Crossing The Line: Life In Occupied Palestine

Dealing With It Podcast Available!

2007-08-04T13:44:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, the Congressional Black Caucus was once the conscience of the Congress, but what happened to it and other African American lawmakers in particular regarding the Israel/Palestine issue? We'll speak to noted journalist Glen Ford about the absence of Black lawmakers in the debate for Palestinian self-determination. Also this week, she is one of the best young comediennes' out there. She's brilliant, uncompromising and Palestinian and Maysoon Zayid joins us on this week's show.
Then later The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service.

Revolution Podcast Avaialable!

2007-07-14T13:29:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, no time in the recent history of the Palestinian people have things been so devoid of hope. The Palestinian national movement is arguably at its lowest point. Osamah Kahlil will speak about the need for a revamped PLO and a radical change in course to save Palestinian unity.

Also this week I'll speak to Sami Abdelshafi a Gaza resident and businessman about life after the Hamas takeover and what might lie ahead for the strip's 1.5 million residents.

Plus, Rania Masri joins me to discuss the latest news from the troubled Palestinian camp of Nahr el-Bared in Tripoli Lebanon.

And, from Cottage Grove, OR The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent news Service.

USS Liberty Podcast Available!

2007-06-30T00:04:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, June 2007 marked 40 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, this much is known. What has gone widely unreported is another 40 year anniversary. one in which American soldiers were killed. No we're not talking about the war in Vietnam. This attack was carried out by one of America's closest allies, Israel.

Today we'll talk to a survivor of the USS Liberty, a ship that was nearly dystroyed by the Israeli army in an unprovoked attack that left 34 US navy personal dead.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia abu-Jamal and The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service.

The Wages of Corruption and Occupation

2007-06-17T02:31:00.001-02:00

Welcome to "Palestine"

By ROBERT FISK

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?

All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).

We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son, Gamal.

We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack Straw for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions - and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in the "war on terror".

Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like our coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East" would be to control.

For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?

It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran (even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear missile from the other).

If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners.

So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve our sacrifice and our love.

How do we deal with a coup d'état by an elected government?

Robert Fisk writes for the Independent.

See No Evil, Report No Evil Podcast Available!

2007-06-16T12:08:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, we'll examine the disparity in media coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with journalist Alison Weir. Also, this week we'll speak to photographer and activist Andrew Courtney about the little known community of African Palestinians and their long history within the country and conflict.

Then later in the podcast, our weekly commentary by Mumia abu-Jamal and The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent news Service.

One-state solution "gaining ground" UN envoy admits

2007-06-14T11:08:00.000-02:00

By Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada
13 June 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7025.shtml

The one-state solution for Palestine-Israel is "gaining
ground," a senior UN diplomat has admitted in a leaked
confidential report. Recently retired UN special envoy Alvaro
de Soto wrote "that the combination of [Palestinian Authority]
institutional decline and Israeli settlement expansion is
creating a growing conviction among Palestinians and Israeli
Arabs, as well as some Jews on the far left in Israel that the
two State solutiuon's best days are behind it."

De Soto's "end of mission" report delivered to his superiors
in May, but published in The Guardian on June 13 contains
stinging criticism of the anti-Hamas and pro-Israeli approach
taken by the UN, the European Union and the United States.
"The steps taken by the international community with the
presumed purpose of bringing about a Palestinian entity that
will live in peace with its neighbour, Israel, have had
precisely the opposite effect," de Soto wrote.

While his broadsides at the failed peace process have been
widely reported, his acknowledgment of the decline of the
two-state solution has drawn less notice.

De Soto, a Peruvian diplomat who has also served as a special
envoy to Cyprus, observed: "Given that a Palestinian state
requires both a territory and a government, and the basis for
both is being systematically undermined," an increasing number
of Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and some Israeli Jews "believe
the only long-term way to end the conflict will be to abandon
the idea of dividing the land and instead, simply insist on
respect for the civil, political and national rights of the
two peoples, Jews and Arabs, who populate the land, in one
State."

Contradicting peace process industry conventional wisdom and
spin, which long held that Israel's 2005 settler pullout from
Gaza was part of an effort to implement the "Road Map" peace
plan, de Soto acknowledged that Israel was motivated entirely
by concerns about the fact that Palestinians are once again on
the verge of becoming the majority in Israeli-ruled territory
(as they were prior to 1948). Israel is in a conundrum because
further unilateral withdrawals are "off the table" while "the
demographic clock continues to tick." De Soto predicts that
"Should the PA pass into irrelevance or non-existence, and the
settlements keep expanding, the one State solution will come
out of the shadows and begin to enter the mainstream."

Signs that this is already happening include increased public
discussion of a single state in the Palestinian solidarity
community. This includes a seminar to be held this July at
Spain's Universidad Complutense de Madrid at which Palestinian
academics and activists from inside Israel, the occupied
territories and the Diaspora, along with counterparts from
Israel, Spain, South Africa and other countries will discuss
legal, practical and political opportunities and possibilites
for a single state. see http://www.ucm.es/info/cv/cursos_pdf/72113.pdf

Drawing on his experience in Cyprus, de Soto speculates that a
peace plan developed originally for Cyprus based on a
binational confederation could be revived for Palestine.

The New York Times and Israel

2007-06-12T11:22:00.000-02:00

Howard Friel
Znet

May 25, 2007

On Wednesday, May 23, Amnesty International reported that, in 2006,
Palestinians killed more than 650 Israelis, including 120 Israeli
children, while the Israelis killed 27 Palestinians, including one
Palestinian child. Readers of the New York Times would not be surprised
to read such figures, since the Times regularly features Palestinian
violence on the front page and elsewhere in the front section.

The problem with the Times’ depiction of Palestinian violence, however, on
the occasion of Amnesty`s 2007 annual report and other such reports, is
that Amnesty actually reported the opposite—in 2006 Israel killed over
650 Palestinians, including 120 children, while Palestinians killed 27
Israelis, including one child.

One Israeli child
killed by Palestinian terrorists is one child too many; likewise with
respect to the 20 Israeli civilians that Palestinians also killed in
2006. Most people in the United States rightfully condemn the
Palestinians who kill innocent and unarmed Israelis. But what about the
Israeli government and military officials who authorized and carried
out the policies that killed 120 Palestinian children and another 200
Palestinian civilians in 2006? Would most people in the US even guess
that in 2006 more Palestinians than Israelis were killed by a ratio of
24 to 1, let alone condemn Israeli terrorism in the occupied
territories?

For many years, including since the
start of the Second Palestinian Intifada on September 29, 2000, Amnesty
International has issued annual reports detailing Israeli and
Palestinian casualties. In its 2001 report (covering events in 2000),
Amnesty reported that “More than 350 Palestinians, including nearly 100
children, were killed mostly through excessive use of lethal force by
Israeli security services.” Amnesty also reported that “More than 60
Israelis, including more than 30 civilians, were killed by Palestinian
armed groups and individuals.” The fact is that Israel has killed well
over 800 Palestinian children since September 2000.

On December 31, 2000, a Switzerland-based human rights organization,
Defense of Children International, which has consultative status with
UNESCO and UNICEF and the Council of Europe, issued a report, and the
chart below, detailing how those 100 Palestinian children were killed
“through excessive use of lethal force” from September 30, 2000 to
December 31, 2000. This chart, in addition to numerous other reports
issued by DCI on the Israeli killing of Palestinian children,
contradicts Israel`s repeated claims that it does its utmost to avoid
harming innocent people.

DATE
NAME
AGE
RESIDENCE
CAUSE OF DEATH

30 September
Mohammad Jamal Mohammad Al-Dura
11
Al-Breij/Gaza
Live bullet to multiple places

30 September
Nizar Mohammad Eida
16
Deir Ammar/Ramallah
Live bullet to chest

30 September
Khaled Adli Insooh Al-Bazyan
15
Nablus
Exploding bullet to head

1 October
Samir Sidqi Tabanja
12
Nablus
Live bullet to chest

1 October
Sarah `Abdel Atheem `Abdel Haq
18 mos.
Talfit/Nablus
Live bullet to head. Killed by Israeli Settlers

1 October
Hussam Bakhit
17
Balatta Refugee Camp/Nablus
Live bullet to head

1 October
Iyad Ahmad Salim Al-Khoshashee
16
Nablus

Live bullet to multiple places. Iyad`s body was found Sunday in the
hills surrounding Nablus, but he is believed to have died on Saturday.

