons testing
Human rights investigators, journalists and humanitarian workers were all barred from Gaza during the fighting, fueling confusion and speculation about what kinds of weapons systems were being used.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who worked in a Gaza hospital during the war, told “Democracy Now!” that “we have seen a substantial number of amputations where the amputees do not have shrapnel injuries. On the contrary, they have torn apart their legs, often one or two or even three limbs.” These injuries—new, terrible and seemingly shrapnel-free—have led to the hypothesis that Israel has been using what are known as Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), a type of weapon that is still in testing phase in the United States.
“It is highly likely that Israel has developed its own version of DIME,” writes journalist David Hambling on the national security blog Danger Room. The “Iron Fist” interceptor, unveiled by the Israeli military in 2006, works in a way that is consistent with DIME technology. As Hambling writes in the online magazine Defense Update, the Iron Fist “uses only the blast effect to defeat the threat, crushing the soft components of a shaped charge or deflecting and destabilizing the missile or kinetic rod in their flight.”
Amnesty International researcher Donatella Rovera surveyed the damage wrought by these weapons and concluded, “The kinds of weapons used and the manner in which they were used indicates prima facie evidence of war crimes.”
War crimes?
Months after Operation Cast Lead, countless questions about the conduct of the IDF and the weapons used in Gaza remain unanswered. Gathering incontrovertible evidence and making solid conclusions is a critical part of post-conflict reconstruction. But given the kind of investigations that have been carried out thus far, that sort of closure seems out of reach for the people of Gaza.
The IDF carried out five of its own investigations, concluding that it “operated in accordance with international law” and that the small number of questionable incidents that did occur were “unavoidable and occur in all combat situations.”
HRW deems these investigations “not credible” and has called on the Israeli government to cooperate with a comprehensive UN investigation led by the former chief prosecutor of the international war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Richard Goldstone. Thus far, Israel has opted not to participate.
And the United States—Israel’s closest ally and largest supporter—has refused to push Israel to cooperate. It seems the “moral twilight zone” extends beyond Gaza, all the way to Washington.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #126 on: 2009-09-01 10:37:03 » |
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Not one penny has reached Gaza
Source: The National
Authors: Omar Karmi (Foreign Correspondent, Jerusalem)
Dated: 2009-08-31
It has been six months since the international community pledged nearly US$5 billion (Dh18bn) in aid to the Palestinian people, chiefly for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip after Israel’s devastating offensive there this year.
None of this aid has reached Gaza and no reconstruction has started.
Although Israel is slowly easing its restrictions on the flow of basic humanitarian goods to Gaza, including food and medicine, construction materials remain prohibited from entering, institutions and homes still lie in rubble, and critically needed projects to repair and upgrade Gaza’s power plant and tottering sewage network lie dormant.
The situation is frustrating to development agencies and experts. Two weeks ago, the UN was forced to issue another emergency appeal for funds for Gazans. The UN’s Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides aid and education to Palestinian refugees, decried the condition of Gaza’s refugees as “shameful”. Numbering one million, refugees make up about 70 per cent of the total population in Gaza; and UNRWA asked for $181 million to help it through the rest of the year in a special Ramadan appeal.
Of the billions of dollars pledged for reconstruction by the international community, UNRWA noted in a press release on August 17, “not one penny” has reached Gaza, and reconstruction has proven to be a “mirage”. The humanitarian situation in Gaza, according to the UN, “remains precarious”.
That such serious humanitarian disasters as a cholera epidemic did not emerge in Gaza, said William Corcoran, the president of the American Near East Refugee Aid agency, (Anera) is partly down to “dumb luck”.
“We expected more serious health scares but thankfully they haven’t occurred,” Mr Corcoran said in an interview last week. “This is partly because sewage pipes have not yet burst into the streets. But they are at the stage where that can happen at any moment.”
In Gaza, Anera is a partner to USAID, the official US aid agency, and is supposed to repair and upgrade most of Gaza’s aged and faulty sewage system. That project – like all the projects, including construction of a seaport and the reopening of the airport, agreed to in the US-brokered 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access – has yet to get off the ground.
Mr Corcoran was keen to highlight the projects Anera has been able to implement in Gaza, including food and medicine deliveries, a programme to provide fresh milk to Gazan preschoolers and the reconstruction of 18 preschools using materials recycled from the destruction wrought in the Gaza war, but he admitted to frustration at the kind of projects Anera is now pursuing.
