Personal Thoughts: This is one of the greatest speech's I have heard. The points Zinn makes are revolutionary but yet so simple. THINK!!
From the Blog: The Politics of Hope by Mark Braverman
I graduated from Columbia in 1970. Students had closed down the campus that Spring over the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. Two years earlier the campus was in turmoil when students and faculty occupied several buildings in protest over the University’s plans to take over a chunk of the local neighborhood in upper Manhattan to build a gym. The President of Columbia had sent in NY riot police to break heads and drag out the protesters. So when that President took the podium at our graduation, several hundred of us ceremoniously walked out and held a counter-commencement. The speaker was Howard Zinn.
This week’s blog posting is a speech Zinn gave on October 10, 1999. You won’t be able to stop reading until you reach the end.
Some years ago, when I was teaching at Boston University, I was asked by a Jewish group to give a talk on the Holocaust. I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, not about the genocide of six million Jews. It was the mid-Eighties, and the United States government was supporting death squad governments in Central America, so I spoke of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guatemala and El Salvador, victims of American policy. My point was that the memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be encircled by barbed wire, morally ghettoized, kept isolated from other genocides in history. It seemed to me that to remember what happened to Jews served no important purpose unless it aroused indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world.
A few days later, in the campus newspaper, there was a letter from a faculty member who had heard me speak—a Jewish refugee who had left Europe for Argentina, and then the United States. He objected strenuously to my extending the moral issue from Jews in Europe in the 1940s to people in other parts of the world, in our time. The Holocaust was a sacred memory. It was a unique event, not to be compared to other events. He was outraged that, invited to speak on the Jewish Holocaust, I had chosen to speak about other matters.
I was reminded of this experience when I recently read a book by Peter Novick, THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LIFE. Novick’s starting point is the question: why, fifty years after the event, does the Holocaust play a more prominent role in this country—the Holocaust Museum in Washington, hundreds of Holocaust programs in schools—than it did in the first decades after the second World War? Surely at the core of the memory is a horror that should not be forgotten. But around that core, whose integrity needs no enhancement, there has grown up an industry of memorialists who have labored to keep that memory alive for purposes of their own.
Some Jews have used the Holocaust as a way of preserving a unique identity, which they see threatened by intermarriage and assimilation. Zionists have used the Holocaust, since the 1967 war, to justify further Israeli expansion into Palestinian land, and to build support for a beleaguered Israel (more beleaguered, as David Ben-Gurion had predicted, once it occupied the West Bank and Gaza). And non-Jewish politicians have used the Holocaust to build political support among the numerically small but influential Jewish voters—note the solemn pronouncements of Presidents wearing yarmulkas to underline their anguished sympathy.
I would never have become a historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to go into the past and never emerge, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in my time. If the Holocaust was to have any meaning, I thought, we must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time. We must atone for our allowing the Jewish Holocaust to happen by refusing to allow similar atrocities to take place now—yes, to use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.
When Jews turn inward to concentrate on their own history, and look away from the ordeal of others, they are, with terrible irony, doing exactly what the rest of the world did in allowing the genocide to happen. There were shameful moments, travesties of Jewish humanism, as when Jewish organizations lobbied against a Congressional recognition of the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 on the ground that it diluted the memory of the Jewish Holocaust. Or when the designers of the Holocaust Museum dropped the idea of mentioning the Armenian genocide after lobbying by the Israeli government. (Turkey was the only Moslem government with which Israel had diplomatic relations.)
Another such moment came when Elie Wiesel, chair of President Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust, refused to include in a description of the Holocaust Hitler’s killing of millions of non-Jews. That would be, he said, to falsify the reality in the name of misguided universalism. Novick quotes Wiesel as saying They are stealing the Holocaust from us. As a result the Holocaust Museum gave only passing attention to the five million or more non-Jews who died in the Nazi camps. To build a wall around the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust is to abandon the idea that humankind is all one, that we are all, of whatever color, nationality, religion, deserving of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What happened to the Jews under Hitler is unique in its details but it shares universal characteristics with many other events in human history: the Atlantic slave trade, the genocide against native Americans, the injuries and deaths to millions of working people, victims of the capitalist ethos that put profit before human life.
In recent years, while paying more and more homage to the Holocaust as a central symbol of man’s cruelty to man, we have, by silence and inaction, collaborated in an endless chain of cruelties. Hiroshima and My Lai are the most dramatic symbols—and did we hear from Wiesel and other keepers of the Holocaust flame outrage against those atrocities? Countee Cullen once wrote, in his poem Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song (after the sentencing to death of the Scottsboro Boys): Surely, I said/ Now will the poets sing/ But they have raised no cry/I wonder why.
There have been the massacres of Rwanda, and the starvation in Somalia, with our government watching and doing nothing. There were the death squads in Latin America, and the decimation of the population of East Timor, with our government actively collaborating. Our church-going Christian presidents, so pious in their references to the genocide against the Jews, kept supplying the instruments of death to the perpetrators of other genocides.
True there are some horrors which seem beyond our powers. But there is an ongoing atrocity which is within our power to bring to an end. Novick points to it, and physician-anthropologist Paul Farmer describes it in detail in his remarkable new book INFECTIONS AND INEQUALITIES. That is: the deaths of ten million children all over the world who die every year of malnutrition and preventable diseases. The World Health Organization estimates three million people died last year of tuberculosis, which is preventable and curable, as Farmer has proved in his medical work in Haiti. With a small portion of our military budget we could wipe out tuberculosis.
The point of all this is not to diminish the experience of the Jewish Holocaust, but to enlarge it. For Jews it means to reclaim the tradition of Jewish universal humanism against an Israel-centered nationalism. Or, as Novick puts it, to go back to that larger social consciousness that was the hallmark of the American Jewry of my youth. That larger consciousness was displayed in recent years by those Israelis who protested the beating of Palestinians in the Intifada, who demonstrated against the invasion of Lebanon.
For others—whether Armenians or Native Americans or Africans or Bosnians or whatever—it means to use their own bloody histories, not to set themselves against others, but to create a larger solidarity against the holders of wealth and power, the perpetrators and ongoing horrors of our time.
The Holocaust might serve a powerful purpose if it led us to think of the world today as wartime Germany—where millions die while the rest of the population obediently goes about its business. It is a frightening thought that the Nazis, in defeat, were victorious: today Germany, tomorrow the world. That is, until we withdraw our obedience.
January 30, 2010
January 29, 2010
Israel keeps up Palestinian evictions
Videos from AlJazeeraEnglish.
Nasser Al Ghawi's tent demolished:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Rcp3vWNUs&feature=channel
Qassem family eviction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EISikrLcSw8&NR=1&feature=fvwp
I know this is somewhat backdated but it gives a good idea of what Palestinian families go through. These are the same families I slept outside in a tent with for the first 2 weeks of my journey. I saw those same settlers every night causing issues. It is still going on today!!!
Nasser Al Ghawi's tent demolished:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Rcp3vWNUs&feature=channel
Qassem family eviction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EISikrLcSw8&NR=1&feature=fvwp
I know this is somewhat backdated but it gives a good idea of what Palestinian families go through. These are the same families I slept outside in a tent with for the first 2 weeks of my journey. I saw those same settlers every night causing issues. It is still going on today!!!
Gaza from above
This is an aerial photo of Gaza, where a 200 foot wide star of David was carved into farmland by Israeli tanks.
It's one of the images contained in the Goldstone Report.
Justice Goldstone himself spoke to students at Yale University this week, and though press coverage of the event is scant, Mondoweiss blog tells the story:
The two student authors of the piece attack the report as "riddled with factual errors and twisted accounts of the war", but instead of providing any reasoned argument in support of their accusation, they paint the Judge as the biased puppet of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which, again without any supporting argument or evidence, they write off as:
It's one of the images contained in the Goldstone Report.
Justice Goldstone himself spoke to students at Yale University this week, and though press coverage of the event is scant, Mondoweiss blog tells the story:
though he said he would not be talking about Gaza, his report came up again and again, and in fact the anti-Goldstoners tried to turn the event into a circus.The hostility to his presence also made it into the pages of the Yale student newspaper .
The two student authors of the piece attack the report as "riddled with factual errors and twisted accounts of the war", but instead of providing any reasoned argument in support of their accusation, they paint the Judge as the biased puppet of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which, again without any supporting argument or evidence, they write off as:
"...a body that is used by some of the world’s worst human rights abusers to deflect attention from their own authoritarianism and brutality.Now the distinguished and experienced Goldstone has been savaged by plenty of much more heavyweight critics, so the shallow attacks of a couple of students is unlikely to register on his consciousness; nonetheless the piece does tend to illustrate how the narrative and techniques of the anti-Goldstone crowd have been absorbed at many levels.
B'Tselem calls for investigation into Nablus executions
Bethlehem - Ma'an - The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem requested Major General Avichai Mandelblit investigate the execution-style deaths of three men in Nablus on 26 December, a report from the group said Wednesday.
The men, allegedly suspects in the death of a settler rabbi days earlier, were shot dead at close range in their homes, in two cases as their families watched. Detention raids are a regular part of the Israeli occupation, particularly in the north recently.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are on average 103 search and arrest operations conducted each week in the West Bank; only three in the past three years have resulted in the death of the "wanted" individuals. All three deaths occurred during the 26 December raids.
At the time, Israeli forces said they were killed during an "attempt to locate and arrest" the men. Reports indicated that the men were all shot because they presented a security risk.
According to B'Tselem, the "killing of the three Fatah activists in Nablus was unlawful," and "the soldiers' violence against the families of the three men and the damage caused to their property" were matters that warranted investigation.
The organization investigated the reports, according to its statement, including interviews with nine relatives of the men who were killed. "Examination of the findings at the scene and of medical reports, revealed a different version" of events than those presented by the military, B'Tselem said.
"The investigation raises a grave suspicion that the soldiers acted unlawfully and, at least in the cases of Ghassan Abu Sharakh and Nader As-Sarkaji, made no attempt to arrest them before shooting them to death. This, in spite of the fact that the two had obeyed the order to exit their home, and were not carrying arms.
"As there were no eyewitnesses to the killing of Anan Subuh, B'Tselem cannot ascertain the circumstances in which he was shot by soldiers. However, B'Tselem's investigation indicates that, although a weapon was found in his hiding place, 'Anan Subuh did not fire at the soldiers. The IDF's Spokesperson's announcements regarding this incident did not mention an exchange of gunfire that night."
Moreover, the organization stated, as the men were "merely suspects," the army's duty was to arrest them and bring them to trial. Israel denies that it carries out assassinations in the West Bank, yet B'Tselem's investigation raise a grave suspicion that the soldiers acted as if they were on an assassination mission, not an arrest operation.
Background: This is one of the first experiences I had in Nablus. Please look back to the report about three men in Nablus who were murdered. I took those pictures.
The men, allegedly suspects in the death of a settler rabbi days earlier, were shot dead at close range in their homes, in two cases as their families watched. Detention raids are a regular part of the Israeli occupation, particularly in the north recently.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are on average 103 search and arrest operations conducted each week in the West Bank; only three in the past three years have resulted in the death of the "wanted" individuals. All three deaths occurred during the 26 December raids.
At the time, Israeli forces said they were killed during an "attempt to locate and arrest" the men. Reports indicated that the men were all shot because they presented a security risk.
According to B'Tselem, the "killing of the three Fatah activists in Nablus was unlawful," and "the soldiers' violence against the families of the three men and the damage caused to their property" were matters that warranted investigation.
The organization investigated the reports, according to its statement, including interviews with nine relatives of the men who were killed. "Examination of the findings at the scene and of medical reports, revealed a different version" of events than those presented by the military, B'Tselem said.
"The investigation raises a grave suspicion that the soldiers acted unlawfully and, at least in the cases of Ghassan Abu Sharakh and Nader As-Sarkaji, made no attempt to arrest them before shooting them to death. This, in spite of the fact that the two had obeyed the order to exit their home, and were not carrying arms.
"As there were no eyewitnesses to the killing of Anan Subuh, B'Tselem cannot ascertain the circumstances in which he was shot by soldiers. However, B'Tselem's investigation indicates that, although a weapon was found in his hiding place, 'Anan Subuh did not fire at the soldiers. The IDF's Spokesperson's announcements regarding this incident did not mention an exchange of gunfire that night."
Moreover, the organization stated, as the men were "merely suspects," the army's duty was to arrest them and bring them to trial. Israel denies that it carries out assassinations in the West Bank, yet B'Tselem's investigation raise a grave suspicion that the soldiers acted as if they were on an assassination mission, not an arrest operation.
Background: This is one of the first experiences I had in Nablus. Please look back to the report about three men in Nablus who were murdered. I took those pictures.
Latest wave of Israeli repression against Palestinian popular resistance in the occupied West Bank makes the NYT
Israel Signals Tougher Line on West Bank Protests
NILIN, West Bank — For more than a year, this village has been a focus of weekly protests against the Israeli security barrier, which cuts through its lands. Now, the village appears to be at the center of an intensifying Israeli arrest campaign.
He added, “They came to say, ‘We know who you are.’ ”
Each Friday for the last five years, Palestinians have demonstrated against the barrier, bolstered by Israeli sympathizers and foreign volunteers who document the ensuing clashes with video cameras, often posting the most dramatic footage on YouTube.
Israel says the barrier, under construction since 2002, is essential to prevent suicide bombers from reaching its cities; the Palestinians oppose it on grounds that much of it runs through the territory of the West Bank.