1 October
Sami Fathi Mohammad Al-Taramsi
16
Sheikh Radwan/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

1 October
Mohammad Nabeel Hamed Daoud
14
Al-Bireh/Ramallah
Live bullet to head

2 October
Wa`el Tayseer Mohammad Qatawi
16
Balatta Refugee Camp/Nablus
Live bullet to eye

2 October
Muslih Hussein Ibrahim Jarad
17
Deir Balah/Gaza
Killed in Um Al-Fahim
Live bullet to chest

2 October
`Aseel Hassan `Assalih
17
`Arrabeh Al-Batouf/Upper Galilee
Live bullet to neck

3 October
Hussam Ismail Al-Hamshari
16
Tulkarem
Exploding bullet to head

3 October
Ammar Khalil Al-Rafai`i
17
Al-Maghazi/Gaza
Hit by missile in the head

4 October
Mohammad Zayed Yousef Abu `Assi
13
Bani Sahla/Gaza
Live bullet to chest
!

6 October
Saleh Issa Yousef Al-Raiyati
17
Rafah/Gaza
Live bullet to head

6 October
Majdi Samir Maslamani
15
Beit Hanina/Jerusalem
Exploding bullet to head

6 October
Mohammad Khaled Tammam
17
Tulkarem
Live bullet to chest

8 October
Yousef Diab Yousef Khalaf
17
Al Breij/Gaza
Died from injuries sustained on 2 October, shrapnel to head.

11 October
Karam Omar Ibrahim Qannan
17
Khan Younis Refugee Camp/Gaza
Rubber coated steel bullet to chest

11 October
Sami Hassan Salim Al-Balduna
17
Tulkarem Refugee Camp
Live bullet to chest

12 October
Sami Fathi Abu Jezr
12
Rafah/Gaza
Died from injuries sustained on 11 October, Live bullet to head

16 October
Mo`ayyad Osaama Al-Jawareesh
14
Aida Refugee Camp/Bethlehem
Rubber coated steel bullet to head

20 Octobe!
r
Mohammad `Adil Abu Tahoun
15
Tulkarem
Live bulle
t to multiple places

20 October
Samir Talal `Oweisi
16
Qalqiliya
Live bullet to chest

20 October
`Alaa Bassam Beni Nimra
16
Salfit
Live bullet to chest

21 October
Omar Ismail Al-Abheisi
15
Deir Balah/Gaza
Exploding bullet to chest

21 October
Majed Ibrahim Hawamda
15
Ramallah
Exploding bullet to head

22 October
Wa`el Mahmoud Mohammad Imad
13
Jabaliya Refugee Camp/Gaza
Live bullet to head

22 October
Salah Al-Din Fawzi Nejmi
16
Al-Maghazi Camp/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

23 October
Ashraf Habayab
15
Askar Refugee Camp/Nablus
Exploding bullet to head. Died from injuries sustained 16 October.

24 October
Iyad Osaama Tahir Sha`ath
12
Khan Younis/Gaza
Live bullet to head. Died from injuries sustained 21 October.

24 October
Nidal Mohammad Zuhud!
i Al-Dubeiki
16
Hai Al-Darraj/Gaza
Exploding bullet to abdomen.

26 October
`Alaa Mohammad Mahfouth
14
Arroub Refugee Camp/Hebron
Live bullet to head. Died from injuries sustained on 6 October.

27 October
Bashir Salah Musa Shelwit
16
Qalqiliya
Live bullet to chest.

29 October
Husni Ibrahim Najjar
16
Rafah/Gaza Strip
Live bullet to head.

31 October
Shadi Awad Nimir Odeh
17
Hai Zaitun/Gaza Strip
Live bullet to head.

1 November
Ahmad Suleiman Abu Tayeh
17
Shatti Refugee Camp/Gaza
Live bullets and exploding bullets to multiple places.

1 November
Mohammad Ibrahim Hajaaj
14
Sheja`aya/Gaza
Live bullet to head.

1 November
Ibrahim Riziq Mohammad Omar
14
Shatti Refugee Camp/Gaza
Live bullet to chest.

2 November
Khaled Mohammad Ahmad Riziq
17
Hizma!
/Jerusalem
Live bullet to multiple places.

2 November Yazen Mohammad Issa Al-Khalaiqa
14
Al-Shiyoukh/Hebron
Killed in Bethlehem
Live bullet to back.

4 November
Rami Ahmad Abdel Fatah
15
Hizma/Jerusalem
Exploding bullet to multiple places.

4 November
Hind Nidal Jameel Abu Quweider
23 days old
Hebron
Tear gas inhalation.

5 November
Maher Mohammad Al-Sa`idi
15
Al-Breij/Gaza
Live bullet to head

6 November
Wajdi Al-Lam Al-Hattab
15
Tulkarem
Exploding bullet to chest

6 November
Mohammad Nawwaf Al-Ta`aban
17
Deir Balah/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

7 November
Ahmad Amin Al-Khufash
6
Marda/Salfit
Run-over by Israeli settler

8 November
Ibrahim Fouad Al-Qassas
15
Khan Younis/Gaza
Live bullet to eye. Died from injuries sustained on 5 November.

8 November
Faris Fa`iq Odeh
15
Hai Zaitun/Gaza
Liv!
e bullet to head.

8 November
Mohammad Misbah Abu Ghali
16
Khan Younis Refugee Camp/Gaza
Live bullet to chest.

8 November
Ra`ed Abdel Hamid Daoud
14
Heras/Salfit
Exploding bullet to multiple places

9 November
Mahmoud Kamel Khalil Sharab
17
Khan Younis/Gaza
Live bullet to back

10 November
Osaama Mazen Saleem `Azouqah
14
Jenin
Live bullet to chest

10 November
Osaama Samir Al-Jerjawee
17
Hai Al-Daraj/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

11 November
Musa Ibrahim Al-Dibs
14
Jabalia Camp/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

12 November
Mohammad Nafiz Abu Naji
16
Sheikh Radwan/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

13 November
Yahya Naif Abu Shemaali
17
Khan Younis/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

14 November
Saber Khamis Brash
15
Al `Amari Camp/Ramallah
Live bullet !
to chest

14 November
Mohammad Khatir Al `Ajli
13 Hai Sheju`a/Gaza
Exploding bullet to head

15 November
Ibrahim Abdel Raouf Jaidi
15
Qalqiliya
Live bullet to chest

15 November
Jadua Munia Mohammad Abu Kupashe
16
Al Samua/Hebron
Live bullets to multiple places.

15 November
Ahmad Samir Basel
17
Tel Al-Howwa/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

15 November
Mohammad Nasser Mohammad Al-Sharafe
17
Nasser/Gaza
Live bullet to head

15 November
Jihad Suheil Abu Shahma
12
Khan Younis/Gaza
Live bullet to head

15 November
Ahmad Said Ahmad Sha`aban
16
Jalama/Jenin
Exploding bullet to abdomen

16 November
Samir Mohammad Hassan Al-Khudour
17
Al-Fawwar Refugee Camp/Hebron
Exploding bullet to chest

17 November
Rami Imad Yassin
17
Zeitun/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

17 November
Mohammad Abdel Jalil Mohammad !
Abu Rayyan
16
Halhoul/Hebron
Live bullet to head

19 November
Abdel Rahman Ziad Dahshan
14
Sabra/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

20 November
Ibrahim Hassan Ahmad Uthman
17
Tel Al-Sultan/Gaza
Live bullet to chest

21 November
Yasser Taleb Mohammad Tebatitti
16
Tulkarem Killed while on vacation. Family lives in Saudi Arabia.
Live bullet to chest

22 November
Ibrahim Hussein Al-Muqannan
14
Khan Younis/Gaza Strip
Live bullet to head. Died from injuries sustained on 20 November

23 November
Maram Imad Ahmad Saleh Hassouneh
3
Jalazone Refugee Camp/Ramallah
Tear gas inhalation

24 November
Aysar Mohammad Sadiq Hassis
15
Jenin
Exploding bullet to eye.

24 November
Majdi Ali Abed
15
Sheju`a/Gaza Strip
Live bullet to head. Died from injuries sustained on 17 November.

26 No!
vember
Ziad Ghaleb Zaid Selmi
17
Habla/Qalqiliya
L
ive bullets to multiple places.

26 November
Mahdi Qassem Jaber
16
Habla/Qalqiliya
Live bullets to multiple places.

28 November
Karam Fathi Al-Kurd
14
Khan Younis/Gaza Strip
Live bullet to head Died from injuries sustained on 23 November.

29 November
Mohammad Abdullah Al-Mashharawi
14
Gaza
Live bullet to head. Died from injuries sustained on 26 November.

30 November
Walid Mohammad Ahmad Hamida
17
Teku`a/Bethlehem
Live bullet to chest.

30 November
Shadi Ahmad Hassan Zghoul
16
Hussan/Bethlehem
Run-over by Israeli settler.

1 December
Mohammed Salih Mohammad Al-Arjah
12
Rafah/Gaza Strip
Live bullet to head.

5 December
Ramzi Adil Mohammed Bayatni
15
Abu Qash/Ramallah
Live bullet to eye.

8 December
Mohammad Abdullah Mohammad Yahya
16
Kufr Rai/Jenin
Hit b!
y missile.

8 December
Alaa Abdelatif Mohammad Abu Jaber
17
Al-Maghayeer/Jenin
Hit by missile.

8 December
Ammar Samir Al-Mashni
17
Beit Or Al-Tahta/Ramallah
Live bullet to head

8 December
Mu`ataz Azmi Ismail Talakh
16
Dheishe Refugee Camp/Bethlehem
Live bullet to head

9 December
Salim Mohammad Hamaideh
12
Rafah/Gaza
Live bullet to head

11 December
Ahmad Ali Hassan Qawasmeh
15
Hebron
Live bullet to head

20 December
Hani Yusef Al-Sufi
14
Rafah/Gaza
Shrapnel to head

22 December
Arafat Mohammad Ali Al-Jabarin
17
Sa`ir/Hebron
Live bullet to head

31 December
Mo`ath Ahmad Abu Hedwan
12
Hebron
Shrapnel to head

CLINICALLY DEAD
The following Palestinian children have been declared clinically dead.