In the West Bank, he said, Anera helped establish four IT institutes affiliated to four different universities. In Gaza, while plans have been laid for a similar project, Anera’s newest project involved buying shoes for children. “We are forced to lower our expectations for what we can do.”
At heart, the problem is political. The expertise is there, whether with such agencies as the UN and Anera, or with local NGOs affiliated to those international bodies. The money has been pledged even if it has yet to be delivered. The statement from UNRWA noted that, pledges apart, the largest Arab donation to date had been a $34m contribution from the emir of Kuwait.
But what Mr Corcoran calls the “political stalemate” – whether in international efforts to pressure Israel to lift its siege on Gaza, which has been in place for more than two years, or in Palestinian reconciliation efforts – has stymied efforts to begin reconstruction in Gaza.
The latter is crucial in establishing a mechanism for distributing aid to Gaza. International sanctions on official contacts with Hamas tie the hands of agencies dealing with Gaza authorities. International funding, under the current proscriptions, cannot end up in the hands of Hamas, and even a clear commitment by Hamas, offered repeatedly over the past months, will not dissuade the international community from this stance.
The result is that international aid efforts are being channelled through the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas. As emphasised yesterday by Nabil Shaath, a senior aide to Mr Abbas, in a press conference in Ramallah, there will be no reconstruction of the Gaza Strip until there is a unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas.
Even then, however, the international community must still pressure Israel to lift the siege, aid organisations said. The destruction of the war in January aside, the greatest damage has been done not by bombs but by isolation. Unable to rebuild or improve, two years of sanctions have undermined the economy and infrastructure. According to a July survey by the Palestine Trade Centre, 95 per cent of industries in Gaza have had to shut as a result of sanctions and 120,000 private sector employees have been laid off.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #127 on: 2009-09-08 23:26:02 » |
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Tunnel to Gaza
[ Hermit : As if the horror of the situation wasn't bad enough, American taxpayer's are now helping to turn the screws even tighter. Horrible to be living in a country that supports the illegal mass punishment by blockades of an effectively defenceless population made up largely of refugees caused by ethnic cleansing. A personal thank-you note to Obama might be in order. ]
Source: Voltairenet.org
Authors: Saed Bannoura
Dated: 2009-09-08
Egyptian security sources reported Tuesday that American military experts arrived at the Al Arish International Airport and headed, while heavily guarded, to the Rafah border terminal where they met senior Egyptian security officials.
The officials held a meeting with their Egyptian counterparts and presented a detailed plan that includes high-tech equipment to uncover tunnels.
The equipment was donated by the United States as the country is sponsoring the installation of high-tech devices to stop the smuggling at the Gaza-Egypt border.
The U.S. officials said that the congress-supported plan aims at securing the 13.5 border line between Egypt and Gaza. The congress approved allocating 50 Million USD to secure the borders between Egypt and Israel.
They visited the border area and saw the tunnels that were uncovered and detonated by Egypt. The number of tunnels uncovered so far exceeded 300.
The officials also observed the ongoing installation of surveillance cameras and monitoring systems along the border, and thanked Egypt for its efforts to counter the tunnels on its border with Gaza.
Israel claims that one of the reasons that “pushed” it to go to war with Gaza us the ongoing smuggling of arms and ammunition.
It is worth mentioning that Egypt installed high-tech surveillance cameras along the border line as an initial step towards installing the new systems.
The equipment can detect underground tunnels, and also detects any underground movement even if it is far away.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #128 on: 2009-09-09 05:40:09 » |
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UN: Gaza in worst condition since 1967
UN agency report says Gaza war cost residents $4 billion, 90% of them currently below poverty line
Source: YNetNews.com
Authors: Ali Waked
dated: 2009-09-09
The UN trade and development agency says 90% of Gaza's residents are currently beneath the poverty line and rates the damages caused by the IDF's Operation Cast Lead at $4 billion, a sum it claims is three times larger than the Strip's annual market performance.
The agency claims the operation halted all trade in the Gaza Strip, creating a defecit of around $88 million. This, in addition to material damages and loss of finances due to the siege and trade limitations later imposed on the Strip, make up the final sum.