While the weekly protests are billed as nonviolent resistance, they usually end in violent confrontations between the Israeli security forces and masked, stone-throwing Palestinian youths. “These are not sit-ins with people singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ ” said Maj. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Army’s Central Command, which controls the West Bank. “These are violent, illegal, dangerous riots.”
Other Palestinians are “jumping on the bandwagon,” he said, and the protests “could slip out of control.”
The protests first took hold in the nearby village of Bilin, which became a symbol of Palestinian defiance after winning a ruling in the Israeli Supreme Court stipulating that the barrier must be rerouted to take in less agricultural land. According to military officials, work to move the barrier will start next month.
Like a creeping, part-time intifada, the Friday protests have been gaining ground. Nabi Saleh, another village near Ramallah, has become the newest focus of clashes, after Jewish settlers took over a natural spring on village land.
One recent Friday, a group of older villagers marched toward the spring. They were met with tear gas and stun grenades, and scuffled with soldiers on the road. Other villagers spilled down the hillsides swinging slingshots and pelted the Israelis with stones.
“Israel recognizes the threat of the popular movement and its potential for expanding,” said Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli anarchist and spokesman of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which is based in Ramallah. “I think the goal is to quash it before it gets out of hand.”
In recent months the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and other leaders of the mainstream Fatah Party have adopted Bilin as a model of legitimate resistance.
The movement has also begun to attract international support. The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee receives financing from a Spanish governmental agency, according to the committee’s coordinator, Mohammed Khatib of Bilin.
“Bilin is no longer about the struggle for Bilin,” said Mr. Khatib, who was arrested in August and has been awaiting trial on an incitement charge. “This is part of a national struggle,” he said, adding that ending the Israeli occupation was the ultimate goal. Before dawn on Thursday soldiers came to Mr. Khatib’s home in Bilin and took him away again.
Israel security officials vehemently deny that they are acting to suppress civil disobedience, saying that security is their only concern. Among other things, they argue that the popular committees encourage demonstrators to sabotage the barrier, which Israel sees as a vital security tool.
The Israeli authorities have also turned their attention to the foreign activists, deporting those who have overstayed visas or violated their terms. In one case soldiers conducted a raid in the center of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters, to remove a Czech woman who had been working for the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group.
Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem and Yesh Din have long complained of harsh measures used to quell the protests, including rubber bullets and .22-caliber live ammunition. The Israeli authorities say the live fire is meant to be used only in dangerous situations, and not for crowd control. But the human rights groups say that weapons are sometimes misused, apparently with impunity, with members of the security forces rarely held to account.
About a hundred soldiers and border police officers have been wounded in the clashes since 2008, according to the military. But the protesters are unarmed, their advocates argue, while the Israelis sometimes respond with potentially lethal force.
Tristan Anderson, 38, an American activist from Oakland, Calif., was severely wounded when he was struck in the forehead by a high-velocity tear-gas canister during a confrontation in Nilin last March.
After months in an Israeli hospital, Mr. Anderson has regained some movement on one side, and has started to talk. But he has serious brain damage, according to his mother, Nancy, and the prognosis is unclear.
The Andersons’ Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, is convinced that the tear-gas projectile was fired directly at the protesters, contrary to regulations. Yet the Israeli authorities who investigated the episode recently decided to close the case without filing charges.
The investigation found that the Israeli security forces had acted in line with regulations, according to Israeli officials. But witnesses insist the projectile was fired from a rise only about 60 yards from where Mr. Anderson stood. If it had been fired properly, in an arc, they contend, it would have flown hundreds of yards.
Nineteen Palestinians have been killed in confrontations over the barrier since 2004. A month after Mr. Anderson was wounded, Bassem Abu Rahmah, a well-known Bilin activist, was killed when a similar type of tear-gas projectile struck him in the chest.
Aqel Srur, of Nilin, one of three Palestinians who gave testimony to the Israeli police in the Anderson case, was killed by a .22-caliber bullet in June.
So far, the activists seem undeterred. Salah Muhammad Khawajeh, a Nilin popular committee member and another local witness in the Anderson case, related that when he was summoned for questioning two months ago, he was warned that he could end up like Mr. Srur.
Mr. Khawajeh’s son, 9, was wounded in the back of the head by a rubber bullet at a protest this month.
But as Mr. Khawajeh put it, “We still come.”
NILIN, West Bank — For more than a year, this village has been a focus of weekly protests against the Israeli security barrier, which cuts through its lands. Now, the village appears to be at the center of an intensifying Israeli arrest campaign.
Muhammad Amira, a schoolteacher and a member of Nilin’s popular committee, the group that organizes the protests, said his home was raided by the army in the early hours of Jan. 10. The soldiers checked his identity papers, poked around the house and looked in on his sleeping children, Mr. Amira said.
He added, “They came to say, ‘We know who you are.’ ”
Each Friday for the last five years, Palestinians have demonstrated against the barrier, bolstered by Israeli sympathizers and foreign volunteers who document the ensuing clashes with video cameras, often posting the most dramatic footage on YouTube.
Israel says the barrier, under construction since 2002, is essential to prevent suicide bombers from reaching its cities; the Palestinians oppose it on grounds that much of it runs through the territory of the West Bank.
While the weekly protests are billed as nonviolent resistance, they usually end in violent confrontations between the Israeli security forces and masked, stone-throwing Palestinian youths. “These are not sit-ins with people singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ ” said Maj. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Army’s Central Command, which controls the West Bank. “These are violent, illegal, dangerous riots.”
Other Palestinians are “jumping on the bandwagon,” he said, and the protests “could slip out of control.”
The protests first took hold in the nearby village of Bilin, which became a symbol of Palestinian defiance after winning a ruling in the Israeli Supreme Court stipulating that the barrier must be rerouted to take in less agricultural land. According to military officials, work to move the barrier will start next month.
Like a creeping, part-time intifada, the Friday protests have been gaining ground. Nabi Saleh, another village near Ramallah, has become the newest focus of clashes, after Jewish settlers took over a natural spring on village land.
One recent Friday, a group of older villagers marched toward the spring. They were met with tear gas and stun grenades, and scuffled with soldiers on the road. Other villagers spilled down the hillsides swinging slingshots and pelted the Israelis with stones.
“Israel recognizes the threat of the popular movement and its potential for expanding,” said Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli anarchist and spokesman of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which is based in Ramallah. “I think the goal is to quash it before it gets out of hand.”
In recent months the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and other leaders of the mainstream Fatah Party have adopted Bilin as a model of legitimate resistance.
The movement has also begun to attract international support. The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee receives financing from a Spanish governmental agency, according to the committee’s coordinator, Mohammed Khatib of Bilin.
“Bilin is no longer about the struggle for Bilin,” said Mr. Khatib, who was arrested in August and has been awaiting trial on an incitement charge. “This is part of a national struggle,” he said, adding that ending the Israeli occupation was the ultimate goal. Before dawn on Thursday soldiers came to Mr. Khatib’s home in Bilin and took him away again.
Israel security officials vehemently deny that they are acting to suppress civil disobedience, saying that security is their only concern. Among other things, they argue that the popular committees encourage demonstrators to sabotage the barrier, which Israel sees as a vital security tool.
The Israeli authorities have also turned their attention to the foreign activists, deporting those who have overstayed visas or violated their terms. In one case soldiers conducted a raid in the center of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters, to remove a Czech woman who had been working for the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group.
Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem and Yesh Din have long complained of harsh measures used to quell the protests, including rubber bullets and .22-caliber live ammunition. The Israeli authorities say the live fire is meant to be used only in dangerous situations, and not for crowd control. But the human rights groups say that weapons are sometimes misused, apparently with impunity, with members of the security forces rarely held to account.
About a hundred soldiers and border police officers have been wounded in the clashes since 2008, according to the military. But the protesters are unarmed, their advocates argue, while the Israelis sometimes respond with potentially lethal force.
Tristan Anderson, 38, an American activist from Oakland, Calif., was severely wounded when he was struck in the forehead by a high-velocity tear-gas canister during a confrontation in Nilin last March.
After months in an Israeli hospital, Mr. Anderson has regained some movement on one side, and has started to talk. But he has serious brain damage, according to his mother, Nancy, and the prognosis is unclear.
The Andersons’ Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, is convinced that the tear-gas projectile was fired directly at the protesters, contrary to regulations. Yet the Israeli authorities who investigated the episode recently decided to close the case without filing charges.
The investigation found that the Israeli security forces had acted in line with regulations, according to Israeli officials. But witnesses insist the projectile was fired from a rise only about 60 yards from where Mr. Anderson stood. If it had been fired properly, in an arc, they contend, it would have flown hundreds of yards.
Nineteen Palestinians have been killed in confrontations over the barrier since 2004. A month after Mr. Anderson was wounded, Bassem Abu Rahmah, a well-known Bilin activist, was killed when a similar type of tear-gas projectile struck him in the chest.
Aqel Srur, of Nilin, one of three Palestinians who gave testimony to the Israeli police in the Anderson case, was killed by a .22-caliber bullet in June.
So far, the activists seem undeterred. Salah Muhammad Khawajeh, a Nilin popular committee member and another local witness in the Anderson case, related that when he was summoned for questioning two months ago, he was warned that he could end up like Mr. Srur.
Mr. Khawajeh’s son, 9, was wounded in the back of the head by a rubber bullet at a protest this month.
But as Mr. Khawajeh put it, “We still come.”
January 28, 2010
Obama answers a question on Palestine...
One day after The State of the Union Address Obama answers a question on Palestine. This is in Tampa, Florida at a town hall meeting. The question was asked by a University of South Florida student.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhhrz2OqEx0
The two main accusations Palestinian governments renounced years ago. Give us another excuse. What about Israeli's excessive force or Palestinians right to a state!? In case you didn't realize he, a black man, supports apartheid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhhrz2OqEx0
The two main accusations Palestinian governments renounced years ago. Give us another excuse. What about Israeli's excessive force or Palestinians right to a state!? In case you didn't realize he, a black man, supports apartheid.
Animating the lost Palestinian Film Archive
An experimental film essay investigating the cultural importance of cinema.
http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_date/2009/for_cultural
http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_date/2009/for_cultural
January 27, 2010
Capital Murder
Written by benwhite
The current consensus in the international community is that East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, is the capital of a future Palestinian state. Israel’s unilateral annexation of territory to create expanded municipal boundaries for a ‘reunited’ Jerusalem was never recognised.
Over the last forty-three years, Israel has created so-called ‘facts on the ground’ in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), in defiance of international law. Since the Madrid/Oslo peace process, successive Israeli governments have continued to colonise Palestinian land at the same time as conducting negotiations.
The extent and scale of Israel’s illegal settlement project across the West Bank, as well as the road network, the Separation Wall, and other ways in which Israel maintains its rule over the OPT, has led some to believe that the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state is impossible.
Perhaps one of the clearest indicators that there is no Palestinian state-in-waiting under Israel’s regime of control is East Jerusalem.
Israel has three, inter-related strategic goals for East Jerusalem:
Mapping the land and creating colonies
Since 1967, Israel has created a number of settlements in the unilaterally expanded city boundaries, with a current population of over 180,000. This represents an expansion of 65% since 1987, while the land taken up by the East Jerusalem colonies went up by 143% in the same time frame (OCHA, opens as PDF).
The purpose of the settlements, both those close to the Old City, as well as the ‘outer ring’ (or Jerusalem ‘envelope’) has been to make the annexation of East Jerusalem a fait accompli. As ex-deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti commented, the aim of the expropriation of land around Jerusalem just three years into the post-’67 occupation was “to encircle the city with huge dormitory suburbs ‘that would obviate any possibility of the redivision of Jerusalem’”.
Israel’s annexation of land around Jerusalem almost tripled (PDF) the land under the city’s municipal authority. A third of the annexed land was expropriated for settlements, and over forty years, more than 50,000 housing units were built for the Jewish population on this land; none, of course, for Palestinians.
From 2000 to 2009, Israel confiscated PDF) over 40,000 dunams in Jerusalem; just under two-thirds of that total was taken in the last five years (’05-’09). In April last year, the UN OCHA reported (PDF) that only 13% of the Israeli-annexed area of East Jerusalem is ‘zoned’ for Palestinian construction (if permission is obtained).
‘Zoning’ land in East Jerusalem for particular purposes is an important way that Israel limits the natural growth of the Palestinian population. Some areas are declared ‘Green’, meaning no building is permitted there. In Jabal Mukaber, for example, 15,000 Palestinian residents are kept to 20% of the neighbourhood’s land, with the rest marked ‘Green’. However, there are a number of settlements that were built on land previously zoned as ‘Green’.
Targeting Palestinian neighbourhoods
Another strategy that has recently come under the spotlight is the targeting of Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem by extremist religious settler movements. In Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians are being evicted from their homes in order for religious Jews to move in, a phenomenon described by ex-Tourism Minister – and supporter of the settlers – Benny Elon as “a microcosm of the entire story of Jerusalem”.
(Elon has highlighted Jewish settlement in Sheikh Jarrah as part of a plan “to create a Jewish continuum surrounding the Old City”, with other methods including “declaring open areas to be national parks and placing state property back-to-back with lands under Jewish ownership”.)
The irony about the Sheikh Jarrah evictions is that the settlers are making their case in the courts based on a claim of pre-1948 ownership. Palestinians dispossessed in the Nakba would not be hopeful of regaining their property on the same basis – whether in West Jerusalem or elsewhere.
Uri Bank, a political activist for the extreme-right Moledet party, described the process and objective in comments made in 2003: “We break up Arab continuity and their claim to East Jerusalem by putting in isolated islands of Jewish presence in areas of Arab population…Our eventual goal is Jewish continuity in all of Jerusalem.” Ariel Sharon once boasted that the “goal” was “not leaving one neighbourhood in East Jerusalem without Jews”.