DATE
NAME
AGE
RESIDENCE!

INJURY

30 September
Khaled Hameed
17
Raf
ah/Gaza
Live bullet to head

30 September
Mohammad Nawaf Abu Owemer
13
Deir Balah/Gaza
Live bullet to head

30 September
Mohammad Sami Al-Hummos
14
Rafah/Gaza
Live bullet to head

5 November
Ghazaleh Joudet Jaradat
14
Sa`ir/Hebron
Rubber coated steel bullet to head

11 November
Hamad Jamal Al-Faraa
13
Khan Younis/Gaza Strip
Live bullet to head

CHILDREN DEATHS AS A RESULT OF
THE ISRAELI IMPOSED CLOSURE

DATE
NAME
AGE
RESIDENCE
CAUSE

13 October
Alaa Osaama Hamdan
10
Assawiya/Nablus

Died from a severe lung infection after Israeli soldiers prohibited her
father from passing through a checkpoint to transport her to a
hospital.

In its 2002 annual
report, Amnesty reported that 460 Palestinians, including 79 children,
were killed during 2001 by Israeli security forces, while Palestinian
armed groups killed 187 Israelis, including 154 civilians. This pattern
of casualties was repeated in each of Amnesty International’s annual
reports from 2003 to 2007. The same pattern of much higher Palestinian
casualties is also reported by Human Rights Watch in its annual
reports.

As of yesterday (May 24), B’Tselem, Israel’s
most important human rights organization, reported fatalities as
follows: From September 29, 2000 to April 30, 2007, 4,098 Palestinians
were killed by Israeli security forces and Israeli civilians, while
1,021 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.

Despite
many more fatalities on the Palestinian side throughout this period,
the New York Times has featured Palestinian violence in its coverage of
the conflict. From September 29, 2000 to December 31, 2005, the Times
published nearly 50 front-page articles on Palestinian suicide bombings
and other terrorist acts,[i][1] in addition to 25 articles on
Palestinian terrorism reported elsewhere in the front section.[ii][2]
This reporting accounted for the vast majority of Palestinian suicide
bombings and other terrorist acts inside Israel’s borders. In contrast,
there was much less emphasis in the Times on the far more numerous
Israeli killings of Palestinians in the occupied territories during the
same period. And as far as I can tell, using the New York Times search
engine, the Times neglected to cover any of the annual reports from
Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch on Israel throughout the
period, nor has it ever mentioned the reports on the Israel-Palestine
conflict issued regularly by Defense for Children International.

There
is another major problem with the Times’ coverage. Both Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch monitor violations of
international humanitarian law, which protects civilians in armed
conflict and belligerent occupation. The Fourth Geneva Convention
(1949) is the main instrument of such law as it applies to Israel’s
occupation of the Palestinian territories. Both Amnesty and HRW
frequently cite Israeli violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, not
only with respect to Israel’s excessive lethal force, but also with
regard to beatings and abuse, house demolitions as collective
punishment, and administrative detention and torture, in addition to
Israel’s settlements in Palestinian territory. Article 49(6) of the
Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer
parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
This key stipulation is universally recognized (except by Israel) as
prohibiting, and thus outlawing, Israel’s settlements in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem. However, again as far as I can tell, the New York
Times has ignored the Fourth Geneva Convention and the fact that it
outlaws Israel`s settlements. This amounts to nothing less than a
rejection of the rule of law by the Times as it applies to the
Israel-Palestine conflict.

Consistent with its
pattern of ignoring the annual reports of Amnesty International as they
apply to Israel`s occupation, the Times appears to have ignored
Amnesty’s just-published 2007 report as well. There was no reference to
the report, or at least to the section on Israel, in either the print
or online editions on May 24. However, if you were to intuitively type
Amnesty International into the Times’ search engine, you would have
found an Associated Press report titled, “Israel Killed 650
Palestinians in 2006,” which summarizes Amnesty’s 2007 report on
Israel. The AP report begins: “Israeli troops killed more than 650
Palestinians last year—half of them unarmed civilians including some
120 children—a threefold increase from 2005, a leading human rights
group said Wednesday [May 23].” Inexplicably, the AP report states that
“No such killings [by Israeli soldiers and settlers] were documented in
the report.” However, Amnesty’s report documents several such
incidents, as reproduced below:

On 9 June, seven
members of the Ghalia family—five children and their parents—were
killed and some 30 other civilians were injured when Israeli forces
fired several artillery shells at a beach in the north of the Gaza
Strip. The beach was crowded with Palestinian families enjoying the
first weekend of the school holidays. The Israeli army denied
responsibility for the killings but failed to substantiate their claim.

In
the early morning of 8 November, 18 members of the Athamna family were
killed and dozens of other civilians were injured when a volley of
artillery shells struck a densely populated neighbourhood of Beit
Hanoun, in the north of the Gaza Strip. The victims, eight of them
children, were killed in their sleep or while fleeing the shelling,
which lasted for around 30 minutes and during which some 12 shells
landed in the area. The Israeli authorities expressed regret for the
killings, saying that the houses were mistakenly struck due to a
technical failure, but rejected calls for an international
investigation. The attack came in the wake of a six-day Israeli army
raid in Beit Hanoun code-named “Autumn Clouds”, during which Israeli
forces killed some 70 Palestinians, at least half of them unarmed
civilians and including several children and two ambulance emergency
service volunteers. The raid also injured some 200 others, including
scores of children.

Eight-year-old Akaber ‘Abd al-Rahman
‘Ezzat Zayed was shot dead by Israeli special forces who opened fire on
the car in which she was travelling to hospital with her uncle, who was
seriously injured in the attack. The incident took place on 17 March in
Yamun village, near the northern West Bank town of Jenin.

On
19 December, 14-year-old Dua’a Nasser ‘Abdelkader was shot dead by
Israeli soldiers as she approached the fence/wall with a friend near
Fara’un, a village in the north of the West Bank.

Nine
members of the Abu Salmiya family were killed when an Israeli F16
fighter jet bombed their home at 2.30am on 12 July. According to the
Israeli army, a senior leader of Hamas’ armed wing was in the house at
the time of the strike but survived. However, the strike wiped out an
entire family: the owner of the house, Nabil Abu Salmiya, a Hamas
political leader and university lecturer; his wife Salwa; and seven of
their children all aged under 18. Dozens of neighbours were also
injured and several other houses were damaged in the strike.

In
the evening of 25 March a group of Israeli settlers assaulted
‘Abderrahman Shinneran as he slept in his tent with his wife and three
children in Susia in the southern Hebron Hills. When his brother ‘Aziz
went to his rescue he too was assaulted and injured.

On 18
November, Tove Johansson, a 19-year-old Swedish human rights defender,
was assaulted by Israeli settlers as she accompanied Palestinian school
children through an Israeli army checkpoint near the Tel Rumeida
Israeli settlement in the West Bank city of Hebron. She was struck with
a broken bottle and sustained facial injuries. Israeli soldiers at a
nearby checkpoint took no action to stop the attack or apprehend the
perpetrators.

Despite continuing US military and financial
support of Israel, in addition to the US boycott of the elected
Palestinian government, the Times chose to ignore these incidents as
presented in Amnesty’s 2007 annual report.

While
Andrew Rosenthal’s tenure as editor of the Times’ editorial page has
substantially improved at least that page’s performance with respect to
a number of important issues, that shift has occurred in the context of
a persistent 30 percent approval rating of President Bush in public
opinion polls and an apparent rejection of the administration’s
policies in the 2006 congressional elections. Tougher tests of
journalistic oversight occur when conditions are not so favorable for
principled criticism and commentary. The Times catastrophically failed
those tests with respect to its coverage throughout most of the US war
in Vietnam and in recent years in Iraq. The Times is failing that test
today in its coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. While Israel
has done most of the killing and has violated a preponderance of the
applicable law, the Times, in a relative sense, has persistently
over-represented Palestinian violence and lawlessness. By failing also
to integrate applicable international law into its editorial standards,
while mostly ignoring the human rights organizations (which regularly
invoke international law in their reports), the Times apparently has no
editorial policy to apply to the conflict aside from an historical and
contemporary disposition to support Israel’s illegal policies.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Howard
Friel is coauthor with Richard Falk of Israel-Palestine on Record: How
The New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East (Verso, June
1) and with Falk of The Record of the Paper: How The New York Times
Misreports US Foreign Policy (Verso, 2004

Al Naksa Podcast Available!

2007-06-08T23:07:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, June 8th marks 40 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Today we'll speak to two women, Samira Khoury whose family was displaced on this day in the West Bank and Nadia Hijab a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. Also, we'll hear from noted author and activist Phyllis Bennis about the continuing human rights violations of the Israeli occupation army onto Palestinian land.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia abu-Jamal and The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service.

An Interview with Greta Berlin

2007-06-07T22:34:00.001-02:00

Sailing to Gaza

By SILVIA CATTORI

Greta Berlin, 66 years old, is a businesswoman from Los Angeles, CA. She is the mother of two Palestinian-American children and has been to the occupied territories twice in the past four years with the International Solidarity Movement. She is also a member of Women in Black Los Angeles.

She is one of many other people, who have organized an unusual project, sailing a boat to Gaza. They intend to challenge Israel's claim that they no longer occupy Gaza. Talking to her, she explains why she and the other courageous people are going.