The agency's report claims the Strip has not been in such dire straits since 1967, and that the government has become the residents' main force of employment.
Gaza's production capabilities are also on a permanent downslide, the UN agency says, and its economy has been recessing for nine years.
The agency offers no solution, and says it regrets that the $4.4 billion dollars pledged to the Strip during a Sharm El-Sheikh conference has not yet reached its destination.
The conference, held in the Egyptian city in March, hosted representatives from 45 different nations. The US pledged $900 million, a third of the sum pledged during the conference.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #129 on: 2009-09-10 11:52:14 » |
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Israeli Study: Majority of Gazans Slain in War Were Civilians
Israeli Military Claims Study 'Not Based on Facts'
[ Hermit : As has become usual Israel once again refrains from addressing the inconvenient facts and instead uses fallacies to attack the organizations and individuals involved in research or criticism. ]
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz
Dated: 2009-09-09
A study issued today by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem dramatically challenged the Israeli government’s claims about last winter’s war against the Gaza Strip, saying that the majority of the nearly 1,400 Gazans killed in a month-long offensive were civilians and that at least 252 of them were children under the age of 16. Only 330 of the slain were actually combatants, the report suggests. [ Hermit : Especially worthy of notice, "B'Tselem noted that 248 Palestinian police officers were killed while at their stations, most in surprise air strikes on the first day of the war." "The military counted them as combatants." (ibid) ]
The Israeli military’s version of the conflict saw only 1,166 Gazans killed, and insisted that the vast majority, 709, were combatants and only 295 were civilians. They provided no evidence for their own claims, however, unlike B’Tselem’s report.
The death tolls from B’Tselem’s reports, though slightly lower, were more in keeping with reports from Palestinians rights groups, which claimed slightly over 1,400 deaths. The Israeli group, as with the Palestinian groups, provided a list of names of the slain. The Israeli military did not.
Also as happened with the Palestinian reports, the Israeli military publicly attacked B’Tselem for issuing its report, claiming that they were not based on facts and claimed that B’Tselem did not have the “intelligence capabilities” to come up with such a report.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #130 on: 2009-09-15 10:41:40 » |
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Gaza Strip's water supply in danger of collapse, says UN
Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Authors:Not Credited
Dated: 2009-09-14
The Gaza Strip's underground water supply is in danger of collapse due to overuse and contamination, exacerbated by Israel's December offensive, the United Nations said Monday.
A report released at the Nairobi headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned that it could take centuries for damage to Gaza's aquifer to be reversed unless action was taken now.
'Many of the impacts of the recent hostilities have exacerbated environmental degradation that has been years in the making,' UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said.
Alternative water sources need to be found in order to rest the aquifer, which provides drinking water for Gaza's 1.5 million residents, UNEP said.
Salt water intrusion and pollution from sewage and agricultural runoff are serious concerns, putting infants in the Gaza Strip at risk of nitrate poisoning, said the report, based on an assessment carried out earlier this year.
Other environmental concerns for Gaza include 600,000 tonnes of rubble created by the Israeli offensive, UNEP said.
The hostilities also saw refuse collection suspended, the build up of hazardous medical waste at landfill sites due to more injured and the release of pollutants such as fuel into the soil, UNEP said.
According to UNEP, more than 1.5 billion dollars could be needed over the next 20 years to restore the aquifer.
Around 1,400 Palestinians died in the offensive, which the Israeli government said it launched to stop Hamas and other militant groups firing rockets into Israel. [ Hermit : But this appears, as is not unusual with Israel, top be a lie. No rockets had killed Israelis for over six months due to an agreement by the Palestinians to prevent the firing of rockets in exchange for Israel lifting their illegal siege of the refugees in Gaza. At the time, Israel was in breach of the agreement as they had not lifted the blockade and still have not. It is possible to conclude that the actual reason, in terms of the effects of Israel's additional torturing of the population of Gaza, was purely to assist the extreme right wing of Israel in the Israeli elections. Even if the alleged reason were the truth, the offensive on a civilian population and its infrastructure as collective punishment is illegal. ]
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #131 on: 2009-09-21 03:00:20 » |
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[Blunderov] Rosh Hashanah. A time for reflection.