Meanwhile, archaeological excavations are delegated by Israeli authorities to ideologically-driven right-wing Jewish groups. Silwan is home to the ‘City of David’ project, a tourism-oriented initiative of the settler group Elad. Dozens of Palestinian homes in Silwan are threatened with demolition, while Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat hopes to develop the area “in terms of historical and religious tourism”.
In May 2009, Ha’aretz revealed that the Israeli Prime Minister’s office and Jerusalem municipality were working with settler groups to “surround the Old City of Jerusalem with nine national parks, pathways and sites”. The Jerusalem Development Authority said the aim was “to strengthen Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel”.
The Israel Lands Administration works “together with the [settlement-promoting] Ateret Cohanim association”, while the new “Samaria and Judea District Police” headquarters in the strategic E1 area received funding from both the state and right-wing Jewish groups. It is little wonder that EU consuls in East Jerusalem felt moved to accuse “the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality” of assisting right-wing groups in “their efforts to implement this ‘strategic vision’ [of altering the city’s demographic balance and severing East Jerusalem from the West Bank].
The road network
Planning transportation links, and particularly road networks, is a vital part of shaping the nature of how a city develops. The Jerusalem municipality understands this, and thus the roads that go through and around occupied East Jerusalem are another part of Israel’s strategy.
One particularly key project is the Eastern Ring Road, the idea of which is to ‘join the dots’ between Israeli colonies in East Jerusalem, and West Jerusalem. A proposed 11km section of the route goes through numerous Palestinian villages and neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, meaning the confiscation of over 1,000 dunams of land. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post in 2006, the idea of the ring road goes back some years, “and was first sketched onto maps by Ariel Sharon during his tenure as a Likud minister and planner of construction efforts designed to erase Israel’s Green Line boundary with the West Bank”.
Palestinians, meanwhile, are being built ‘alternative’ roads, in order to link up different enclaves. When serving as the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the OPT, South African legal professor John Dugard described what he called “Israel’s broader plan to replace territorial contiguity with ‘transportational contiguity’ by artificially connecting Palestinian population centres through an elaborate network of alternate roads and tunnels and creating segregated road networks, one for Palestinians and another for Israeli settlers, in the West Bank”.
It is also important to mention the Jerusalem Light Rail, a project that has suffered setbacks on account of the international BDS movement. Once again, while the public, official purpose of the rail line is “relieving traffic congestion and renewal of the city centre”, the map of the route confirms that is another way of the Jerusalem municipality consolidating the colonisation of the eastern half of the city.
The dividing Wall
Israel’s Separation Wall cuts through occupied East Jerusalem, dividing neighbourhoods, villages, families, and streets:
The wall epitomises all the tactics of domination. It more than doubles the area of East Jerusalem, creating a clover shape to include the new settlements and their development zones: Bet Horon, Givat Zeev, Givon Hadasha and the future Nabi Samuel park; Har Gilo, Betar Ilit and the Etzion Bloc; Maale Adumim.
OCHA describes the Wall’s deliberate function of inclusion/exclusion:
The route runs deep into the West Bank to encircle the large settlements of Giv’at Zeev (pop. 11,000) and Ma’ale Adummim (pop. 28,000). These settlements currently lie outside the municipal boundary but will be physically connected to Jerusalem by the Barrier. By contrast, densely populated Palestinian areas – Shu’fat Camp, Kafr ‘Aqab, and Samiramees with a total population of over 30,000 – which are currently inside the municipal boundary, are separated from East Jerusalem by the Barrier.
The Wall has created an enclave in Bir Nabala, where 15,000 Palestinians are surrounded. There are now some 50,000 Palestinians with Jerusalem residency who find themselves on the wrong side of the Wall.
Palestinians: immigrants in their own city
The Palestinians of East Jerusalem have ‘permanent residency’ status from the Israeli authorities. They are not citizens. In fact, as Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel put it, Palestinians of East Jerusalem “are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967”.
The next time someone tells you that Israel is the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, ask them why there are over 100,000 children in Jerusalem who were born without citizenship.
A Palestinian ‘resident’ does not need a permit to live and work in Israel, and is also entitled to health insurance and other social rights. However, ‘residents’ do not have the right to vote in national elections, can not automatically pass this status on to their children, and, are liable to having their ‘permanent residency’ revoked – which can happen without appeal or even notification.
In 2008, Israel stripped over 4,500 Palestinians in East Jerusalem of their residency status, which is a third of the total revocations since 1967. A leaked EU Heads of Mission report in 2005 observed that when it comes to the residency status policy, “Israel’s main motivation is almost certainly demographic”.
Restricting home construction
A fundamental part of Israel’s strategy in East Jerusalem is to restrict the ability for Palestinians to build or expand their houses, which restricts the growth of the community and also makes for conditions in which normal life becomes increasingly untenable.
The Jerusalem municipality’s discriminatory approach to housing means that as many as 40% of houses in East Jerusalem are ‘illegal’, because they were built without having received the proper building permit.
Permits, like in ‘Area C’ of the West Bank, are routinely denied – an EU report last year noted that Silwan had received only 20 building permits since 1967. The process of applying is also highly – often prohibitively – costly: over $25,000 for a 200 sq metre building. In 2009, over 900 demolition orders for Palestinian houses were issued by the Jerusalem municipality, with dozens carried out.
The Israeli newspaper Yediot Yerushaliyim reported in April of last year that the Jerusalem municipality “intends to spend 1.2 million shekels on aerial photographing to track building offenders, in the eastern part of the city in particular”. Earlier this month, Ha’aretz referred to the existence of a NIS 2 million budget “for demolishing and sealing off illegal structures”.
While encouraging and facilitating intensified colonisation of East Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat sometimes feels compelled to make positive noises about providing solutions to the ‘Arab housing shortage’. Yet even when Barkat announced plans for new houses, over two-thirds of the units will take 20 years to complete – by which time, there will be a 74% shortfall in Palestinian housing needs.
The death of Palestinian East Jerusalem and Israeli ‘democracy’
It is not difficult to understand the rationale behind the outworking of the permit system and the demolitions, or to see the vision at work behind all the various policies covered briefly here. Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, quotes government officials in his 1994 book as saying that, “[It is necessary] to make life difficult for the Arabs, not to allow them to build…” An engineer and chief planner for the municipality once confirmed that the “only way to manage” the ratio between the Palestinian and Jewish population is “[through manipulation] of housing potential]”.
Amir Cheshin served as senior advisor on ‘Arab Affairs’ for ten years under Kollek and then Ehud Olmert. The book he went on to co-author does not shy away from the reality of Israel’s policies in East Jerusalem:
Kollek spearheaded the effort by Israel to settle east Jerusalem with Jewish families. In 1970 Kollek coauthored the proposal for development in east Jerusalem that became the basis for Israeli policy for the next decade. Indeed, the 1970 Kollek plan contains the principles upon which Israeli housing policy in east Jerusalem is based to this day – expropriation of Arab-owned land, development of large Jewish neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem, and limitations on development in Arab neighbourhoods.
This month, Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat described the Palestinians in East Jerusalem as a “strategic threat”, at a meeting of a Knesset lobby group. Barkat worried about the percentages, and the difficulty of keeping the Palestinians at 30% of Jerusalem’s population, the apparent goal. As ex-deputy mayor Benvenisti says, “It’s pure racism. We live in the only city in the world where an ethnic population ratio serves as a philosophy”.
In the words of the director of Israel’s Macro Centre for Political Economics, in order “to try to guarantee a Jewish majority and generate Jewish hegemony in Jerusalem”, Israel “has annexed huge parts of Jerusalem, enlarged the boundaries of the municipality, taken lots of land in the eastern part of the city and built more than 50,000 housing units on this land exclusively for Jews”.
This overview of Israel’s deliberate colonisation of East Jerusalem in defiance of international law only begins to scratch the surface. In the international ‘peace process’ and associated media reports, Jerusalem is typically presented as a ‘final status’ issue in the negotiations to establish a Palestinian state. Through policies going back 40 years, Israel’s leaders from across the political spectrum have made it clear that as far as they are concerned, Jerusalem’s ‘status’ is already final.
The current consensus in the international community is that East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, is the capital of a future Palestinian state. Israel’s unilateral annexation of territory to create expanded municipal boundaries for a ‘reunited’ Jerusalem was never recognised.
Over the last forty-three years, Israel has created so-called ‘facts on the ground’ in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), in defiance of international law. Since the Madrid/Oslo peace process, successive Israeli governments have continued to colonise Palestinian land at the same time as conducting negotiations.
The extent and scale of Israel’s illegal settlement project across the West Bank, as well as the road network, the Separation Wall, and other ways in which Israel maintains its rule over the OPT, has led some to believe that the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state is impossible.
Perhaps one of the clearest indicators that there is no Palestinian state-in-waiting under Israel’s regime of control is East Jerusalem.
Israel has three, inter-related strategic goals for East Jerusalem:
- To make the claim that Jerusalem is the ‘eternal, undivided Jewish capital’ a physical reality.
- Increase the Jewish presence/decrease the Palestinian presence (‘the demographic battle’).
- Cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank.
Mapping the land and creating colonies
Since 1967, Israel has created a number of settlements in the unilaterally expanded city boundaries, with a current population of over 180,000. This represents an expansion of 65% since 1987, while the land taken up by the East Jerusalem colonies went up by 143% in the same time frame (OCHA, opens as PDF).
The purpose of the settlements, both those close to the Old City, as well as the ‘outer ring’ (or Jerusalem ‘envelope’) has been to make the annexation of East Jerusalem a fait accompli. As ex-deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti commented, the aim of the expropriation of land around Jerusalem just three years into the post-’67 occupation was “to encircle the city with huge dormitory suburbs ‘that would obviate any possibility of the redivision of Jerusalem’”.
Israel’s annexation of land around Jerusalem almost tripled (PDF) the land under the city’s municipal authority. A third of the annexed land was expropriated for settlements, and over forty years, more than 50,000 housing units were built for the Jewish population on this land; none, of course, for Palestinians.
From 2000 to 2009, Israel confiscated PDF) over 40,000 dunams in Jerusalem; just under two-thirds of that total was taken in the last five years (’05-’09). In April last year, the UN OCHA reported (PDF) that only 13% of the Israeli-annexed area of East Jerusalem is ‘zoned’ for Palestinian construction (if permission is obtained).
‘Zoning’ land in East Jerusalem for particular purposes is an important way that Israel limits the natural growth of the Palestinian population. Some areas are declared ‘Green’, meaning no building is permitted there. In Jabal Mukaber, for example, 15,000 Palestinian residents are kept to 20% of the neighbourhood’s land, with the rest marked ‘Green’. However, there are a number of settlements that were built on land previously zoned as ‘Green’.
Targeting Palestinian neighbourhoods
Another strategy that has recently come under the spotlight is the targeting of Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem by extremist religious settler movements. In Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians are being evicted from their homes in order for religious Jews to move in, a phenomenon described by ex-Tourism Minister – and supporter of the settlers – Benny Elon as “a microcosm of the entire story of Jerusalem”.
(Elon has highlighted Jewish settlement in Sheikh Jarrah as part of a plan “to create a Jewish continuum surrounding the Old City”, with other methods including “declaring open areas to be national parks and placing state property back-to-back with lands under Jewish ownership”.)
The irony about the Sheikh Jarrah evictions is that the settlers are making their case in the courts based on a claim of pre-1948 ownership. Palestinians dispossessed in the Nakba would not be hopeful of regaining their property on the same basis – whether in West Jerusalem or elsewhere.
Is not it absurd that the very same Palestinian whose property was confiscated in 1948 finds that his new home is confiscated on the grounds that it was owned previously to 1948 by Jews? What is it precisely that distinguishes the claim of the Jew from that of the Palestinian?
Meanwhile, archaeological excavations are delegated by Israeli authorities to ideologically-driven right-wing Jewish groups. Silwan is home to the ‘City of David’ project, a tourism-oriented initiative of the settler group Elad. Dozens of Palestinian homes in Silwan are threatened with demolition, while Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat hopes to develop the area “in terms of historical and religious tourism”.
In May 2009, Ha’aretz revealed that the Israeli Prime Minister’s office and Jerusalem municipality were working with settler groups to “surround the Old City of Jerusalem with nine national parks, pathways and sites”. The Jerusalem Development Authority said the aim was “to strengthen Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel”.
The Israel Lands Administration works “together with the [settlement-promoting] Ateret Cohanim association”, while the new “Samaria and Judea District Police” headquarters in the strategic E1 area received funding from both the state and right-wing Jewish groups. It is little wonder that EU consuls in East Jerusalem felt moved to accuse “the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality” of assisting right-wing groups in “their efforts to implement this ‘strategic vision’ [of altering the city’s demographic balance and severing East Jerusalem from the West Bank].
The road network
Planning transportation links, and particularly road networks, is a vital part of shaping the nature of how a city develops. The Jerusalem municipality understands this, and thus the roads that go through and around occupied East Jerusalem are another part of Israel’s strategy.
One particularly key project is the Eastern Ring Road, the idea of which is to ‘join the dots’ between Israeli colonies in East Jerusalem, and West Jerusalem. A proposed 11km section of the route goes through numerous Palestinian villages and neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, meaning the confiscation of over 1,000 dunams of land. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post in 2006, the idea of the ring road goes back some years, “and was first sketched onto maps by Ariel Sharon during his tenure as a Likud minister and planner of construction efforts designed to erase Israel’s Green Line boundary with the West Bank”.