Silvia: Your mission states," We tried to enter Palestine by ground. We tried to enter by air. Now we are going to go by sea."1 This is an exceptional attempt. Why Gaza in particular? And why go by boat in one of the most patrolled places in the world?

Greta Berlin: Israel says that Gaza is no longer occupied. Well, if that's true, then we have every right to visit. The truth is that Israel controls every entrance into Gaza, and the population is completely isolated from the rest of the world. Internationals can no longer go through the border with Egypt, and, of course, the Eretz border with Israel is closed to almost everyone.

So, 50 to 80 of us, men and women, will begin our journey in Cyprus toward the end of this summer. Many of us are over 50, and we come from all over the world Palestinians, Israelis, Australians, Greeks, Americans, English, Spanish, Italians, just to name a few we will embark on a boat called FREE GAZA. One of the passengers, Hedy Epstein, is a holocaust survivor, and two or three Palestinians are Nakba survivors.

Many of us have also been stopped from entering the occupied territories, because we have gone before to non-violently bear witness to what Israel does to the Palestinians.

Silvia Cattori: This departure coincides with the time The Exodus left Marseille for Palestine sixty years ago on July 27, 1947. It had 4500 Jewish refugees on board. Is your trip meant to coincide with that departure in l947?

Greta Berlin: It's merely a coincidence. The reason we're leaving in the summer of 2007 is because it's the second anniversary of Israel's 'alleged withdrawal' from Gaza. Since then, Gaza is ever more besieged, and the people are living in much worse conditions. We intend to draw the attention of the world to the terrible lack of human and civil rights for the Palestinians.

Silvia Cattori: To enter the waters of Gaza is not going to be so simple. Do you really believe the Israeli navy will let you in?

Greta Berlin: Israel has no right to prevent us from going. So we're going. International law says that we have the right to visit Gaza. Remember, in July 2005, when Israel told the entire world that Gaza was no longer occupied? If it's no longer occupied, why shouldn't we go?

Let the Israeli authorities prove that it's no longer occupied by allowing us to enter. This voyage is an attempt to challenge Israel's own words. We've been invited by many NGO's to come and visit their facilities and clinics. Why should Israel have the right to deny us those visits?

Let me repeat. We must do everything we can to bring to the world's attention to the fact that Israel's military blockade is causing the death of the people of Gaza. We clearly know this trip will be difficult, but we're determined. We can either complain about the inertia of the international community, or we can do something to make them sit up and pay attention. If those of us who have already seen the gravity of the situation do nothing about it, then what kind of credibility will we have with the occupied Palestinians?

We've planned this trip for a long time, carefully thinking out the best way to show our support. We discussed the possibility of going to support of the right of return for the Palestinians of 1948. Should our journey be a statement about the 60 years of occupation? But we decided it's of utmost importance that we challenge Israel's claim that Gaza is no longer occupied, that its people are free.

According to international law, the waters of Gaza for all 40 kilometers of its coast belong to the Palestinians, and Israel has no right to control those waters. Even the Oslo agreements state that the coast of Gaza belongs to the people who live there.

Silvia Cattori: What do you want to prove?

Greta Berlin: We want to prove that Israel and the United States are starving the people of Gaza for democratically electing Hamas. We're hoping to call on the conscience of the world, "Wake up. You can't turn away from the crimes of Israel. You can't close your eyes any longer to the slow-motion genocide of the Palestinians

It's important to show that Israel has lied; Gaza has never been free. Israeli warships still fire on the fishermen, killing many of them over the past two years. What did these men ever do except fish for their families? What kind of evil would make Israel fire on men who had the right to fish in their own waters?

Silvia Cattori: Do you seriously believe that you can face the military might of Israel?

Greta Berlin: We're going to try. Our mission is to go to Gaza. Of course, we assume that we'll be stopped. However, we're going to insist that we have the legal and moral right to go. And, we have enough media on board to tell the story of what will happen; so let them try to stop us. They'll report that Israel's 'freedom for Gaza' is a complete hoax, The territory is still occupied and its people terrorized every day.

Silvia Cattori: Is your mission more for political reasons then?

Greta Berlin: Yes. Gaza has the right to be free. Our objective is not to take food or medicine, although we are going to have both on board. Like any people, the people of Gaza want to be able to travel, to trade, to work in peace, and to have the right to control their own destinies. They should have the right to fly out of their airport that Israel destroyed five years ago, and they should have the right to fish in their sea.

Of course, the humanitarian catastrophe is important, but it's vitally important for the people to be free. The international community must step up and help them reestablish the internal structures to build their society. But out mission is to put Israel, the United States, the EU on notice that they bear responsibility for the welfare of 1.4 million people.

Silvia Cattori: This is a great project that you are all launching.

Greta Berlin: The Palestinians have never received anything with all these 'so-called' peace plans. Every international effort has failed. Part of our desire is to counter the misinformation that has been out there for almost 60 years in favor of Israel instead of the true story of the Palestinian's dispossession.

The world can't wait any longer for Israel to decide when to come to the peace table.

Even the NGO's aren't able to tell the true story for fear of losing international support. More than 65 UN resolutions have tried to bring Israel to account; yet the US has vetoed these resolutions every time. For 60 years the Palestinians have waited for justice. How much longer must they pay the price for what Europe did to the Jews? How much longer will the international community turn away and say, "We didn't see, we didn't know."

Silvia Cattori: Do you hope that other boats and other captains will join you?

Greta Berlin: Any person who has a boat, anyone who wants to join our breaking the siege is welcome. The more boats that join us, the better our chances are that we will be heard.

Silvia Cattori: Don't you all need a certain amount of courage to launch such a project?

Greta Berlin: I think that if Hedy Epstein at 82 and Mary Hughes at 73 and so many others in their 70s and 80s can make this trip, so can I. I don't think any of us think we are brave; I think we are determined to have the voices of the Palestinians heard, and if we can help, we have to. We can't turn away as Israel bombs women and children every day.

Silvia Cattori: Why do you care so much for the plight of the Palestinians?

Greta Berlin: When I lived in Chicago, Illinois I married a Palestinian refugee from l948. That's when I began to learn the truth about Israel's ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in order to establish a Jewish state. As I became more involved in the 60s and 70s, a group called the Jewish Defence League threatened by two small children, saying they would kill them if we continued to work for justice for the Palestinians

For almost 20 years I left the struggle, raising the children and working on my career. I wasn't going to jeopardize their safety for a cause I supported.

In 1997, with my children grown and gone, I started to write letters and advocate again. I couldn't believe that almost 20 years had passed, and the situation for the Palestinians was worse by the day. On September 29, 2000, Mohammed Al Dura, a little 12-year-old boy in Gaza was murdered by an Israeli sniper. Someone just happened to catch the killing on video. I was appalled and returned.

When Rachel Corrie was crushed to death in March, 2003 and Tom Hurndall was shot through the head several days later; both human rights workers with the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza, I made a commitment to go to the occupied territories to see for myself what Israel was doing to a people it occupies.

Silvia Cattori: Isn't the ISM considered to be a terrorist organization by Israel?

Greta Berlin: Actually, no. Those of us who have volunteered for the ISM are peaceful and believe in nonviolently demonstrating against the occupation. The only terrorism that I witnessed in the five months I was there in 2003 and 2005 was the Israeli military violence against us and the illegal settler violence against the Palestinians and those of us who were trying to protect them. I was shot in the leg by a rubber-coated steel bullet while protesting against that dreadful wall Israel is building. And I, like hundreds of peace activists, have had tear gas and sound bombs thrown at me in Bil'in. While escorting Palestinian children to school in Hebron, settler children threw rocks at us, wounding me in the hand and the thigh.

Almost everyone on board this boat has been beaten, shot, or tear-gassed by the Israeli military. Many of us have been arrested for protecting women and children. Israeli authorities know that we aren't connected in any way to any terrorist organization.

But Israel is terrified that we come back to our countries and tell the truth of what happens to an occupied people. That's what they really fearthe truth.

We are all committed to going to Gaza. And we are eagerly awaiting the support of all progressive people to join with us2. Even if we don't land, we will have tried, and we will have told the world the situation. I believe that all of the people on the boat feel the same way. We know what the obstacles are. And this is not the only voyage. We will continue to return as part of a strategy of bringing the truth of Israel's occupation to the world.

Silvia Cattori: What do you hope to do once you reach Gaza?

Greta Berlin: We're going fishing. Come, join us, bring your fishing poles.

Resources

1. www.freegaza.org

2. Contact : friends@freegaza.org

Defending Israel from democracy

2007-06-05T21:58:00.000-02:00

By Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7001.shtml

The second Palestinian intifada has been crushed. The
700km wall is sealing the occupied population of the West
Bank into a series of prisons. The "demographic timebomb"
-- the fear that Palestinians, through higher birth rates,
will soon outnumber Jews in the Holy Land and that
Israel's continuing rule over them risks being compared to
apartheid -- has been safely defused through the
disengagment from Gaza and its 1.4 million inhabitants. On
the fortieth anniversary of Israel's occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza, Israel's security establishment is
quietly satisfied with its successes.