Lenin obliges
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Sabra and Shatila posted by lenin
To destroy the basis of Palestinian nationhood, Israel had to crush every manifestation of civil society, political and military development among the Palestinians living in border areas and miserable refugee camps, from 1949 onward. Repeated incursions into Jordan, including the bombing of Irbid, and the ethnic cleansing of one and a half million people from the Suez Canal area in 1970, was a logical corollary of this. The Hashemite kingdom of Jordan had been the Zionists' key ally in the originary purge of 700,000 Palestinians that enabled the Israeli state to come into being. It was a major host of refugee populations, tightly controlling their movements and environment on Israel's behalf. Israel foresaw, however, that if local populations sympathised with the refugees, they had a political problem on their hands. So, their repeated attacks were in part an endeavour to turn local populations against the Palestinians, frightening them enough to pressure the Jordanian government into acting against the refugees. After a series of massacres by the Jordanian state, refugees aligned to the PLO were driven into Lebanon, right into the middle of a brewing civil war between, loosely, left-wing and Islamic groups on the one hand, and right-wing Maronite groups on the other. The PLO sought to avoid being dragged into that war, but when Phalangists started, using Israeli-supplied weaponry, to attack Palestinians, the PLO joined with local leftist forces. Israel was intervening directly long before its invasion, its actions including the napalming of a refugee camp, killing 200 people. By 1982, under the Likudnik Prime Minister and veteran of 1948, Menachem Begin, Israel had opted for open conquest.
Israel had a number of interests in the war. They wanted to crush the PLO, to align themselves with the right-wing Maronite forces with whom they believed they had a natural alliance (and it would make sense geopolitically in terms of opposing both left-wing and Islamist movements), and to extend their border somewhat to the north. Just as was witnessed during Israel's assault on Lebanon in 2006, Zionism is ideologically committed to the idea that the territory at least up to the Litani river belongs to Israel. The attempted ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon during the invasion took the form of dropping leaflets from 20 June 2006 on civilian areas, ordering all Lebanese to evacuate for their own safety - and then dropping bombs on them as they fled. On 23 June 2006, Israel explicitly acknowledged that it intended to set up a military administration in the entire area south of the Litani. Whether or not international opinion (ie, that of the US and its allies) would accept this, it would count as yet another 'fact on the ground' that Israel could defend on the grounds that retreat would only encourage the evil-doers. Well, the first invasion of Lebanon was even more ambitious in its aims. Israel believed that in alliance with the Phalangists, it could control up to two-thirds of Lebanese territory. Given Israel's long-standing obsession with the 'demographic problem', moreover, it would not be sensible for them to annexe the territory without being sure that they could control, deplete and expel the Palestinians in that territory.
As usual, Israel's aggression was prepared by various provocative actions designed to elicit a response from the PLO, including 'training exercises' in Lebanese territory, attacks on Lebanese fishing boats and violations of air and water space. No retort was forthcoming. So, following the attempted assassination of Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov by the Abu Nidal group, Israel launched a series of bombing raids in Lebanese territory (where the Abu Nidal group did not have a presence). The PLO did respond this time, shelling northern colonies - or settlements, or villages, or 'Jewish residences', or whatever euphemism you prefer. Israel took the cue to invade, protestings its determination to crush terrorism and protect its civilians from shelling (does this sound vaguely familiar?). In reality it embarked on the attempted annihilation of the PLO as a physical force of resistance, and of the whole idea of independent Palestinian nationhood. And it is in this context that one must understand the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
The PLO was, Israel recognised, not merely a military or paramilitary outfit, but a popular political force well-rooted in the exiled Palestinian population. To attack the PLO was not just to attack their troops, but the whole civilian infrastructure which supported them. And it wasn't enough to attack them in Lebanon. It is forgotten, perhaps, that during the invasion Israel also quoshed a number of civic and elected institutions in the West Bank, imposing authoritarian rule by whatever proxies and quislings they could find (few in number as it happened). It set up, funded and armed Village Leagues to keep control of the territories, authorising them to carry out arrests and attacks on opponents. This is the role that, sadly, Fatah has come to embrace. In Lebanon, the annihilationist motif was evident from the beginning. Long before Sabra and Shatila, the earliest targets of the war included refugee camps such as Rashidiyeh, which was reduced to rubble. Its residents fled or were killed, and those who were caught were rounded up and taken to a nearby beach to watch the destruction. All males of teenage years and older were blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken away. And they were not heard from again. Again, the Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp was largely flattened by bombing, and its mosque bulldozed afterwards. Approximately 100 mangled bodies were found under the mosques ruins. Hospitals were destroyed, orphanages flattened by cluster and phosphorus bombs, a school in Sidon was destroyed with 300 inside killed and, with ruthless efficiency, the Israeli army blew housing blocks and apartments to craters, if they suspected that there might be PLO activists inside. Hundreds of thousands of refugees - mostly women and children, since males were more robustly dealt with - were wandering aimlessly through Lebanon's carnage, starving and out of their minds with terror, before Sabra and Shatila. And all the while, incidentally, liberal and left-wing figures from the United States were taking IDF tours of southern Lebanon, cheering on the bloodshed. Jane Fonda, who had funded the Viet Cong, found herself conscripted to Israel's army of overseas cheerleaders, as did Tom Hayden, the former Sixties radical. Michael Walzer's verdict can be summarised in the simple phrase: "just war".