Palestinians, meanwhile, are being built ‘alternative’ roads, in order to link up different enclaves. When serving as the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the OPT, South African legal professor John Dugard described what he called “Israel’s broader plan to replace territorial contiguity with ‘transportational contiguity’ by artificially connecting Palestinian population centres through an elaborate network of alternate roads and tunnels and creating segregated road networks, one for Palestinians and another for Israeli settlers, in the West Bank”.
It is also important to mention the Jerusalem Light Rail, a project that has suffered setbacks on account of the international BDS movement. Once again, while the public, official purpose of the rail line is “relieving traffic congestion and renewal of the city centre”, the map of the route confirms that is another way of the Jerusalem municipality consolidating the colonisation of the eastern half of the city.
The dividing Wall
Israel’s Separation Wall cuts through occupied East Jerusalem, dividing neighbourhoods, villages, families, and streets:
The wall epitomises all the tactics of domination. It more than doubles the area of East Jerusalem, creating a clover shape to include the new settlements and their development zones: Bet Horon, Givat Zeev, Givon Hadasha and the future Nabi Samuel park; Har Gilo, Betar Ilit and the Etzion Bloc; Maale Adumim.
OCHA describes the Wall’s deliberate function of inclusion/exclusion:
The route runs deep into the West Bank to encircle the large settlements of Giv’at Zeev (pop. 11,000) and Ma’ale Adummim (pop. 28,000). These settlements currently lie outside the municipal boundary but will be physically connected to Jerusalem by the Barrier. By contrast, densely populated Palestinian areas – Shu’fat Camp, Kafr ‘Aqab, and Samiramees with a total population of over 30,000 – which are currently inside the municipal boundary, are separated from East Jerusalem by the Barrier.
The Wall has created an enclave in Bir Nabala, where 15,000 Palestinians are surrounded. There are now some 50,000 Palestinians with Jerusalem residency who find themselves on the wrong side of the Wall.
Palestinians: immigrants in their own city
The Palestinians of East Jerusalem have ‘permanent residency’ status from the Israeli authorities. They are not citizens. In fact, as Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel put it, Palestinians of East Jerusalem “are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967”.
The next time someone tells you that Israel is the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, ask them why there are over 100,000 children in Jerusalem who were born without citizenship.
A Palestinian ‘resident’ does not need a permit to live and work in Israel, and is also entitled to health insurance and other social rights. However, ‘residents’ do not have the right to vote in national elections, can not automatically pass this status on to their children, and, are liable to having their ‘permanent residency’ revoked – which can happen without appeal or even notification.
In 2008, Israel stripped over 4,500 Palestinians in East Jerusalem of their residency status, which is a third of the total revocations since 1967. A leaked EU Heads of Mission report in 2005 observed that when it comes to the residency status policy, “Israel’s main motivation is almost certainly demographic”.
Restricting home construction
A fundamental part of Israel’s strategy in East Jerusalem is to restrict the ability for Palestinians to build or expand their houses, which restricts the growth of the community and also makes for conditions in which normal life becomes increasingly untenable.
The Jerusalem municipality’s discriminatory approach to housing means that as many as 40% of houses in East Jerusalem are ‘illegal’, because they were built without having received the proper building permit.
Permits, like in ‘Area C’ of the West Bank, are routinely denied – an EU report last year noted that Silwan had received only 20 building permits since 1967. The process of applying is also highly – often prohibitively – costly: over $25,000 for a 200 sq metre building. In 2009, over 900 demolition orders for Palestinian houses were issued by the Jerusalem municipality, with dozens carried out.
The Israeli newspaper Yediot Yerushaliyim reported in April of last year that the Jerusalem municipality “intends to spend 1.2 million shekels on aerial photographing to track building offenders, in the eastern part of the city in particular”. Earlier this month, Ha’aretz referred to the existence of a NIS 2 million budget “for demolishing and sealing off illegal structures”.
While encouraging and facilitating intensified colonisation of East Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat sometimes feels compelled to make positive noises about providing solutions to the ‘Arab housing shortage’. Yet even when Barkat announced plans for new houses, over two-thirds of the units will take 20 years to complete – by which time, there will be a 74% shortfall in Palestinian housing needs.
The death of Palestinian East Jerusalem and Israeli ‘democracy’
It is not difficult to understand the rationale behind the outworking of the permit system and the demolitions, or to see the vision at work behind all the various policies covered briefly here. Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, quotes government officials in his 1994 book as saying that, “[It is necessary] to make life difficult for the Arabs, not to allow them to build…” An engineer and chief planner for the municipality once confirmed that the “only way to manage” the ratio between the Palestinian and Jewish population is “[through manipulation] of housing potential]”.
Amir Cheshin served as senior advisor on ‘Arab Affairs’ for ten years under Kollek and then Ehud Olmert. The book he went on to co-author does not shy away from the reality of Israel’s policies in East Jerusalem:
Kollek spearheaded the effort by Israel to settle east Jerusalem with Jewish families. In 1970 Kollek coauthored the proposal for development in east Jerusalem that became the basis for Israeli policy for the next decade. Indeed, the 1970 Kollek plan contains the principles upon which Israeli housing policy in east Jerusalem is based to this day – expropriation of Arab-owned land, development of large Jewish neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem, and limitations on development in Arab neighbourhoods.
This month, Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat described the Palestinians in East Jerusalem as a “strategic threat”, at a meeting of a Knesset lobby group. Barkat worried about the percentages, and the difficulty of keeping the Palestinians at 30% of Jerusalem’s population, the apparent goal. As ex-deputy mayor Benvenisti says, “It’s pure racism. We live in the only city in the world where an ethnic population ratio serves as a philosophy”.
In the words of the director of Israel’s Macro Centre for Political Economics, in order “to try to guarantee a Jewish majority and generate Jewish hegemony in Jerusalem”, Israel “has annexed huge parts of Jerusalem, enlarged the boundaries of the municipality, taken lots of land in the eastern part of the city and built more than 50,000 housing units on this land exclusively for Jews”.
This overview of Israel’s deliberate colonisation of East Jerusalem in defiance of international law only begins to scratch the surface. In the international ‘peace process’ and associated media reports, Jerusalem is typically presented as a ‘final status’ issue in the negotiations to establish a Palestinian state. Through policies going back 40 years, Israel’s leaders from across the political spectrum have made it clear that as far as they are concerned, Jerusalem’s ‘status’ is already final.
Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’
Exclusive: Graeme Murray and Chris Watt
One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland.
Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor.
Dr Meyer also attended hearings at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, where five pro-Palestine campaigners are accused of racially aggravated conduct after disrupting a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet at the city’s Queen’s Hall.
Speaking as his tour got under way, Dr Meyer said there were parallels between the treatment of Jews by Germans in the Second World War and the current treatment of Palestinians by Israelis.
He said: “The Israelis tried to dehumanise the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanise me. Nobody should dehumanise any other and those who try to dehumanise another are not human.
“It may be that Israel is not the most cruel country in the world … but one thing I know for sure is that Israel is the world champion in pretending to be civilised and cultured.”
Dr Meyer was born in 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany. He was not allowed to attend school there after November 1938. He then fled to the Netherlands, alone. In 1944, after a year in the underground, he was caught by the Gestapo and survived 10 months at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
He now lives in the Netherlands, and is the author of three books on Judaism, the Holocaust and Zionism.
Dr Meyer also insisted the definition of “anti-Semitic” had now changed, saying: “Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”
A spokesman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, of which Dr Meyer is a member, said criticising Israel was “not the same” as criticising Jews.
Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign chairman and one of the five demonstrators facing charges when the court case continues in March, said: “Palestinians are happy to have him as an ally in their cause.
“Hajo knows that Israel has a long history of abusing the tragic history of the Holocaust in order to suppress legitimate criticism of its own crimes.
“Especially since Gaza, people are no longer taken in by their claim that anyone that criticises Israel is anti-Semitic.”
Dr Meyer’s claims met with a furious reaction from pro-Israel groups, who branded him “a disgrace”.
Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice-chairman of the Zionist Federation, said: “I shall be telling him he is abusing his status as a survivor, and I shall be telling him that if Israel had been created 10 years earlier, millions of lives might have been saved.
“Whether he is a survivor or not, to use Nazi comparisons in relation to Israel’s policies is anti-Semitic, unquestionably.”
The tour was cynically timed, Mr Hoffman added, to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.
Dr Ezra Golombok, Scottish spokesman for the Israel Information Office, accused the anti-zionist lobby of “exploiting” Dr Meyer, who he described as someone “who’s got into a situation he doesn’t understand”.
“This is a propaganda exercise by Mick Napier and his friends, and nothing more. It’s preposterous to compare Israel with Nazi tactics.”
The lecture series, entitled Never Again – For Anyone, continues until January 30.
One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland.
Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor.
Dr Meyer also attended hearings at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, where five pro-Palestine campaigners are accused of racially aggravated conduct after disrupting a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet at the city’s Queen’s Hall.
Speaking as his tour got under way, Dr Meyer said there were parallels between the treatment of Jews by Germans in the Second World War and the current treatment of Palestinians by Israelis.
He said: “The Israelis tried to dehumanise the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanise me. Nobody should dehumanise any other and those who try to dehumanise another are not human.
“It may be that Israel is not the most cruel country in the world … but one thing I know for sure is that Israel is the world champion in pretending to be civilised and cultured.”
Dr Meyer was born in 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany. He was not allowed to attend school there after November 1938. He then fled to the Netherlands, alone. In 1944, after a year in the underground, he was caught by the Gestapo and survived 10 months at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
He now lives in the Netherlands, and is the author of three books on Judaism, the Holocaust and Zionism.
Dr Meyer also insisted the definition of “anti-Semitic” had now changed, saying: “Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”
A spokesman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, of which Dr Meyer is a member, said criticising Israel was “not the same” as criticising Jews.
Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign chairman and one of the five demonstrators facing charges when the court case continues in March, said: “Palestinians are happy to have him as an ally in their cause.
“Hajo knows that Israel has a long history of abusing the tragic history of the Holocaust in order to suppress legitimate criticism of its own crimes.
“Especially since Gaza, people are no longer taken in by their claim that anyone that criticises Israel is anti-Semitic.”
Dr Meyer’s claims met with a furious reaction from pro-Israel groups, who branded him “a disgrace”.
Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice-chairman of the Zionist Federation, said: “I shall be telling him he is abusing his status as a survivor, and I shall be telling him that if Israel had been created 10 years earlier, millions of lives might have been saved.
“Whether he is a survivor or not, to use Nazi comparisons in relation to Israel’s policies is anti-Semitic, unquestionably.”
The tour was cynically timed, Mr Hoffman added, to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.
Dr Ezra Golombok, Scottish spokesman for the Israel Information Office, accused the anti-zionist lobby of “exploiting” Dr Meyer, who he described as someone “who’s got into a situation he doesn’t understand”.
“This is a propaganda exercise by Mick Napier and his friends, and nothing more. It’s preposterous to compare Israel with Nazi tactics.”
The lecture series, entitled Never Again – For Anyone, continues until January 30.
Holocaust Survivor Protests Israeli Massacre in Gaza - 2009
Elderly Holocaust Survivor protests Israel's response to Hamas rocket attacks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1NWucpa9Nc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1NWucpa9Nc
Israeli forces detain 5 teens near Nablus
Nablus – Ma’an – Israeli forces seized five Palestinian teens from the northern West Bank village of Burqa during early morning raids Wednesday, officials said.
Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official responsible for monitoring settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that several Israeli military vehicles stormed the village at midnight, and seized five young men after ransacking their homes.
He identified the detainees as 18-year-old Muhannad Seif, 17-year-old Yafi’ Suheil, 17-year-old Ashraf Hajja, 15-year-old Walid Daghlas, and 16-year-old Fadi Abu Omar.
Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official responsible for monitoring settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that several Israeli military vehicles stormed the village at midnight, and seized five young men after ransacking their homes.
He identified the detainees as 18-year-old Muhannad Seif, 17-year-old Yafi’ Suheil, 17-year-old Ashraf Hajja, 15-year-old Walid Daghlas, and 16-year-old Fadi Abu Omar.
Background: I stayed in this village for a week keeping night vigils. These boys were our friends. We played table tennis with them almost every night. Muhannad will spend at least 3 years in prison. The other 4 boys, since they are under age, will serve a lesser sentence of 1 to 1 1/2 years. What are they charged with you might ask...stone throwing & they will not be aloud to see their families. It is very frustrating. Where is the justice!?
Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein - University of Waterloo
Dr. Norman Finkelstein debunks a holocaust card thrown by a Jewish girl, having crocodile tears in her eyes, with a holocaust card of his own but of different nature.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B7ijMjc2Js
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B7ijMjc2Js
Palestinians prepare to enter record books with longest caricature
Gaza – Ma’an – Palestinians are hoping to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the third time for drawing the longest caricature in the world.
Muhammad An-Nimnim, known as Abu Noon, the director of Artists for Freedom in Palestine and a Palestinian cartoonist, told Ma’an that the participants are in preparation and making the necessary arrangements to enter the record books with the longest caricature in 2010.
Abu Noon said he hopes that the picture will be drawn on the separation wall in Bethlehem in the West Bank, to boost tourism to the city. International artists will also participate in the caricature's creation, in support of peace, he said.
Coordination with a consulate is underway to complete the necessary procedures to allow the artists to begin drawing on the wall in Bethlehem, he added.
The caricature, he said, will express peace and the universal language of art. "Everyone talks about peace but no one listens, but today we will express our will, strengthen our steadfastness, and prove to the world that we want peace," said Abu Noon.