But like a shark whose physiology requires that, to stay
alive, it never sleeps or stops moving, Israel must remain
restless, constantly reinventing itself and its policies
to ensure its ethnic project does not lose legitimacy,
even as it devours the Palestinian homeland. By keeping a
step ahead of the analysts and worldwide opinion, Israel
creates facts on the ground that cement its supremacist
and expansionist agenda.

So, with these achievements under its belt, where next for
the Jewish state?

I have been arguing for some time that Israel's ultimate
goal is to create an ethnic fortress, a Jewish space in
expanded borders from which all Palestinians -- including
its 1.2 million Palestinian citizens -- will be excluded.
That was the purpose of the Gaza disengagement and it is
also the point of the wall snaking through the West Bank,
effectively annexing to Israel what little is left of a
potential Palestinian state.

It should therefore be no surprise that we are witnessing
the first moves in Israel's next phase of conquest of the
Palestinians. With the 3.7 million Palestinians in the
occupied territories caged inside their ghettos, unable to
protest their treatment behind fences and walls, the turn
has come of Israel's Palestinian citizens.

These citizens, today nearly a fifth of Israel's
population, are the legacy of an oversight by the
country's Jewish leaders during the ethnic cleansing
campaign of the 1948 war. Ever since Israel has been
pondering what to do with them. There was a brief debate
in the state's first years about whether they should be
converted to Judaism and assimilated, or whether they
should be marginalised and eventually expelled. The latter
view, favoured by the country's first prime minister,
David Ben Gurion, dominated. The question has been when
and how to do the deed.

The time now finally appears to be upon us, and the
crushing of these more than one million unwanted citizens
currently inside the walls of the fortress -- the
Achilles' heel of the Jewish state -- is likely to be just
as ruthless as that of the Palestinians under occupation.

In my recent book Blood and Religion, I charted the
preparations for this crackdown. Israel has been secretly
devising a land swap scheme that would force up to a
quarter of a million Palestinian citizens (but hardly any
territory) into the Palestinian ghetoes being crafted next
door -- in return Israel will annex swaths of the West
Bank on which the illegal Jewish settlements sit. The
Bedouin in the Negev are being reclassified as trespassers
on state land so that they can be treated as guest workers
rather than citizens. And lawyers in the Justice Ministry
are toiling over a loyalty scheme to deal with the
remaining Palestinians: pledge an oath to Israel as a
Jewish and democratic state (that is, one in which you are
not wanted) or face being stripped of your rights and
possibly expelled.

There will be no resistance to these moves from Israel's
Jewish public. Opinion polls consistently show that
two-thirds of Israeli Jews support "transfer" of the
country's Palestinian population. With a veneer of
legality added to the ethnic cleansing, the Jewish
consensus will be almost complete.

But these measures cannot be implemented until an
important first battle has been waged and won in the
Knesset, the Israeli parliament. One of Israel's gurus of
the so-called "demographic threat", Arnon Sofer, a
professor at Haifa University, has explained the problem
posed by the presence of a growing number of Palestinian
voters: "In their hands lies the power to determine the
right of return [of Palestinian refugees] or to decide who
is a Jew ... In another few years, they will be able to
decide whether the state of Israel should continue to be a
Jewish-Zionist state."

The warning signs about how Israel might defend itself
from this "threat" have been clear for some time. In
Silencing Dissent, a report published in 2002 by the Human
Rights Association based in Nazareth, the treatment of
Israel's 10 Palestinian Knesset members was documented:
over the previous two years, nine had been assaulted by
the security services, some on several occasions, and
seven hospitalised. The report also found that the state
had launched 25 investigations of the 10 MKs in the same
period.

All this abuse was reserved for the representatives of a
community the Israeli general Moshe Dayan once referred to
as "the quietest minority in the world".

But the state's violence towards, and intimidation of,
Palestinian Knesset members -- until now largely the
reflex actions of officials offended by the presence of
legislators refusing to bow before the principles of
Zionism and privileges for Jews -- is entering a new, more
dangerous phase.

The problem for Israel is that for the past two decades
Palestinian legislators have been entering the Knesset not
as members of Zionist parties, as was the case for many
decades, but as representatives of independent Palestinian
parties. (A state claiming to be Jewish and democratic has
to make some concessions to its own propaganda, after
all.)

The result has been the emergence of an unexpected
political platform: the demand for Israel's constitutional
reform. Palestinian political parties have been calling
for Israel's transformation from a Jewish state into a
"state of all its citizens" -- or what the rest of us
would call a liberal democracy.

The figurehead for this political struggle has been the
legislator Azmi Bishara. A former philosophy professor,
Bishara has been running rings around Jewish politicians
in the Knesset for more than a decade, as well as exposing
to outsiders the sham of Israel's self-definition as a
"Jewish and democratic" state.

Even more worryingly he has also been making an
increasingly convincing case to his constituency of 1.2
million Palestinian citizens that, rather than challenging
the hundreds of forms of discrimination they face one law
at a time, they should confront the system that props up
the discrimination: the Jewish state itself. He has
started to persuade a growing number that they will never
enjoy equality with Jews as long as they live in ethnic
state.

Bishara's campaign for a state of all its citizens has
faced an uphill struggle. Palestinian citizens spent the
first two decades after Israel's creation living under
martial law, a time during which their identity, history
and memories were all but crushed. Even today the minority
has no control over its educational curriculum, which is
set by officials charged with promoting Zionism, and its
schools are effectively run by the secret police, the Shin
Bet, through a network of collaborators among the teachers
and pupils.

Given this climate, it may not be surprising that in a
recent poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute 75
per cent of Palestinian citizens said they would support
the drafting of a constitution defining Israel as a Jewish
and democratic state (Israel currently has no
constitution). Interestingly, however, what concerned
commentators was the survey's small print: only a third of
the respondents felt strongly about their position
compared to more than half of those questioned in a
similar survey three years ago. Also, 72 per cent of
Palestinian citizens believed the principle of "equality"
should be prominently featured in such a constitution.

These shifts of opinion are at least partly a result of
Bishara's political work. He has been trying to persuade
Israel's Palestinian minority -- most of whom, whatever
the spin tells us, have had little practical experience of
participating in a democracy other than casting a vote --
that it is impossible for a Jewish state to enshrine
equality in its laws. Israel's nearest thing to a Bill of
Rights, the Basic Law on Freedom and Human Dignity,
intentionally does not mention equality anywhere in its
text.

It is in this light that the news about Bishara that broke
in late April should be read. While he was abroad with his
family, the Shin Bet announced that he would face charges
of treason on his return. Under emergency regulations --
renewed by the Knesset yet again last week, and which have
now been in operation for nearly 60 years -- he could be
executed if found guilty. Bishara so far has chosen not to
return.

Coverage of the Bishara case has concentrated on the two
main charges against him, which are only vaguely known as
the security services have been trying to prevent
disclosure of their evidence with a gagging order. The
first accusation -- for the consumption of Israel's Jewish
population -- is that Bishara actively helped Hizbullah in
its targeting of Israeli communities in the north during
the war against Lebanon last summer.

The Shin Bet claims this after months of listening in on
his phone conversations -- made possible by a change in
the law in 2005 that allows the security services to bug
legislators' phones. The other Palestinian MKs suspect
they are being subjected to the same eavesdropping after
the Attorney-General Mechahem Mazuz failed to respond to a
question from one, Taleb a-Sana, on whether the Shin Bet
was using this practice more widely.

Few informed observers, however, take this allegation
seriously. An editorial in Israel's leading newspaper
Haaretz compared Bishara's case to that of the Israeli
Jewish dissident Tali Fahima, who was jailed on trumped-up
charges that she translated a military plan, a piece of
paper dropped by the army in the Jenin refugee camp, on
behalf of a Palestinian militant, Zacharia Zbeidi, even
though it was widely known that Zbeidi was himself fluent
in Hebrew.

The editorial noted that it seemed likely the charge of
treason against Bishara "will turn out to be a tendentious
exaggeration of his telephone conversations and meetings
with Lebanese and Syrian nationals, and possibly also of
his expressions of support for their military activities.
It seems very doubtful that MK Bishara even has access to
defense-related secrets that he could sell to the enemy,
and like in the Fahima case, the fact that he identified
with the enemy during wartime appears to be what fueled
the desire to seek and find an excuse for bringing him to
trial."

Such doubts were reinforced by reports in the Israeli
media that the charge of treason was based on claims that
Bishara had helped Hizbullah conduct "psychological
warfare through the media".

The other allegation made by the secret police has a
different target audience. The Shin Bet claims that
Bishara laundered money from terrorist organisations. The
implication, though the specifics are unclear, is that
Bishara both helped fund terror and that he squirrelled
some of the money away, possibly hundreds of thousands of
dollars, presumably for his own benefit. This is supposed
to discredit him with his own constituency of Palestinian
citizens.

It should be noted that none of this money has been found
in extensive searches of Bishara's home and office, and
the evidence is based on testimony from a far from
reliable source: a family of money-changers in East
Jerusalem.

This second charge closely resembles the allegations faced
by the only other Palestinian of national prominence in
Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement
and a spiritual leader of the Palestinian minority. He was
arrested in 2003, originally on charges that he laundered
money for the armed wing of Hamas, helping them buy guns
and bombs.