In September 1982, a month after Israel's demolition of the PLO had been consecrated, the IDF sealed off the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. On Thursday 16 September 1982, truckloads of Phalangist and Haddad troops entered the camp from behind IDF lines. The Phalangists selected for the attack were drawn from the most extreme elements of the militia, while the Haddad troops were more or less direct auxiliaries of the Israeli army. They killed and killed for days. At night, they killed by they light of flares, methodically massacring the inhabitants, scooping them up with bulldozers and burying them under the rubble. Those bodies which could not be buried were taken away in trucks. On Friday 17 September, the Israeli chief of staff and met with the Phalangist high command, commended their hard work, and offered them a truck with IDF markings so that they might better do their work. They were given another 12 hours in the camp to finish their work, which they duly completed by 5am on Saturday 18 September. After the massacre was completed, journalists began to arrive on the scene. Robert Fisk was one of them, and reported:
"What we found inside the Palestinian Chatila camp at ten o'clock on the morning of 18th September 1982 did not quite beggar description, although it would have been easier to re-tell in the cold prose of a medical examination ... there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into the rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army medical equipment and empty bottles of whisky ... Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot at point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines.
"The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old ... On the other side of the main road, up a track through the debris, we found the bodies of five women and several children. The women were middle-aged and their corpses lay draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. The girl had short, dark curly hair, her eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was dead ... One of the women also held a tiny baby to her body. The bullet that had passed through her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman's stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror." (Robert Fisk, Pity The Nation: Lebanon At War, Oxford University Press, 1992).
The UN General Assembly considered this an act of genocide. It is important to see this in light of the processes that led to the massacre. It was not an isolated incident, but the horrifying - from the IDF's perspective, apparently, glorious - culmination of Israel's war on the very idea of the Palestinian people. It has a genocidal logic which has been repeatedly expressed in the various massacres in Israel's wars, whether in Qana or in Gaza, where the IDF seemed to go out of its way to violate every last humanitarian norm - indeed, to prove that it absolutely did not consider the Palestinians worthy of even the most minimal human consideration. The incident in Gaza City, on 22 January this year, in which the IDF sealed off a neighbourhood, bombed and shelled it, blocked medical and humanitarian entry, and knowingly left children to slowly die next to their already deceased relatives, was a clear indication of this. Remembering Sabra and Shatila is not just about paying ritual tribute to the dead, for whom tributes are worthless. It is about knowing what it is that the Palestinians are up against, and understanding the urgent need for solidarity today. The TUC's support for the BDS campaign is long belated recognition of that.
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #132 on: 2009-09-21 05:06:59 » |
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Reading that should bring everyone a very special kind of joy.
Ultimately Lebanon and Syria are the inevitable victims because Israel has destroyed the regional water supplies, and Syria and the Lebanon are weak and have water.
And yes, the USA with the largest Israeli Occupied Sector in the world located in the heart of Washington, supports these bloody genocidalists. Allegedly unreservedly. Which is why it is so important for the rest of the world to try to send both Israel and the USA a message. That genocide remains unacceptable even when it is performed in the name of democracy, freedom and liberty by the most moral armies in the world.