Abu Noon said that he has received over 45 applications from artists in the Palestinian territories and around the world, including international artists.
An-Nimnim called on President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to facilitate the provision of legal and operational procedures to allow the event to take place on the part of the wall that closes off Bethlehem.
Palestinians have previously entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest plate of Kanafeh (a dessert made with semolina and white cheese) and the longest traditional dress.
Muhammad An-Nimnim, known as Abu Noon, the director of Artists for Freedom in Palestine and a Palestinian cartoonist, told Ma’an that the participants are in preparation and making the necessary arrangements to enter the record books with the longest caricature in 2010.
Abu Noon said he hopes that the picture will be drawn on the separation wall in Bethlehem in the West Bank, to boost tourism to the city. International artists will also participate in the caricature's creation, in support of peace, he said.
Coordination with a consulate is underway to complete the necessary procedures to allow the artists to begin drawing on the wall in Bethlehem, he added.
The caricature, he said, will express peace and the universal language of art. "Everyone talks about peace but no one listens, but today we will express our will, strengthen our steadfastness, and prove to the world that we want peace," said Abu Noon.
Abu Noon said that he has received over 45 applications from artists in the Palestinian territories and around the world, including international artists.
An-Nimnim called on President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to facilitate the provision of legal and operational procedures to allow the event to take place on the part of the wall that closes off Bethlehem.
Palestinians have previously entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest plate of Kanafeh (a dessert made with semolina and white cheese) and the longest traditional dress.
Deir Yassin Massacre Documentary
Video about the Deir Yassin Massacre committed by the Zionist terrorists in 1948.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prLPvqttW9c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prLPvqttW9c&feature=related
January 26, 2010
Israel uses depleted uranium against Palestinians in Gaza
"The ruined buildings and debris left after the Israeli attack on Gaza are contaminated with depleted uranium and similar types of weapons," said Sameh Habeeb, spokesperson for the Palestinian Return Center in London.
The activist quoted international nuclear experts as saying that the contaminated materials will be severely destructive and hazardous to Palestinian residents in the long run.
Habeeb criticized the United Nations for its inefficiency in providing the Palestinian people with proper services, saying that the international body has avoided proper measures to clean the contaminated areas.
The activist called on the UN to launch a probe into the type of weapons used by the Israeli troops during the 22-day war on Gaza last year.
Israel began waging war on the Gaza Strip on Dec. 27, 2008, and managed to kill a total 95 resistance fighters. Its major targets, however, were residential areas, mosques and medical centers.
The full-scale offensive led to the death of at least 1,400 Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children. Officials from various international bodies have confirmed that Tel Aviv resorted to unconventional weapons and terror tactics. Israel's casualties in the conflict were estimated at 13, including 10 military personnel.
The Israeli attack on Gaza is estimated by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics to have caused nearly $2 billion worth of damage.
The (Sheikh Jarrah) revolution won't be televised... it'll be YouTubed
By Abe Selig, The Jerusalem Post
Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, along with a slew of blogs, are playing an increasing role in the growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, activists and journalists familiar with the situation there told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Activists and journalists both described a situation in which protesters were relying on the Internet to try and affect change on the ground and raise awareness of the arrests made during demonstrations in the neighborhood.
“It’s all Facebook, e-mails and Twitter,” said Didi Remez, a human rights activist, who has become noticeably involved in the Sheikh Jarrah protests as of late. Remez was arrested during a protest there last Friday.
Remez also said that distant audiences, like American Jews, who might be deprived of Sheikh Jarrah coverage due to the mainstream media’s lack of interest, were instead staying abreast of the situation via social networking sites.
“The American media is for some reason refusing to cover this,” he said. “Even though it’s becoming a major issue in Israel. And still, despite that, there’s a lot of awareness [of this issue] among Jewish Americans, the reason being that they are increasingly connected through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on.”
“They’re getting information on this without The New York Times,” Remez continued. “So, something that hasn’t been covered at all by the [American] mainstream media, is still getting coverage through new media, and I think that’s a statement about the decline of the mainstream media and maybe a larger comment on the shift away from it.”
Others echoed Remez’s comments, but added that another advantage of social media was its ability to counter police statements about Sheikh Jarrah they said the mainstream media often parroted.
“This is an issue that the media hasn’t really been covering, and when they have, they’ve mostly relied on police statements that portrayed the protesters as a handful of extreme leftists or anarchists, which is simply not true,” said Lisa Goldman, a Tel-Aviv based freelance journalist who has used Facebook, Twitter and blogs to follow the Sheikh Jarrah protests.
“What the social media outlets have been able to provide is a direct source of information that isn’t filtered through the mainstream media,” she said, adding that in this vein, the use of new media had been “absolutely crucial.”
Additionally, Goldman added, social media outlets had also served as a tool to awaken the mainstream Left to the goings-on in Sheikh Jarrah, including, but not limited to, the emerging issue of police behavior towards protesters there, which the Jerusalem Magistrate Court has even censured – ruling last week that the arrests of 17 protesters during a rally two weeks ago was illegal.
“The silent Israeli Left is finally waking up,” she said. “And it’s a result of the way some young people are using social media. It’s been very effective in raising awareness among the moderate Left, who are seeing that the police are suppressing free speech.”
Goldman also pointed to the participation in last Friday’s rally of Prof. Moshe Halbertal, who helped draft the IDF code of ethics and who has been active in disputing the United Nation’s Goldstone Report, as an example of figures who would certainly not be considered extreme, but who have joined the Sheikh Jarrah fray.
Hagai El-Ad, the director of the Association for Human Rights in Israel and one of the 17 protesters arrested two weeks ago, added that the use of new media to circumvent the mainstream media, which, he said, was often “reluctant to cover hard issues, or blatantly hostile,” was spreading rapidly.
“However, it’s not just new media [at play in Sheikh Jarrah],” he said. “I think there’s a need to [step back] from the tactics being used there, and zoom in on the core issue, which is the moral outrage of Jerusalemite families being thrown out of their homes and living in tents in the street. That’s the essential injustice here, and I think it’s a fuel of its own.”
Yet El-Ad did concede that the use of new media was a driving force behind the success of the Sheikh Jarrah protest organizers.
“They are a courageous group of young people, who are functioning without any real budget or resources,” he said. “But they are cleverly online, and they’ve been able to translate that into real movement on the ground – it’s not just a Facebook group that people add their names too.”
“Yes, the mobilization happens online,” El-Ad added, “but the end result is the most classic form of civil protest.”
Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, along with a slew of blogs, are playing an increasing role in the growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, activists and journalists familiar with the situation there told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Activists and journalists both described a situation in which protesters were relying on the Internet to try and affect change on the ground and raise awareness of the arrests made during demonstrations in the neighborhood.
“It’s all Facebook, e-mails and Twitter,” said Didi Remez, a human rights activist, who has become noticeably involved in the Sheikh Jarrah protests as of late. Remez was arrested during a protest there last Friday.
Remez also said that distant audiences, like American Jews, who might be deprived of Sheikh Jarrah coverage due to the mainstream media’s lack of interest, were instead staying abreast of the situation via social networking sites.
“The American media is for some reason refusing to cover this,” he said. “Even though it’s becoming a major issue in Israel. And still, despite that, there’s a lot of awareness [of this issue] among Jewish Americans, the reason being that they are increasingly connected through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on.”
“They’re getting information on this without The New York Times,” Remez continued. “So, something that hasn’t been covered at all by the [American] mainstream media, is still getting coverage through new media, and I think that’s a statement about the decline of the mainstream media and maybe a larger comment on the shift away from it.”
Others echoed Remez’s comments, but added that another advantage of social media was its ability to counter police statements about Sheikh Jarrah they said the mainstream media often parroted.
“This is an issue that the media hasn’t really been covering, and when they have, they’ve mostly relied on police statements that portrayed the protesters as a handful of extreme leftists or anarchists, which is simply not true,” said Lisa Goldman, a Tel-Aviv based freelance journalist who has used Facebook, Twitter and blogs to follow the Sheikh Jarrah protests.
“What the social media outlets have been able to provide is a direct source of information that isn’t filtered through the mainstream media,” she said, adding that in this vein, the use of new media had been “absolutely crucial.”
Additionally, Goldman added, social media outlets had also served as a tool to awaken the mainstream Left to the goings-on in Sheikh Jarrah, including, but not limited to, the emerging issue of police behavior towards protesters there, which the Jerusalem Magistrate Court has even censured – ruling last week that the arrests of 17 protesters during a rally two weeks ago was illegal.
“The silent Israeli Left is finally waking up,” she said. “And it’s a result of the way some young people are using social media. It’s been very effective in raising awareness among the moderate Left, who are seeing that the police are suppressing free speech.”
Goldman also pointed to the participation in last Friday’s rally of Prof. Moshe Halbertal, who helped draft the IDF code of ethics and who has been active in disputing the United Nation’s Goldstone Report, as an example of figures who would certainly not be considered extreme, but who have joined the Sheikh Jarrah fray.
Hagai El-Ad, the director of the Association for Human Rights in Israel and one of the 17 protesters arrested two weeks ago, added that the use of new media to circumvent the mainstream media, which, he said, was often “reluctant to cover hard issues, or blatantly hostile,” was spreading rapidly.
“However, it’s not just new media [at play in Sheikh Jarrah],” he said. “I think there’s a need to [step back] from the tactics being used there, and zoom in on the core issue, which is the moral outrage of Jerusalemite families being thrown out of their homes and living in tents in the street. That’s the essential injustice here, and I think it’s a fuel of its own.”
Yet El-Ad did concede that the use of new media was a driving force behind the success of the Sheikh Jarrah protest organizers.
“They are a courageous group of young people, who are functioning without any real budget or resources,” he said. “But they are cleverly online, and they’ve been able to translate that into real movement on the ground – it’s not just a Facebook group that people add their names too.”
“Yes, the mobilization happens online,” El-Ad added, “but the end result is the most classic form of civil protest.”
Nil'in supporters plan fact-finding visit
An urgent fact-finding mission to Ni'lin has been launched after the Israeli military began what activists termed an escalation of repression against human rights defenders in the village.
Nil'in representatives will welcome delegations of political leaders and journalists to the Ramallah-area village on Tuesday.
The visit aims to raise awareness about "the gravity of the attack on the village and the people's fundamental rights of freedom of expression, assembly and association" and, in turn, to extend protection to Ni'lin.
Arrests of human rights defenders in Ni'lin have lead to the detention of 11 people in less than one week, residents reported, and during night raids by the Israeli military in the village inhabitants are subjected to harassment, intimidation and destruction of property. In at least one case, the army arrested the father of a targeted human rights defender to press him to hand himself over.
Palestinian political leaders and eleven European diplomats have responded to the invitation to learn more about the ongoing arrests of human rights defenders active against the wall.
"I myself have been arrested for a month as part of this repressive campaign to stop mobilization against the illegal wall. I know that it was the international support from civil society and governments that achieved my release," said Jamal Juma', coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign.
He added: "The day I was released, Israel changed tactics and targets now the grassroots. I am happy to see that pressure continues and the diplomatic representation of the European governments look for ways to effecitvely protect Palestinian human rights defenders. International pressure stopped the attack on the internationally known figures, now we need to stop the mass arrests of grassroots activists against the wall and ensure that the decision of the International Court of Justice to tear down the wall is implemented."
Ni'lin, located west of Ramallah in the West Bank, has lost over the last 60 years 48,000 of its original 58,000 dunum of land. The wall on the western side, and a military base on the southern side, will strip Ni'lin of a further 2,500 dunums of land.
Nil'in representatives will welcome delegations of political leaders and journalists to the Ramallah-area village on Tuesday.
The visit aims to raise awareness about "the gravity of the attack on the village and the people's fundamental rights of freedom of expression, assembly and association" and, in turn, to extend protection to Ni'lin.
Arrests of human rights defenders in Ni'lin have lead to the detention of 11 people in less than one week, residents reported, and during night raids by the Israeli military in the village inhabitants are subjected to harassment, intimidation and destruction of property. In at least one case, the army arrested the father of a targeted human rights defender to press him to hand himself over.
Palestinian political leaders and eleven European diplomats have responded to the invitation to learn more about the ongoing arrests of human rights defenders active against the wall.
"I myself have been arrested for a month as part of this repressive campaign to stop mobilization against the illegal wall. I know that it was the international support from civil society and governments that achieved my release," said Jamal Juma', coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign.
He added: "The day I was released, Israel changed tactics and targets now the grassroots. I am happy to see that pressure continues and the diplomatic representation of the European governments look for ways to effecitvely protect Palestinian human rights defenders. International pressure stopped the attack on the internationally known figures, now we need to stop the mass arrests of grassroots activists against the wall and ensure that the decision of the International Court of Justice to tear down the wall is implemented."
Ni'lin, located west of Ramallah in the West Bank, has lost over the last 60 years 48,000 of its original 58,000 dunum of land. The wall on the western side, and a military base on the southern side, will strip Ni'lin of a further 2,500 dunums of land.
Israelis, Palestinians point fingers after Mitchell failure
Bethlehem - Ma’an/Agencies - Finger pointing over which side sets more preconditions for peace talks continues after US special envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell returns to Washington.
Following a series of meetings in the region, President Mahmoud Abbas refused Mitchell’s request to return to peace talks without the guarantee of a meaningful settlement construction halt, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Abbas for a failure to move forward.