As with Bishara, the Shin Bet had been bugging Salah's
every phone call for many months and had supposedly
accumulated mountains of evidence against him. Salah spent
more than two years in jail, the judges repeatedly
accepting the Shin Bet's advice that his requests for bail
be refused, as this secret evidence was studied in minute
detail at his lengthy trial. In the closing stages, as it
became clear that the Shin Bet's case was evaporating, the
prosecution announced a plea bargain. Salah agreed
(possibly unwisely, but understandably after two years in
jail) to admit minor charges of financial impropriety in
return for his release.

To this day, Salah does not know what he did wrong. His
organisation had funded social programmes for orphans,
students and widows in the occupied territories and had
submitted its accounts to the security services for
approval. In a recent interview, Salah observed that in
the new reality he and his party had discovered that it
was "as if helping orphans, sick persons, widows and
students had now become illegal activities in support of
terrorism".

Why was Salah targeted? In the same interview, he noted
that shortly before his arrest the prime minister of the
day, Ariel Sharon, had called for the outlawing of the
Islamic Movement, whose popularity was greatly concerning
the security establishment. Sharon was worried by what he
regarded as Salah's interference in Israel's crushing of
Palestinian nationalism.

Sharon's concern was two-fold: the Islamic Movement was
raising funds for welfare organisations in the occupied
territories at the very moment Israel was trying to
isolate and starve the Palestinian population there; and
Salah's main campaign, "al-Aqsa is in danger", was
successfully rallying Palestinians inside Israel to visit
the mosques of the Noble Sanctuary in the Old City of
Jersualem, the most important symbols of a future
Palestinian state.

Salah believed that responsibility fell to Palestinians
inside Israel to protect these holy places as Israel's
closure policies and its checkpoints were preventing
Muslims in the occupied territories from reaching them.
Salah also suspected that Israel was using the exclusion
of Palestinians under occupation from East Jerusalem to
assert its own claims to sovereignty over the site, known
to Jews as Temple Mount. This was where Sharon had made
his inflammatory visit backed by 1,000 armed guards that
triggered the intifada; and it was control of the Temple
Mount, much longed for by his predecessor, Ehud Barak,
that "blew up" the Camp David negotiations, as one of
Barak's advisers later noted. Salah had become a nuisance,
an obstacle to Israel realising its goals in East
Jersualem and possibly in the intifada, and needed to be
neutralised

Salah had become a nuisance, an obstacle to Israel
realising its goals in East Jersualem and possibly in the
intifada, and needed to be neutralised. The trial removed
him from the scene at a key moment when he might have been
able to make a difference.

That now is the fate of Bishara.

Indications that the Shin Bet wanted Bishara's scalp over
his campaign for Israel's reform to a state of all its
citizens can be dated back to at least the start of the
second intifada in 2000. That was when, as Israel prepared
for a coming general election, the departing head of the
Shin Bet observed: "Bishara does not recognise the right
of the Jewish people to a state and he has crossed the
line. The decision to disqualify him [from standing for
election] has been submitted to the Attorney General." Who
expressed that view? None other than Ami Ayalon, currently
contesting the leadership of the Labor party and hoping to
become the official head of Israel's peace camp.

In the meantime, Bishara has been put on trial twice
(unnoticed the charges later fizzled out); he has been
called in for police interrogations on a regular basis; he
has been warned by a state commission of inquiry; and the
laws concerning Knesset immunity and travel to foreign
states have been changed specifically to prevent Bishara
from fulfilling his parliamentary duties.

True to Ayalon's advice, Bishara and his political party,
the National Democratic Assembly (NDA), were disqualified
by the Central Elections Committee during the 2003
elections. The committee cited the "expert" opinion of the
Shin Bet: "It is our opinion that the inclusion of the NDA
in the Knesset has increased the threat inherent in the
party. Evidence of this can also be found in the
ideological progress from the margins of Arab society
(such as a limited circle of intellectuals who dealt with
these ideas theoretically) to center stage. Today these
ideas [concerning a state of all its citizens] have a
discernible effect on the content of political discourse
and on the public 'agenda' of the Arab sector."

But on this occasion the Shin Bet failed to get its way.
Bishara's disqualification was overturned on appeal by a
narrow majority of the Supreme Court's justices.

The Shin Bet's fears of Bishara resurfaced with a
vengeance in March this year, when the Ma'ariv newspaper
reported on a closed meeting between the Prime Minister,
Ehud Olmert, and senior Shin Bet officials "concerning the
issue of the Arab minority in Israel, the extent of its
steadily decreasing identification with the State and the
rise of subversive elements".

Ma'ariv quoted the assessment of the Shin Bet:
"Particularly disturbing is the growing phenomenon of
'visionary documents' among the various elites of Israeli
Arabs. At this time, there are four different visionary
documents sharing the perception of Israel as a state of
all citizens and not as a Jewish state. The isolationist
and subversive aims presented by the elites might
determine a direction that will win over the masses."

In other words, the secret police were worried that the
influence of Bishara's political platform was spreading.
The proof was to be found in the four recent documents
cited by the Shin Bet and published by very diffrerent
groups: the Democratic Constitution by the Adalah legal
centre; the Ten Points by the Mossawa political lobbying
group; the Future Vision by the traditionally conservative
political body comprising mostly mayors known as the High
Follow-Up Committee; and the Haifa Declaration, overseen
by a group of academics known as Mada.

What all these documents share in common is two
assumptions: first, that existing solutions to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict are based on two states and
that in such an arrangement the Palestinian minority will
continue living inside Israel as citizens; and second,
that reforms of Israel are needed if the state is to
realise equality for all citizens, as promised in its
Declaration of Independence.

Nothing too subversive there, one would have thought. But
that was not the view of the Shin Bet.

Following the report in Ma'ariv, the editor of a weekly
Arab newspaper wrote to the Shin Bet asking for more
information. Did the Shin Bet's policy not constitute an
undemocratic attempt to silence the Palestinian minority
and its leaders, he asked. A reply from the Shin Bet was
not long in coming. The secret police had a responsibility
to guard Israel "against subversive threats", it was
noted. "By virtue of this responsibility, the Shin Bet is
required to thwart subversive activity by elements who
wish to harm the nature of the State of Israel as a
democratic Jewish State -- even if they act by means of
democratically provided tools -- by virtue of the
principle of 'defensive democracy'."

Questioned by Israeli legal groups about this policy when
it became public, the head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin,
wrote a letter clarifying what he meant. Israel had to be
protected from anyone "seeking to change the state's basic
principles while abolishing its democratic character or
its Jewish character". He was basing his opinion on a law
passed in 2002 that charges the Shin Bet with safeguarding
the country from "threats of terror, sabotage,
subversion".

In other words, in the view of the Shin Bet, a Jewish and
democratic state is democratic only if you are a Jew or a
Zionist. If you try to use Israel's supposed democracy to
challenge the privileges reserved for Jews inside a Jewish
state, that same state is entitled to defend itself
against you.

The extension in the future of this principle from Bishara
to the other Palestinian MKs and then on to the wider
Palestinian community inside Israel should not be doubted.
In the wake of the Bishara case, Israel Hasson, a former
deputy director of the Shin Bet and now a right-wing
Knesset member, described Israel's struggle against its
Palestinian citizens as "a second War of Independence" --
the war in 1948 that founded Israel by cleansing it of 80
per cent of its Palestinians.

The Shin Bet is not, admittedly, a democratic institution,
even if it is operating in a supposedly democratic
environment. So how do the state's more accountable
officials view the Shin Bet's position? Diskin's reply had
a covering letter from Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz,
the country's most senior legal officer. Mazuz wrote: "The
letter of the Shin Bet director was written in
coordination with the attorney general and with his
agreement, and the stance detailed in it is acceptable to
the attorney general."

So now we know. As Israel's Palestinian politicians have
long been claiming, a Jewish and democratic state is
intended as a democracy for Jews only. No one else is
allowed a say -- or even an opinion.

Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, is
the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the
Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto Press, 2006). His
website is www.jkcook.net.

Dispossession and Humiliation

2007-06-04T22:13:00.001-02:00

Four Decades of Occupation

By ZALI KHOURI

"I don't know what I would do if my daughter had to go through that humiliation." A U.S. congressman said those words to me while watching Qalandia checkpoint, the key Israeli roadblock between occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. As we mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 war and Israel's military occupation of Palestinian territory, his comment is particularly poignant. As both a Palestinian and an American, I wonder what my fellow Americans would do if they lived for 40 years with every aspect of their lives controlled by a foreign army, or what members of Congress would do if they had to pass through an occupier's checkpoint on Capitol Hill.

In 1995, I worked with other Palestinians to launch the Coca-Cola franchise in the West Bank and Gaza. I am one of many Palestinian-American businessmen who invested after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. They were supposed to have ended the occupation and led to the formation of an independent and economically viable Palestinian state. We were determined to create jobs and build businesses that would bring Palestinians hope for a free and prosperous future. Instead, the occupation has become more entrenched. And we see the toll it takes on the new generation of Palestinians every man, woman and child under the age of 40 who has not known a day of freedom in his or her lifetime.

Israel is the leading foreign destination for privately sponsored congressional trips. Yet while the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is one of our most critical foreign policy issues, few members of Congress visit the occupied Palestinian territories. I tell those who do that a trip through Qalandia checkpoint will show them most of what they need to know.