May I be excused now? I think I need to throw up.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #133 on: 2009-09-28 04:47:41 » |
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Israel demands PA drop war crimes suit at The Hague
[ Hermit : And while Israel defames the authors of the reports, the International community, and the humanitarian and relief organizations who have confirmed the many war crimes committed by Israel, Israel attempts to blackmail and bribe its way out of the dock. When anyone else tries something like this, they are not usually referred to as moral examples. Why is it different for Israel? ]
Source: Ha'Aretz
Authors: Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff (Haaretz Correspondent)
Dated: 2009-09-28
Tensions are mounting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority following Ramallah's call on the International Court at The Hague to examine claims of "war crimes" that the IDF allegedly committed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. The issue is already weighing in on the relations between the leadership of Israel's defense and security establishment with their counterparts in the West Bank, and is part of a growing list of Israeli complaints about the behavior of PA officials.
Meanwhile, Israel has warned the Palestinian Authority that it would condition permission for a second cellular telephone provider to operate in the West Bank - an economic issue of critical importance to the PA leadership - on the Palestinians withdrawing their request at the International Court.
The issue of a second cellular provider is at the center of talks between the PA, the international Quartet, and Israel, and has been ongoing for some months. Currently the sole provider is Pal-Tel, and the PA prime minister, Salam Fayyad, considers the introduction of another carrier as an important step in improving the civilian infrastructure in the West Bank. The project is central to Watanya, the company that is set to serve as the second provider, and profits are expected to be substantial
However, if the project is not approved by October 15, the PA will be forced to pay a penalty estimated at $300 million, the sum that has already been invested in licensing and infrastructure.
Western diplomats, including the Quartet's envoy to the region, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, have made it clear to senior Israeli officials that time is running out, and have urged them to allow for the establishment of a second provider to go forward.
Israel's objections begin with the issue of transmission frequencies. The frequencies that the Palestinians want the new company to use are very close to ones used by the Israel Defense Forces in some of its most sensitive activities.
"Israel is making it difficult for us on many levels," complains Mohammed Mustafa, economic adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. "They now want us to pressure Pal-Tel to release some of its frequencies, so that they can be used by Watanya."
However, another, more substantive issue was recently added, when the Palestinian Authority appealed to the International Criminal Court. Security sources told Haaretz that this move, which was authorized by Fayyad and Abbas, incensed senior officials of the defense establishment, especially army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
Ashkenazi has been kept busy by involvement in a holding action against the threat that Israeli officers would be brought before the court as a result of charges that the IDF committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Concern has intensified following the grave report that the Goldstone Commission released two weeks ago on behalf of the United Nations. [ Hermit : Facts have apparently become anti-semitic as well as anti-Republican. ]
In Israel the argument is that the PA is being unfair, and that at the time of the operation in the Gaza Strip, last winter, its senior officials encouraged their Israeli counterparts to step up the pressure on Hamas, and even to attempt to bring its rule in the territory to the point of collapse. However, at a latter stage they joined those decrying Israel and its alleged actions in the Strip.
In light of this tension, the chief of staff conditioned his approval of a second cellular provider to the Palestinians' withdrawing their appeal to the court.
"The PA has reached the point where it has to decide whether it is working with us or against us," senior figures in the defense establishment have said. At the PA it is being said, in response to the Israeli demands, that Abbas and Fayyad will water down their appeal to the ICJ, though they will refuse to promise that it will rescinded entirely.
During the past year Israel defense officials have often praised the Palestinians on improving their contribution to securing the West Bank, and of the decisive character of the leadership under Fayyad. However, in recent weeks there have been increasing claims that even as the Authority is being praised by Israel and the international community, it is behaving irresponsibly by violating agreements between the two sides.
The Israeli claims focus on the growing presence of Palestinian security personnel in civilian clothing in East Jerusalem, contrary to the obligations of the PA. The security personnel participate in prayers at Al-Aqsa mosque, and at other sites in the city, and have stepped up their presence in the Jerusalem's medical and educational facilities. Moreover, they have also been involved in the abduction of Palestinians suspected of selling property to Jews.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Starving a Nation: From the World's Largest Concentration Camp
« Reply #134 on: 2009-09-28 18:00:47 » |
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"The PA has reached the point where it has to decide whether it is working with us or against us,"
[Blunderov] Darling! They're playing our song! That haunting refrain! That sweet, sweet melody! I'm come over all dewy eyed just hearing it again..it's just so... beautiful...
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