"The Palestinian Authority are the ones that are preventing the re-launch of the peace process with their preconditions that they have never asked before from any previous Israeli government," a statement from Netanyahu’s office said, adding, "The Prime Minister calls on the Palestinian Authority to sit at the negotiating table and discuss ways to promote security, peace, and prosperity for the two people."
Erekat, however, in a statement released on Saturday, blamed Netanyahu and his government for putting more conditions on negotiations. By continuing to build settlements, the statement said, Israel has announced its “intention to continue its occupation irrespective of [the] outcome [of peace talks], [and constitute] a direct challenge to the international community… [settlements and their construction] cast Israel’s readiness for peace further into doubt.”
Following a series of meetings in the region, President Mahmoud Abbas refused Mitchell’s request to return to peace talks without the guarantee of a meaningful settlement construction halt, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Abbas for a failure to move forward.
"The Palestinian Authority are the ones that are preventing the re-launch of the peace process with their preconditions that they have never asked before from any previous Israeli government," a statement from Netanyahu’s office said, adding, "The Prime Minister calls on the Palestinian Authority to sit at the negotiating table and discuss ways to promote security, peace, and prosperity for the two people."
Erekat, however, in a statement released on Saturday, blamed Netanyahu and his government for putting more conditions on negotiations. By continuing to build settlements, the statement said, Israel has announced its “intention to continue its occupation irrespective of [the] outcome [of peace talks], [and constitute] a direct challenge to the international community… [settlements and their construction] cast Israel’s readiness for peace further into doubt.”
January 25, 2010
Nil'in photo takes top prize at Dutch contest
A Dutch photographer has won the Silver Camera Award in the foreign news category for his shot during a weekly demonstration against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Nil'in.
The award is widely considered the foremost prize for press photography in the Netherlands.
The photographer, Cris Toala Olivares, took the shot in October 2009 when he was in the West Bank for its annual olive harvest. He captured this moment when dozens of tear-gas canisters were shot at Palestinians in an olive grove in Nil'in.
Olivares, a Dutch citizen originally from Ecuador, also visited the Gaza Strip in January 2009 and produced a series of photos during Israel's assault on the coastal enclave over the winter.
The award is widely considered the foremost prize for press photography in the Netherlands.
The photographer, Cris Toala Olivares, took the shot in October 2009 when he was in the West Bank for its annual olive harvest. He captured this moment when dozens of tear-gas canisters were shot at Palestinians in an olive grove in Nil'in.
Olivares, a Dutch citizen originally from Ecuador, also visited the Gaza Strip in January 2009 and produced a series of photos during Israel's assault on the coastal enclave over the winter.
January 24, 2010
Gaza's thin red line one year later
Eva Bartlett, The Electronic Intifada
"The last Israeli attacks were the hardest, the most dangerous. It wasn't a war, it was a massacre. They shot anyone walking, anyone outside of their home, in their home ... it didn't matter. And it didn't matter if the victims were children or adults; there was no difference."
Ali Khalil, 47, has served as a medic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and private hospitals in Gaza for more than 20 years. He has seen some of the worst atrocities committed by the Israeli army. During Israel's war on Gaza last winter, Khalil worked in Gaza's northern region, venturing repeatedly into high-risk areas bombarded by Israeli tanks, helicopters and warplanes to rescue the injured and retrieve the dead.
During the 23-day invasion, the Israeli army warplanes, drones, warships, tanks and snipers rendered entire areas off-limits and impossible for ambulances and civil defense fire and rescue trucks to reach. In the north, Ezbet Abed Rabbo and Attatra, east and northwest of Jabaliya, respectively, were among the districts occupied by the Israeli army.
Through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Palestinian rescuers were sometimes able to coordinate with the Israeli army to gain access to areas they controlled.
"We'd wait five hours, even over 30 hours, for coordination from the Israelis to enter the area to retrieve wounded or martyred," says Khalil. "And much of the time, we wouldn't get it."
Even coordination, however, did not ensure access or safety.
"On 9 January, we went to retrieve wounded and martyred. There were three ambulances, and one ICRC jeep in front. We had coordination via the ICRC," says Khalil.
Marwan Hammouda, 33, a PRCS medic for the last 10 years, was on the same call. "We were driving to the area, speaking with the Israelis on the phone. They'd tell us which way to drive, what road to take. When we got near the wounded, Israeli soldiers started firing. I told them, 'We have coordination' and they said to wait. Then they began firing at us again."
Emergency workers under fire
According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), that same day, 9 January, Israeli soldiers fired on a convoy of 11 ambulances led by a clearly marked ICRC vehicle in central Gaza, injuring an ICRC staff member and damaging the vehicle.
This was not the only that occasion emergency medics came under fire. During the invasion, Israeli forces killed 16 medical rescuers, four in one day alone. Another 57 were injured. At least 16 ambulances were damaged with at least nine completely destroyed.
Although the Geneva Conventions explicitly state that "medical personnel searching, collecting, transporting or treating the wounded should be protected and respected in all circumstances," throughout Israel's invasion this was not the case. Indeed, as the injured and emergency workers testify, Israeli forces targeted and prevented medical workers from reaching the wounded.
"If we can't even access areas with ICRC coordination, how are we supposed to help people?" asks Khalil.
Without coordination, many ambulances did not dare risk Israeli gunfire and shelling, meaning hundreds of calls went unanswered, according to PCHR. Denied medical care, many victims succumbed to their wounds.
It was days before ambulances could reach the bodies of at least five members of the Abu Halima family who were killed when Israeli shelling and white phosphorous struck their home. In addition, two young male cousins, Matar and Muhammad, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers as they tried to drive a tractor-pulled wagon carrying the injured and martyred.
Ambulances trying to answer the calls were fired upon by machine guns and further shelling. Ali Khalil is still traumatized by what he and other emergency workers finally found days later.
"I brought back baby Shahed's burned, gnawed corpse."
The infant body that Khalil carried out, burned by white phosphorous, left in the tractor wagon, had been partially eaten by stray dogs.
"For the rest of my life I'll remember that day. I'll never get over it."
Khalil is among many veteran medics who feel all the emergency workers need counseling for the stresses and traumas endured in their work.
Ahmed Abu Foul, 26, works as a medic and coordinator of all the PRCS volunteers in northern Gaza. He also works as a medic and coordinator with the Civil Defense, Gaza's fire and rescue services. He is newly a father of a baby girl.
Abu Foul has narrowly escaped death while working on many occasions, and his body bears the scars of Israeli-fired bullet, shrapnel and flechette (dart bomb) injuries. In the last invasion alone, Abu Foul was twice targeted by snipers, was at the Fakhoura school when it was hit by white phosphorous shells on 6 January, and was in a building that was being bombed while emergency workers tried to evacuate the victims. In the latter incident, Abu Foul's colleague was killed and Abu Foul was lacerated with shrapnel to the leg and head.
Despite his many close calls, Abu Foul maintains a convincingly cheerful attitude, and continues to work full time for both the Civil Defense and the PRCS. However, he admits the psychological and physical pain have not abated since the last Israeli attacks.
"My left leg is useless. When I walk too much, the pain becomes unbearable and my leg won't support me. There's still shrapnel in it, and the nerves were badly damaged by the shrapnel."
It's the same leg that was shot in May 2008 while Abu Foul was on a mission for PRCS, he says. Just above the support bandage around his calf, a hollow in his leg above his kneecap shows where the bullet bored straight through.
"A doctor here said he could remove the shrapnel and repair the nerves, but wanted to open it up from my foot all the way to my thigh," he says of his recent injury.
"I have pain in my head also, especially when it is sunny," he adds. "There's still shrapnel in it from the shelling, although doctors already removed three pieces."
He endures both injuries, waiting for specialists and the means outside of Gaza to remove the shrapnel. "It's too dangerous here; we don't have the means nor the medical equipment to locate the shrapnel before removing it."
Medical shortages under siege
Under siege since after Hamas' election in early 2006, Gaza is still not receiving all the necessary medical supplies needed, nor the spare parts to repair aged machinery. Doctors, unable to leave Gaza, cannot obtain advanced and specialized training. The health care system, post-invasion and under siege, is in more dire condition than before the Israeli attacks one year ago. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, stocks of 141 types of medicines are depleted, as are 116 types of essential medical supplies.
Aside from Abu Foul's very present physical pain, it is memories of the wounded, the martyred, and the loss of his colleagues that still troubles him.
"I was with Dr. Issa Saleh coming down the stairs from the sixth floor of an apartment building in Jabaliya, evacuating a martyr, when the Israelis again shelled the building. They knew there were medics inside. They could see our uniforms and the ambulances outside. Dr. Saleh was hit by the missile."
Abu Foul describes in testimony to the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights how he believed he'd been mortally wounded.
"I put my hand on the back of my head and I found blood and brain. I then saw Dr. Issa had been decapitated and realized it must have been his head hitting my head and his brain on the back of my head."
Just days earlier, Abu Foul and other medics came under heavy Israeli fire for several minutes as they attempted to reach the injured.
The extreme stress and loss have manifested in Abu Foul's daily life. "I feel as though I don't care about anything now. Now, when I get angry I find myself hitting and throwing things. I feel nervous and I shout a lot now," he told al-Mezan.
Yet Abu Foul takes his role as an emergency rescuer seriously and is not daunted in his work, in spite of how it has affected his personal life. Abu Foul now continues to seek replacement equipment, requesting delegations visiting Gaza to bring any sort of emergency equipment.
"Ten out of sixteen fire engines are functional. We need fire hoses, spotlights for the trucks, handheld spotlights for searching in the dark, chemical extinguishing spray, electric saws for cutting through wreckage ..." The list is long and seems impossible when the Israeli siege on Gaza is tighter than ever.
Duty calls
"Each invasion becomes harder than the last," says Marwan Hammouda. Like his colleagues, Hammouda has no fear of death, and like them he has a history of injuries in the line of work, the latest being a gunshot to his left foot when the ambulance he was driving came under Israeli fire in Jabaliya.
Since Israel's invasion, Hammouda has developed a thyroid disorder, a condition doctors say is a result of post-traumatic stress.
"You saw the last war," he says. "There was nowhere safe, not homes, not schools, not kindergartens, not media buildings." And not ambulances.
"So do I want to die in my home, or in my work, at least helping people who have been injured?" Hammouda asks. "The Israelis don't have any respect for international law. And I have absolutely no confidence that things will change because American politicians give sweet speeches."
"My children got used to the idea that I could die at any moment in our work," says the father of six. "During the Israeli attacks, I only saw them for five or ten minutes a day. Some days I didn't see them at all because I was always with the ambulances."
Hassan al-Attal, 35, a father of three, was shot by an Israeli sniper while carrying a body from Zimmo crossroads east of Jabaliya back towards the wailing, flashing ambulance.
Since the Israeli tanks rolled in with the land invasion after the first week of aerial bombardment, injured and trapped residents of Ezbet Abed Rabbo -- one of the hardest-hit areas during the Israeli attacks -- had been calling for ambulances to evacuate the wounded and the dead. In almost all cases, emergency rescuers were unable to reach these calls, hindered by Israeli army shooting and shelling.
A medic for ten years, Attal has on many occasions come under Israeli fire and aggression while working.
His gunshot injury during the 7 January mission at 1:30pm came during Israel's self-declared "humanitarian cease-fire hours," when civilians were told they could safely walk the streets to buy food supplies or otherwise leave their homes.
After carrying the corpse only a few meters, Israeli sniper fire broke out on Attal and Jamal Said, 21, the volunteer with him.
"We came under heavy fire, around 20 shots. I was shot in the left thigh," says Attal.
Hazem Graith, 35, a father of four and a medic with the PRCS since 1999, worked in Gaza's north during the Israeli attacks.
Like most medics, Graith came to the profession out of a sense of obligation to his community. "Because I love to help people," he says.
Graith too has come under Israeli fire on many occasions. However, he is quick to emphasize that while the Israeli attacks on rescuers during last winter's invasion were the most savage and numerous yet, they were not isolated incidents. Rather, they were part of a larger Israeli policy of denying access of emergency personnel to the wounded which dates back to the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000.
Targeting hospitals and medical facilities
In addition to attacking rescuers, Israeli warplanes and tanks attacked medical facilities and clinics during the Israeli war on Gaza. An investigative report published by the Guardian in March 2009 found that 15 of Gaza's 27 hospitals were bombed, and another 44 clinics were damaged -- two destroyed completely -- although the Israeli military knew the coordinates of all the facilities.
On 15 January, the al-Quds hospital complex in Tel al-Hawa was shelled repeatedly, including with white phosphorous, causing fires to break out, extensive damage and forced the evacuation of all patients from the hospital.
The al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital in eastern Gaza -- the only one of its kind in the entire territory -- was attacked on the night of 15 January by tank shelling, including with phosphorous, and machine gun fire. Hospital residents included the disabled and immobile patients, as well as the elderly. Fire broke out on the roof of the hospital, and most buildings in the complex sustained extensive damage.
When medics were forced to evacuate the Ezbet Abed Rabbo PRCS station on the second day of the land invasion, the small band of ambulances temporarily stationed outside of Hamid's home in Jabaliya. Days later, they moved to Beit Lahia's al-Awda hospital, where they were based for the rest of the Israeli attacks.
"It was the most dangerous invasion we faced. Everywhere was dangerous, there was no safe place. Especially after 4pm it was extremely dangerous to be on the streets. But if we didn't go out, who would help the people?"
Dodging missiles and gunfire on the streets and at attack sites, medics were further hounded at their temporary station at al-Awda hospital.
"The Israelis launched missiles on al-Awda, a hospital. Fortunately no one was killed in that attack, but it's a hospital, and our ambulance base," says Hamid.