The checkpoint is a microcosm of the Palestinian experience. More than 500 Israeli checkpoints are scattered throughout the West Bank, which is roughly the size of Delaware. Palestinian students wait at checkpoints, sometimes for hours, to get to school. Others wait years to visit their parents in Gaza while studying in the West Bank. Laborers wait to get to work, mothers to the grocery store, and doctors to the hospital. With a wave of a soldier's hand, they might pass through and make it to their final exam or to the hospital in time to deliver a healthy baby. Just as easily, the soldier can stop them. Hours at a checkpoint can mean missing an exam or losing a baby to a miscarriage.

Israel's military occupation similarly blocks the economic, political and social potential of Palestine. Like all people, when allowed to live in freedom, Palestinians have thrived. Economic development in the oil-rich Arabian Gulf countries was largely driven by Palestinians. Palestinian-Americans are accomplished businesspeople, educators and artists. But in their homeland, the military occupation hems Palestinians in, limits their horizons and stifles their potential. Is this in Israel's best interest?

For 40 years, America has called on Israel to end the occupation. There is international consensus that the creation of an independent Palestinian state would bring peace and stability to the region. Yet the occupation and relentless building of new Israeli settlements continues unabated. Consecutive American administrations have agreed that settlements are illegal. Still, at least 20,000 new Jewish settlers moved into the West Bank last year alone. And the prospects for an independent Palestinian state darken.

A viable state cannot be built on a ruined economy. Various agreements beginning with the Oslo Accords and most recently the November 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access required the free movement of people and goods within the Palestinian territory. Yet, according to a recent World Bank report, Israeli restrictions leave more than 50 percent of the West Bank off limits to Palestinians while the movement of Israeli settlers living there illegally remains relatively unhindered. We can spend hours at Qalandia and the many other checkpoints, while Israeli settlers speed by on Israeli-only roads.

The World Bank notes that these restrictions "create such a high level of uncertainty and inefficiency that the normal conduct of business becomes exceedingly difficult and stymies the growth and investment which is necessary to fuel economic revival." I know this firsthand. Today Coca-Cola employs hundreds of Palestinians. Yet, it is virtually impossible to compete fairly when my goods and my employees cannot move freely, even within our own community.

American interests suffer, too. Our credibility is damaged when Israel ignores U.S.-brokered agreements, yet remains the beneficiary of unparalleled American financial and diplomatic support. American peacemaking efforts are premised on the notion that a better future is possible, a future where both Palestinians and Israelis live in peace, freedom and dignity. On this anniversary of the 1967 war, the United States should fully engage and commit to winning the war of peace. The first step is for the occupation to end. Surely 40 years has been too long.

Zali Khouri is CEO of the Palestinian National Beverage Co. and a board member of the Palestinian Development Investment Co. He is chairman of the Palestine International Business Forum and chairs the largest Palestinian NGO, the NGO Development Center, in association with the World Bank.

Black Like Me Podcast Available!

2007-06-02T20:05:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, the historic relationship that has existed between the African American and Jewish communities has been well documented. But what about the relationship between Blacks and Arabs, and in particular Palestinians? Today we'll examine this alliance and speak with author and lecturer Alex Lubin and Dr. Charles Mock.

Also this week we'll get an update on the ongoing crisis in the Nahr El-Bared refugee camp.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia abu-Jamal and The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent news Service.

It's better to be orphans

2007-05-27T11:35:00.000-02:00

By Gideon Levy

Once again we are being hit by a wave of desire for "a strong man."
From every direction, from the left and right, voices that miss former
prime minister Ariel Sharon are being heard, like voices of longing for
a father who has departed. "If Sharon were here the war in Lebanon
would have ended differently," and "Sharon would have put an end to the
Qassams a long time ago."

Let it be said at once: Being orphaned in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's
shadow is better than the fatherliness of the mythical leader. Hamas
should be profoundly grateful to Sharon, thanks to whom it now controls
Gaza. Hezbollah, too, would be ungrateful if it did not thank the man
who led to its firm footing in Lebanon, and here in Israel Sderot owes
that man for the Qassams that are landing on its head. Those who now
miss Sharon are longing for the brute force and bullying that led us to
the brink. Israel is nostalgic for its most dangerous leader, for the
person who caused it more damage than anyone else.

During his six years as prime minister Sharon wiped out the last chance for the
existence of a Palestinian partner. Sharon's Israel waged war on the
Palestinian Liberation Organization, and instead of a secular movement
that believes in compromises we received a fanatical Islamic
leadership, just as the first Lebanon war gave rise to Hezbollah. Whom
do we have to thank for this? Sharon.

Under Sharon's leadership the Israel Defense Forces destroyed all the institutions of
the new and fragile Palestinian regime, from the police headquarters in
various places to the welfare offices. As for Yasser Arafat, the only
person who was able to forge a historic compromise, we eliminated him
as a leader, and no one in Israel asked what would rise on the ruins of
the PLO and who would come after Arafat. We have locked up Marwan
Barghouti, a promising potential leader, for many years, together with
a long list of political activists who talked about peace. We have also
denied Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, the most moderate of the
Palestinian leaders, any chance of gaining control, and we are not
letting him present even the slightest achievement to his suffering
citizenry.

Sharon is responsible for all of this. Under him,
Israel spoke only the language of force, and of military and
engineering operations, from Defensive Shield to the separation fence.
After that, Sharon landed the much-praised disengagement on us. While
ignoring in a racist and lordly way the existence of the Palestinian
people in the Gaza Strip, which has its needs and desires, and ignoring
its leadership, Sharon pulled the IDF and Jewish settlements out of
Gaza without any agreement or hope for the future, only to allow Israel
to continue to control the West Bank. We destroyed everything and we
left the Gaza Strip behind lock and bolt, imprisoned as it had never
been before.

And it is no wonder that imprisoned and hungry
people, who have no exit, have turned to anarchy and violence. The
experiment with humans has succeeded: They have indeed begun to run
amok in their huge cage. Hamas came into power - this too was no
surprise - and the world imposed a cruel economic boycott on the
Palestinian Authority, with Israel's encouragement, even when the unity
government arose. The civil war and the Qassams were not long in
coming. These are just the appetizer. And what did we expect? And what
did Sharon intend when he replaced one occupation with another?

If, heaven forbid, Sharon were now in a position of leadership, the IDF
would already have invaded Gaza, just as it invaded Jenin and Nablus
and sowed killing and destruction there. The firing of the Qassams
might have ceased for a while, just as has happened with the terror
attacks from the West Bank. But on the ruins, reinforced by poverty and
despair, a new form of violent resistance would have arisen. Sharon, a
real man, would also have totally destroyed the last remnants of the
Palestinian unity government, and even then no one would have asked
what would come in its stead. It isn't that we aren't acting like
bullies now as well, kidnapping an education minister in the middle of
the night and bombing money changers. But Olmert has refrained from
going all the way in Sharon's path. How pleasant it is, relatively and
temporarily, to be orphans in his lap.

Lost in Lebanon Podcast Available!

2007-05-26T12:23:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, conservative estimates put the number of dead and injured at well over 100 in he Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli; thousands are fleeing their homes, and a humanitarian crisis that already is unbearable grows worse. Today we’ll get two reports on the current crisis in Lebanon.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia abu-Jamal and The War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service.

Twilight Zone / Cry, the beloved country

2007-05-26T12:22:00.001-02:00

By Gideon Levy

PRETORIA, South Africa - It was like being in the movies. Only there
would you see an inert photo suddenly come to life. We were standing at
the memorial museum in Soweto, next to a photo of a dead boy with other
children around him, and our guide Antoinette was telling us about it.
Antoinette said that the young girl in the picture was her.

The
photo is at the entrance of the museum, built to commemorate the
blacks' struggle against apartheid, which began here. Across the way is
Nelson Mandela's tiny hut, nearby is the house of Desmond Tutu and down
the street is the present home of Winnie Mandela.

The picture
was stunningly familiar to us. We were four: MK Ran Cohen (Meretz);
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations; Diana
Buttu, a former legal advisor to the PLO; and myself. We were all
making the same associations: Hector is Mohammed al-Dura; the white
soldiers shooting at children are us.

The passage of time was
evident with Antoinette. The teenager in the picture was now a woman in
her late forties. Her brother would have been 44, but a bullet from the
rifle of a white policeman deprived him of the chance to witness the
miracle of how the cruel racist regime collapsed.

It was
another UN conference about peace with the Palestinians, but this time
it was being held in a particularly "loaded" location. We were only two
Israelis there, but the calling cards I collected were quite varied:
Arab and African ambassadors, the previous Egyptian foreign minister,
representatives of Muslim countries and diplomats posted in Pretoria.
The Syrian ambassador smiled and did not offer his card; the Libyan
ambassador did the same. But they listened to us attentively.

The
new regime has been good for South Africa; no Palestinian refugee camp
looks nearly as attractive as Soweto 2007. But not far away is a
shantytown called Alexandra and the sights there are worse than in any
Palestinian refugee camp we've seen. This is where South African blacks
who haven't been able to pull themselves out of poverty live, together
with refugees from neighboring Zimbabwe.