Lost colleagues
Khaled Abu Sada, 43, another long-term medic, will never forget the Israeli attack that savagely martyred his colleague Arafa Abd al-Dayem.
On 4 January, at around 10am, medics Sada, Abd al-Dayem and PRCS volunteer Ala Sarhan, 23, answered the call of civilians targeted by Israeli tank shelling in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya.
As they brought the injured and martyred to the ambulance, the medic team was struck by an Israeli tank-fired dart bomb. The flechettes, just two inches long and dart-shaped, are designed to bore through anything, to break apart upon impact, to ensure maximum damage. Arafa Abd al-Dayem, 35, a father of four and volunteer medic for eight years, was shredded by the darts.
Abu Sada testified to the Guardian: "I came round here and found Arafa kneeling down with his hands in the air and praying to God. They found his body full of these nails. The guy that had been brought to the ambulance was in pieces. He was now missing his head and both his legs."
Arafa Abd al-Dayem went into shock and died an hour or so after the attack, while Ala Sarhan was paralyzed by the injuries sustained in the attack.
Powerless to help
Ashraf al-Khatib has been a medic for 11 years. During the Israeli attacks, he worked at Rafah's PRCS station. "On 15 January we got a call from a man who said his brother was dead and he was injured by multiple Israeli gunshots. Ahmed and Ibrahim Thabet didn't know the Israeli army were nearby when they rode their motorcycle through a district of eastern Rafah."
Called at 11am, al-Khatib attempted to get Israeli coordination via the ICRC to reach the injured man.
"We tried for hours. Ibrahim kept calling us, crying, panicked. We explained we couldn't reach the area because of the Israeli army. We told him how to stop his bleeding to his chest and leg until we arrived."
Unable to wait any longer, al-Khatib and colleagues made the decision to risk going without Israeli coordination.
"I told them, we may die. But we agreed to go."
Two ambulances reached the area and brought out the dead and injured men.
"We had snipers trained on us, lasers on our foreheads and chest," he says.
Having reached the Thabet brothers, the medics saw more victims.
"It was a busy area. People didn't know there were Israeli snipers nearby."
But because of renewed Israeli firing, al-Khatib's ambulances were forced to retreat, leaving the victims behind.
Al-Khatib recalls another well-known case in Gaza, that of the Shurrab family in Rafah.
"We got a call from Muhammad Shurrab saying he and his sons had been evicted from their home by Israeli soldiers, then shot. They were all living but injured," he explained.
The family waited, trapped between an Israeli tank and their home, bleeding of their injuries, he says.
"We went, when we tried to reach them Israeli soldiers fired on us, so we retreated and tried to get coordination. Shurrab would call every so often; I'd tell him to be patient while we tried. It was winter, so in addition to their injuries, they were freezing."
Al-Khatib relates the saga which went on through the night.
"Later, the father called to say one son had died. We called Al-Jazeera television and told them the Israelis were preventing us from reaching Shurrab. Al-Jazeera took his mobile number and interviewed him live on the air. By that time his second son had died. Twelve hours later the Israelis finally allowed us to reach him, but his sons were both dead."
Al-Khatib says this was the worst challenge he has faced as a medic.
"I knew they were injured but there was no way to reach them, then the kids died. The Israeli army was playing with us," he says.
Muhammad, who declined to give his last name, 30, a volunteer medic and ambulance driver at the Tel al-Hawa PRCS station, was among the team sent to retrieve injured from the Samouni neighborhood in Zaytoun, eastern Gaza, while the attacks were still raging.
"When we arrived, we saw two tanks and a bulldozer between the trees. The tanks aimed their machine guns at the ambulance and the Israelis told us to continue forward. We went about 500 meters. Suddenly 20 or 30 soldiers appeared on foot and surrounded the ambulance, pointing their guns at us. They told me to get out of the ambulance, slowly. I did. They told me to take off my clothes. I did, at the same time telling them we'd come to bring out injured."
They ordered his colleague Rami, a volunteer medic, to get out and strip his clothes.
"They forced us to lie on the ground."
For the next 30 minutes, Muhammad says, they lay on the cold ground in their underwear, soldiers sitting on their backs, guns trained on them.
"Finally, after maybe 30 minutes, they let us go. But they didn't let us retrieve the injured or the children."
"Why shoot at ambulances?"
Throughout Gaza, during and before Israel's latest invasion there, stories of detention, attack, delay and bombardment of stations of both medic rescuers and the Civil Defense abound. Despite the scale of the aggression, the last Israeli war on Gaza was not a precedent for emergency workers, but the continuation of a deeply-entrenched Israeli policy violating international law.
In April 2009, journalist Amira Hass reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz finding a note in Gaza ordering soldiers to "open fire also upon rescue." Written in Hebrew, Hass reports that the note was found in a home occupied by Israeli forces during the war on Gaza. A military spokesperson, she writes, denied the note represents official Israeli army policy. But the facts on the ground and bodies in the graveyard point to a different conclusion.
Although one year has passed since the Israeli invasion, throughout Gaza the psychological wounds are still wide open. For the emergency rescuers, the prospect of the next Israeli attack is all too real and all too routine.
"Nothing is forbidden here, there is no international law where Israel is concerned. Even though the Geneva Conventions say we have the right to reach the wounded, Israel does not pay attention to international law," says medic Hazem Graith.
Like Hammouda, Graith speaks wryly of the Israeli explanation for such attacks.
"Why shoot at ambulances? Why destroy them? Why kill medics?" he asks. "The Israelis say we are militants or are carrying militants, that's the reason they give for targeting medics. Lies, all lies. In our ambulances there are only ever wounded or martyred."
While the destruction of ambulances is a major obstacle to medics' work, Graith calls for more than mere aid.
"We don't want new ambulances from the international community. We want you to see what Israel does and apply pressure to stop Israel from firing on ambulances."
He emphasizes, "Go to the root of the problem."
"The last Israeli attacks were the hardest, the most dangerous. It wasn't a war, it was a massacre. They shot anyone walking, anyone outside of their home, in their home ... it didn't matter. And it didn't matter if the victims were children or adults; there was no difference."
Ali Khalil, 47, has served as a medic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and private hospitals in Gaza for more than 20 years. He has seen some of the worst atrocities committed by the Israeli army. During Israel's war on Gaza last winter, Khalil worked in Gaza's northern region, venturing repeatedly into high-risk areas bombarded by Israeli tanks, helicopters and warplanes to rescue the injured and retrieve the dead.
During the 23-day invasion, the Israeli army warplanes, drones, warships, tanks and snipers rendered entire areas off-limits and impossible for ambulances and civil defense fire and rescue trucks to reach. In the north, Ezbet Abed Rabbo and Attatra, east and northwest of Jabaliya, respectively, were among the districts occupied by the Israeli army.
Through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Palestinian rescuers were sometimes able to coordinate with the Israeli army to gain access to areas they controlled.
"We'd wait five hours, even over 30 hours, for coordination from the Israelis to enter the area to retrieve wounded or martyred," says Khalil. "And much of the time, we wouldn't get it."
Even coordination, however, did not ensure access or safety.
"On 9 January, we went to retrieve wounded and martyred. There were three ambulances, and one ICRC jeep in front. We had coordination via the ICRC," says Khalil.
Marwan Hammouda, 33, a PRCS medic for the last 10 years, was on the same call. "We were driving to the area, speaking with the Israelis on the phone. They'd tell us which way to drive, what road to take. When we got near the wounded, Israeli soldiers started firing. I told them, 'We have coordination' and they said to wait. Then they began firing at us again."
Emergency workers under fire
According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), that same day, 9 January, Israeli soldiers fired on a convoy of 11 ambulances led by a clearly marked ICRC vehicle in central Gaza, injuring an ICRC staff member and damaging the vehicle.
This was not the only that occasion emergency medics came under fire. During the invasion, Israeli forces killed 16 medical rescuers, four in one day alone. Another 57 were injured. At least 16 ambulances were damaged with at least nine completely destroyed.
Although the Geneva Conventions explicitly state that "medical personnel searching, collecting, transporting or treating the wounded should be protected and respected in all circumstances," throughout Israel's invasion this was not the case. Indeed, as the injured and emergency workers testify, Israeli forces targeted and prevented medical workers from reaching the wounded.
"If we can't even access areas with ICRC coordination, how are we supposed to help people?" asks Khalil.
Without coordination, many ambulances did not dare risk Israeli gunfire and shelling, meaning hundreds of calls went unanswered, according to PCHR. Denied medical care, many victims succumbed to their wounds.
It was days before ambulances could reach the bodies of at least five members of the Abu Halima family who were killed when Israeli shelling and white phosphorous struck their home. In addition, two young male cousins, Matar and Muhammad, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers as they tried to drive a tractor-pulled wagon carrying the injured and martyred.
Ambulances trying to answer the calls were fired upon by machine guns and further shelling. Ali Khalil is still traumatized by what he and other emergency workers finally found days later.
"I brought back baby Shahed's burned, gnawed corpse."
The infant body that Khalil carried out, burned by white phosphorous, left in the tractor wagon, had been partially eaten by stray dogs.
"For the rest of my life I'll remember that day. I'll never get over it."
Khalil is among many veteran medics who feel all the emergency workers need counseling for the stresses and traumas endured in their work.
Ahmed Abu Foul in the destroyed Palestine Red Crescent Society station, Ezbet Abed Rabbo. |
The ambulance which Arafa Abd al-Dayem was loading when he was fatally struck by an Israeli-fired dart bomb. |
Ahmed Abu Foul, 26, works as a medic and coordinator of all the PRCS volunteers in northern Gaza. He also works as a medic and coordinator with the Civil Defense, Gaza's fire and rescue services. He is newly a father of a baby girl.
Abu Foul has narrowly escaped death while working on many occasions, and his body bears the scars of Israeli-fired bullet, shrapnel and flechette (dart bomb) injuries. In the last invasion alone, Abu Foul was twice targeted by snipers, was at the Fakhoura school when it was hit by white phosphorous shells on 6 January, and was in a building that was being bombed while emergency workers tried to evacuate the victims. In the latter incident, Abu Foul's colleague was killed and Abu Foul was lacerated with shrapnel to the leg and head.
Despite his many close calls, Abu Foul maintains a convincingly cheerful attitude, and continues to work full time for both the Civil Defense and the PRCS. However, he admits the psychological and physical pain have not abated since the last Israeli attacks.
"My left leg is useless. When I walk too much, the pain becomes unbearable and my leg won't support me. There's still shrapnel in it, and the nerves were badly damaged by the shrapnel."
It's the same leg that was shot in May 2008 while Abu Foul was on a mission for PRCS, he says. Just above the support bandage around his calf, a hollow in his leg above his kneecap shows where the bullet bored straight through.
"A doctor here said he could remove the shrapnel and repair the nerves, but wanted to open it up from my foot all the way to my thigh," he says of his recent injury.
"I have pain in my head also, especially when it is sunny," he adds. "There's still shrapnel in it from the shelling, although doctors already removed three pieces."
He endures both injuries, waiting for specialists and the means outside of Gaza to remove the shrapnel. "It's too dangerous here; we don't have the means nor the medical equipment to locate the shrapnel before removing it."
Medical shortages under siege
Under siege since after Hamas' election in early 2006, Gaza is still not receiving all the necessary medical supplies needed, nor the spare parts to repair aged machinery. Doctors, unable to leave Gaza, cannot obtain advanced and specialized training. The health care system, post-invasion and under siege, is in more dire condition than before the Israeli attacks one year ago. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, stocks of 141 types of medicines are depleted, as are 116 types of essential medical supplies.
Aside from Abu Foul's very present physical pain, it is memories of the wounded, the martyred, and the loss of his colleagues that still troubles him.
"I was with Dr. Issa Saleh coming down the stairs from the sixth floor of an apartment building in Jabaliya, evacuating a martyr, when the Israelis again shelled the building. They knew there were medics inside. They could see our uniforms and the ambulances outside. Dr. Saleh was hit by the missile."
Abu Foul describes in testimony to the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights how he believed he'd been mortally wounded.
"I put my hand on the back of my head and I found blood and brain. I then saw Dr. Issa had been decapitated and realized it must have been his head hitting my head and his brain on the back of my head."
Just days earlier, Abu Foul and other medics came under heavy Israeli fire for several minutes as they attempted to reach the injured.
The extreme stress and loss have manifested in Abu Foul's daily life. "I feel as though I don't care about anything now. Now, when I get angry I find myself hitting and throwing things. I feel nervous and I shout a lot now," he told al-Mezan.
Yet Abu Foul takes his role as an emergency rescuer seriously and is not daunted in his work, in spite of how it has affected his personal life. Abu Foul now continues to seek replacement equipment, requesting delegations visiting Gaza to bring any sort of emergency equipment.
"Ten out of sixteen fire engines are functional. We need fire hoses, spotlights for the trucks, handheld spotlights for searching in the dark, chemical extinguishing spray, electric saws for cutting through wreckage ..." The list is long and seems impossible when the Israeli siege on Gaza is tighter than ever.
A Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance, destroyed by Israeli bombing at the al-Quds hospital and PRCS station, Tel al-Hawa, Gaza City. |
Duty calls
"Each invasion becomes harder than the last," says Marwan Hammouda. Like his colleagues, Hammouda has no fear of death, and like them he has a history of injuries in the line of work, the latest being a gunshot to his left foot when the ambulance he was driving came under Israeli fire in Jabaliya.
Since Israel's invasion, Hammouda has developed a thyroid disorder, a condition doctors say is a result of post-traumatic stress.
"You saw the last war," he says. "There was nowhere safe, not homes, not schools, not kindergartens, not media buildings." And not ambulances.
"So do I want to die in my home, or in my work, at least helping people who have been injured?" Hammouda asks. "The Israelis don't have any respect for international law. And I have absolutely no confidence that things will change because American politicians give sweet speeches."
"My children got used to the idea that I could die at any moment in our work," says the father of six. "During the Israeli attacks, I only saw them for five or ten minutes a day. Some days I didn't see them at all because I was always with the ambulances."
Hassan al-Attal, 35, a father of three, was shot by an Israeli sniper while carrying a body from Zimmo crossroads east of Jabaliya back towards the wailing, flashing ambulance.
Since the Israeli tanks rolled in with the land invasion after the first week of aerial bombardment, injured and trapped residents of Ezbet Abed Rabbo -- one of the hardest-hit areas during the Israeli attacks -- had been calling for ambulances to evacuate the wounded and the dead. In almost all cases, emergency rescuers were unable to reach these calls, hindered by Israeli army shooting and shelling.
A medic for ten years, Attal has on many occasions come under Israeli fire and aggression while working.
His gunshot injury during the 7 January mission at 1:30pm came during Israel's self-declared "humanitarian cease-fire hours," when civilians were told they could safely walk the streets to buy food supplies or otherwise leave their homes.
After carrying the corpse only a few meters, Israeli sniper fire broke out on Attal and Jamal Said, 21, the volunteer with him.
"We came under heavy fire, around 20 shots. I was shot in the left thigh," says Attal.
Hazem Graith, 35, a father of four and a medic with the PRCS since 1999, worked in Gaza's north during the Israeli attacks.
Like most medics, Graith came to the profession out of a sense of obligation to his community. "Because I love to help people," he says.
Graith too has come under Israeli fire on many occasions. However, he is quick to emphasize that while the Israeli attacks on rescuers during last winter's invasion were the most savage and numerous yet, they were not isolated incidents. Rather, they were part of a larger Israeli policy of denying access of emergency personnel to the wounded which dates back to the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000.
Targeting hospitals and medical facilities
In addition to attacking rescuers, Israeli warplanes and tanks attacked medical facilities and clinics during the Israeli war on Gaza. An investigative report published by the Guardian in March 2009 found that 15 of Gaza's 27 hospitals were bombed, and another 44 clinics were damaged -- two destroyed completely -- although the Israeli military knew the coordinates of all the facilities.
On 15 January, the al-Quds hospital complex in Tel al-Hawa was shelled repeatedly, including with white phosphorous, causing fires to break out, extensive damage and forced the evacuation of all patients from the hospital.
The al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital in eastern Gaza -- the only one of its kind in the entire territory -- was attacked on the night of 15 January by tank shelling, including with phosphorous, and machine gun fire. Hospital residents included the disabled and immobile patients, as well as the elderly. Fire broke out on the roof of the hospital, and most buildings in the complex sustained extensive damage.
When medics were forced to evacuate the Ezbet Abed Rabbo PRCS station on the second day of the land invasion, the small band of ambulances temporarily stationed outside of Hamid's home in Jabaliya. Days later, they moved to Beit Lahia's al-Awda hospital, where they were based for the rest of the Israeli attacks.
"It was the most dangerous invasion we faced. Everywhere was dangerous, there was no safe place. Especially after 4pm it was extremely dangerous to be on the streets. But if we didn't go out, who would help the people?"
Dodging missiles and gunfire on the streets and at attack sites, medics were further hounded at their temporary station at al-Awda hospital.
"The Israelis launched missiles on al-Awda, a hospital. Fortunately no one was killed in that attack, but it's a hospital, and our ambulance base," says Hamid.
Lost colleagues
Khaled Abu Sada, 43, another long-term medic, will never forget the Israeli attack that savagely martyred his colleague Arafa Abd al-Dayem.
On 4 January, at around 10am, medics Sada, Abd al-Dayem and PRCS volunteer Ala Sarhan, 23, answered the call of civilians targeted by Israeli tank shelling in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya.
As they brought the injured and martyred to the ambulance, the medic team was struck by an Israeli tank-fired dart bomb. The flechettes, just two inches long and dart-shaped, are designed to bore through anything, to break apart upon impact, to ensure maximum damage. Arafa Abd al-Dayem, 35, a father of four and volunteer medic for eight years, was shredded by the darts.
Abu Sada testified to the Guardian: "I came round here and found Arafa kneeling down with his hands in the air and praying to God. They found his body full of these nails. The guy that had been brought to the ambulance was in pieces. He was now missing his head and both his legs."
Arafa Abd al-Dayem went into shock and died an hour or so after the attack, while Ala Sarhan was paralyzed by the injuries sustained in the attack.
Arafa Abd al-Dayem, the night before he was killed by Israeli fire while on duty. |
The first night of Israel's land invasion during last winter's attacks; the Ezbet Abed Rabbo PRCS station had to be evacuated because of Israeli shelling. |
Powerless to help
Ashraf al-Khatib has been a medic for 11 years. During the Israeli attacks, he worked at Rafah's PRCS station. "On 15 January we got a call from a man who said his brother was dead and he was injured by multiple Israeli gunshots. Ahmed and Ibrahim Thabet didn't know the Israeli army were nearby when they rode their motorcycle through a district of eastern Rafah."
Called at 11am, al-Khatib attempted to get Israeli coordination via the ICRC to reach the injured man.
"We tried for hours. Ibrahim kept calling us, crying, panicked. We explained we couldn't reach the area because of the Israeli army. We told him how to stop his bleeding to his chest and leg until we arrived."
Unable to wait any longer, al-Khatib and colleagues made the decision to risk going without Israeli coordination.
"I told them, we may die. But we agreed to go."
Two ambulances reached the area and brought out the dead and injured men.
"We had snipers trained on us, lasers on our foreheads and chest," he says.
Having reached the Thabet brothers, the medics saw more victims.
"It was a busy area. People didn't know there were Israeli snipers nearby."
But because of renewed Israeli firing, al-Khatib's ambulances were forced to retreat, leaving the victims behind.
Al-Khatib recalls another well-known case in Gaza, that of the Shurrab family in Rafah.
"We got a call from Muhammad Shurrab saying he and his sons had been evicted from their home by Israeli soldiers, then shot. They were all living but injured," he explained.
The family waited, trapped between an Israeli tank and their home, bleeding of their injuries, he says.
"We went, when we tried to reach them Israeli soldiers fired on us, so we retreated and tried to get coordination. Shurrab would call every so often; I'd tell him to be patient while we tried. It was winter, so in addition to their injuries, they were freezing."
Al-Khatib relates the saga which went on through the night.
"Later, the father called to say one son had died. We called Al-Jazeera television and told them the Israelis were preventing us from reaching Shurrab. Al-Jazeera took his mobile number and interviewed him live on the air. By that time his second son had died. Twelve hours later the Israelis finally allowed us to reach him, but his sons were both dead."
Al-Khatib says this was the worst challenge he has faced as a medic.
"I knew they were injured but there was no way to reach them, then the kids died. The Israeli army was playing with us," he says.
Muhammad, who declined to give his last name, 30, a volunteer medic and ambulance driver at the Tel al-Hawa PRCS station, was among the team sent to retrieve injured from the Samouni neighborhood in Zaytoun, eastern Gaza, while the attacks were still raging.
"When we arrived, we saw two tanks and a bulldozer between the trees. The tanks aimed their machine guns at the ambulance and the Israelis told us to continue forward. We went about 500 meters. Suddenly 20 or 30 soldiers appeared on foot and surrounded the ambulance, pointing their guns at us. They told me to get out of the ambulance, slowly. I did. They told me to take off my clothes. I did, at the same time telling them we'd come to bring out injured."
They ordered his colleague Rami, a volunteer medic, to get out and strip his clothes.
"They forced us to lie on the ground."
For the next 30 minutes, Muhammad says, they lay on the cold ground in their underwear, soldiers sitting on their backs, guns trained on them.
"Finally, after maybe 30 minutes, they let us go. But they didn't let us retrieve the injured or the children."
"Why shoot at ambulances?"
Throughout Gaza, during and before Israel's latest invasion there, stories of detention, attack, delay and bombardment of stations of both medic rescuers and the Civil Defense abound. Despite the scale of the aggression, the last Israeli war on Gaza was not a precedent for emergency workers, but the continuation of a deeply-entrenched Israeli policy violating international law.
In April 2009, journalist Amira Hass reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz finding a note in Gaza ordering soldiers to "open fire also upon rescue." Written in Hebrew, Hass reports that the note was found in a home occupied by Israeli forces during the war on Gaza. A military spokesperson, she writes, denied the note represents official Israeli army policy. But the facts on the ground and bodies in the graveyard point to a different conclusion.
Although one year has passed since the Israeli invasion, throughout Gaza the psychological wounds are still wide open. For the emergency rescuers, the prospect of the next Israeli attack is all too real and all too routine.
"Nothing is forbidden here, there is no international law where Israel is concerned. Even though the Geneva Conventions say we have the right to reach the wounded, Israel does not pay attention to international law," says medic Hazem Graith.
Like Hammouda, Graith speaks wryly of the Israeli explanation for such attacks.
"Why shoot at ambulances? Why destroy them? Why kill medics?" he asks. "The Israelis say we are militants or are carrying militants, that's the reason they give for targeting medics. Lies, all lies. In our ambulances there are only ever wounded or martyred."
While the destruction of ambulances is a major obstacle to medics' work, Graith calls for more than mere aid.
"We don't want new ambulances from the international community. We want you to see what Israel does and apply pressure to stop Israel from firing on ambulances."
He emphasizes, "Go to the root of the problem."
Sheikh Jarrah: Settlers throw urine bottles, activists arrested
Thursday, January 22nd, settlers occupying the Gawi and Al-Kurd family’s homes were reported to be harassing and attempting to provoke the evicted Palestinians and solidarity activists to a violent response. Other settlers stood by with film equipment, ready to record any response to their provocation. The evening’s heckling resulted in the arrest of Marwan Abu al Saber. Al Saber was released later that night.
Settler harassment of neighborhood residents continued and during the night four chairs were stolen by settlers from the Al-Kurd tent. In the last two weeks they have also stolen an ISM”ers shoes and a shelf from the tent. Thursday night’s theft was reported to the police but no action was taken.
Friday morning a young settler boy in the Al-Kurd home threw bottles from the home towards the Al-Kurd tent. One bottle, directed at a solidarity activist who was filming nearby, contained urine.
The rest of the day was quiet and the weekly, nonviolent demonstration began as usual. Police closed the street and when demonstrators tried to enter the area, they were arrested. 15 Israeli activists were arrested as they tried to reach the Gawi and Al-Kurd tents. Access to the nearby Orthodox Jewish tomb was also restricted however access was granted for settlers and Jewish Israelis. At the barrier to the tomb, a few young orthodox Jewish boys began throwing stones at a Palestinian woman from the neighborhood. When it became apparent that the police were condoning these actions, neighborhood men tried to prevent the boys from throwing stones by pushing the boys away. Police reacted immediately to the Palestinian men and arrested Muhamad Zamamiri and Muhand Jalejel. Zamamiri was released Saturday without conditions but Jalajel stayed in jail until Sunday evening, was given a 1.500 Shekel fine and one month of house arrest. One ISM activist was also arrested while filming.
Arrestees were taken to the Russian Compound where most were detained for 24 hours. ISM actvist Kim Reis Jenson from Denmark was seen by a judge at 8pm on Saturday night and charged with attacking a police officer and disturbing police officer’s work. Later in the evening Jenson was released without being charged however the police still have his passport. It is unusual for police to withhold passports and when he will get it back remains unclear. Israeli activists were also released with their trial set for Tuesday January 26, 2010. Palestinian Muhand Jalejel was held for 48 hours.
Settler harassment of neighborhood residents continued and during the night four chairs were stolen by settlers from the Al-Kurd tent. In the last two weeks they have also stolen an ISM”ers shoes and a shelf from the tent. Thursday night’s theft was reported to the police but no action was taken.
Friday morning a young settler boy in the Al-Kurd home threw bottles from the home towards the Al-Kurd tent. One bottle, directed at a solidarity activist who was filming nearby, contained urine.
The rest of the day was quiet and the weekly, nonviolent demonstration began as usual. Police closed the street and when demonstrators tried to enter the area, they were arrested. 15 Israeli activists were arrested as they tried to reach the Gawi and Al-Kurd tents. Access to the nearby Orthodox Jewish tomb was also restricted however access was granted for settlers and Jewish Israelis. At the barrier to the tomb, a few young orthodox Jewish boys began throwing stones at a Palestinian woman from the neighborhood. When it became apparent that the police were condoning these actions, neighborhood men tried to prevent the boys from throwing stones by pushing the boys away. Police reacted immediately to the Palestinian men and arrested Muhamad Zamamiri and Muhand Jalejel. Zamamiri was released Saturday without conditions but Jalajel stayed in jail until Sunday evening, was given a 1.500 Shekel fine and one month of house arrest. One ISM activist was also arrested while filming.
Arrestees were taken to the Russian Compound where most were detained for 24 hours. ISM actvist Kim Reis Jenson from Denmark was seen by a judge at 8pm on Saturday night and charged with attacking a police officer and disturbing police officer’s work. Later in the evening Jenson was released without being charged however the police still have his passport. It is unusual for police to withhold passports and when he will get it back remains unclear. Israeli activists were also released with their trial set for Tuesday January 26, 2010. Palestinian Muhand Jalejel was held for 48 hours.
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