Less than a kilometer
separates the impoverished Alexandra from a fancy Johannesburg
neighborhood called Sandton. There, behind the electric fences and
personal bodyguards, hide the city's wealthy - many of them Jews and a
good number former Israelis. On Shabbat we ate cholent. On Friday night
we dined with a former Israeli from Nahalal. We drove to Alexandra with
a guy who originally hails from Tivon, who has been here for 30 years
and owns a huge agricultural enterprise that employs 1,800 black
workers earning $2 an hour.

It's impossible not to admire what has occurred in this battered land since the yoke
of white tyranny was lifted.

Not in his name

At
the conference luncheon, Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's minister for
intelligence services, hurried over to grab a seat next to us. Kasrils,
a Jew, had never been to Israel (where he has relatives) until his
visit to the territories earlier in the month, when he invited
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to his country. He then made
his first, quick trip to Tel Aviv, saw Rabin Square and ate fish in
Jaffa. "It was the most pleasant evening I had," he acknowledges.

Tom
Segev once wrote that he is "a guy I wouldn't choose to be stuck in an
elevator with," but I would be glad to get stuck with Ronnie Kasrils,
inside or outside an elevator. He is a Jew in conflict with his people,
perhaps also with his identity - a courageous freedom fighter and
communist, who joined the oppressed race in its struggle, was exiled
from his country for 27 years and is now a minister.

A son of
Lithuanian Jews, who had a bar mitzvah and belonged to Jewish youth
movements, Kasrils is one of the most fascinating characters to come
out of the local Jewish community - which now thoroughly denounces him.
He brandishes his Jewishness openly, perhaps defiantly, even when he
recently made an official visit to Iran and Syria. He once founded a
movement called "Not in My Name," to underscore his disassociation from
the injustices committed by Israel in the territories. Ronnie Kasrils
hates the Israeli occupation.

When we talked he said the
Israeli occupation is worse than apartheid: The whites never shelled
the black neighborhoods with tanks and artillery.

Just like the pogroms

If
this warm, outgoing 69-year-old has any personal security protection,
it is invisible. We sat in a vacant room in a building on the
University of Pretoria campus and talked. "You're an Israeli and I'm a
South African," he emphasized immediately, as if to negate any common
identity. "I'm confident that the circle will be closed one day and
people will understand that I'm not anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli ... It
really pains me as a Jew that in this country such hostility has
developed toward Israel, because of its treatment of the Palestinians
...

"When we saw on television the drama going on in your
country, the oppressive pictures of the methods you use toward the
Palestinians, the uprooting of trees, the tanks entering Jenin, and the
old woman weeping over the demolition of her house and crying 'The
Jews, the Jews' - it's just like what my grandmother used to tell me
about the pogroms: The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks are coming.
I'm trying to say: It's not the Jews, it's Zionisms that's doing this.
So I decided to get up and say something. I found this in the Jewish
tradition: to open your mouth, in the name of conscience.

"The
man who greeted me when I returned to South Africa after the years of
exile was Rabbi Cyril Harris ... He gave me a red skullcap with a
dedication: to the freedom fighter. When I started to express criticism
of Israel, I thought that the Jews would denounce Ariel Sharon, but
then I found out that I was naive. I was stunned to see that the Jewish
community here didn't care who was in power in Israel and how extreme
the policy was against the Palestinians ... They would blindly support
any government. Rabbi Harris became my enemy. He called me a fringe Jew
and my response was: We were the only ones who stood up against
apartheid and now we're the minority against the injustice.

"When
I visited the territories I also passed through Israel and I saw the
forests that cover the remnants of the Palestinian villages. As a
former forestry minister, this was especially striking to me. I also
went into a few settlements. It was insane. Young Americans spat on the
flag that was on my car. The occupation reminds me of the darkest days
of apartheid, but we never saw tanks and planes firing at a civilian
population. It's a monstrousness I'd never seen before. The wall you
built, the checkpoints and the roads for Jews only - it turns the
stomach, even for someone who grew up under apartheid. It's a hundred
times worse.

"We know from our experience that oppression
motivates resistance and that the more savage the oppression, the
harsher the resistance. At a certain point in time you think that the
oppression is working, and that you're controlling the other people,
imprisoning its leaders and its activists, but the resistance will
triumph in the end.

"We saw the entrance to Qalqilyah, the
wall, the people standing hours in line at the checkpoints. It's a
beautiful country, I love its landscapes, but I know that it's big
enough to contain more people. Israel has developed very impressively,
but how much more impressive it would be if you brought about a just
solution ... I don't care if it's two states or one - it's up to you,
the Israelis and the Palestinians, to decide.

"I had coffee
with the commander of the Erez checkpoint. It reminded me of the
central prison in Pretoria, a place I've visited many times. And it was
so awful to go through this thing in order to get to Gaza. At first I
said that I don't want to speak with the man at the checkpoint, but
then I decided that was foolish. The Israelis were actually very nice
to me.

"What is Zionism to me? When I was 10 years old, it
meant security and a national home for the Jews. I waved the Israeli
flag at my bar mitzvah and I was very proud of my Judaism. The first
book I received for my bar mitzvah was 'The Revolt,' by Menachem Begin.
My biggest hero was Asher Ginsberg, Ahad Ha'am ... Later on I started
reading not only Herzl, but also [historians] Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris
and Tom Segev, and I came to see 1948 in a different light. I
understood that it was an ethnic cleansing.

"South Africa
changed me and strengthened my South African identity. And then I began
to understand that the main problem of Zionism is the exclusivity of
the establishment of a national home and the concept of the chosen
people. Very soon I started to oppose it. The establishment of a
national home for Jews alone seemed to me like a parallel of apartheid.
The apartheid leaders also spoke about a chosen people. In 1961, prime
minister Hendrik Verwoerd said that Israel is like South Africa. That
opened my eyes. For many years we were also aware of the military
cooperation between Israel and South Africa - a joint offensive naval
force, missile boats, the Cheetah planes and the big secret of the
nuclear weapons. Prime minister Johannes Vorster, who had a declared
Nazi past, received a hero's welcome from you. This added to my
feelings regarding Israel.

"I am very conscious of the
Holocaust and of anti-Semitism, but my experience here leads me to one
conclusion: that all forms of racism must be fought by means of a
common struggle. I have a dream: That you will change your outlook, as
happened here, and that change will come. When politicians reach
agreements, it's amazing how fast ordinary folks can come to a change
in thinking. Change the leadership and the economic conditions and
you'll see how easy the change is."

Palestinian Pinochet Making His Move?

2007-05-21T16:20:00.000-02:00

By Tony Karon

15 May 2007

There's something a little misleading in the media reports
that routinely describe the fighting in Gaza as pitting Hamas
against Fatah forces or security personnel "loyal to President
Mahmoud Abbas." That characterization suggests somehow that
this catastrophic civil war that has killed more than 25
Palestinians since Sunday is a showdown between Abbas and the
Hamas leadership -- which simply isn't true, although such a
showdown would certainly conform to the desires of those
running the White House Middle East policy.

The Fatah gunmen who are reported to have initiated the
breakdown of the Palestinian unity government and provoked the
latest fighting may profess fealty to President Abbas, but
it's not from him that they get their orders. The leader to
whom they answer is Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza warlord who has
long been Washington's anointed favorite to play the role of a
Palestinian Pinochet. And while Dahlan is formally subordinate
to Abbas, whom he supposedly serves as National Security
Adviser, nobody believes that Dahlan answers to Abbas -- in
fact, it was suggested at the time that Abbas appointed Dahlan
only under pressure from Washington, which was irked by the
Palestinian Authority president's decision to join a unity
government with Hamas.

If Dahlan takes orders from anyone at all, it's certainly not
from Abbas. Abbas has long recognized the democratic
legitimacy and popularity of Hamas, and embraced the reality
that no peace process is possible unless the Islamists are
given the place in the Palestinian power structure that their
popular support necessitates. He has always favored
negotiation and cooperation with Hamas -- much to the
exasperation of the Bush Administration, and also of the Fatah
warlords whose power of patronage was threatened by the Hamas
election victory -- and could see the logic of the unity
government proposed by the Saudis even when Washington
couldn't. Indeed, as the indispensable Robert Malley and
Hussein Agha note, nothing has hurt Abbas's political standing
as much as the misguided efforts of Washington to boost his
standing in the hope of undermining the elected Hamas
government.

Needless to say, only an Administration as deluded about its
ability to reorder Arab political realities in line with its
own fantasies -- and also, frankly, as utterly contemptuous of
Arab life and of Arab democracy, empty sloganizing
notwithstanding -- as the current one has proved to be could
imagine that the Palestinians could be starved, battered and
manipulated into choosing a Washington-approved political
leadership. Yet, that's exactly what the U.S. has attempted to
do ever since Hamas won the last Palestinian election,
imposing a financial and economic chokehold on an already
distressed population, pouring money and arms into the forces
under Dahlan's control, and eventually adapting itself to
funnel monies only through Abbas, as if casting in him in the
role of a kind of Quisling-provider would somehow burnish his
appeal among Palestinian voters. (As I said, their contempt
for Arab intelligence knows no bounds. )

But while the hapless Abbas is little more than a reluctant
passenger in Washington's strategy -- and will, I still
believe, repair to his former exile lodgings in Qatar in the
not too distant future -- Mohammed Dahlan is its point man, the
warlord who commands the troops and who has been spoiling for
a fight with Hamas since they had the temerity to trounce his
organization at the polls on home turf.

Dahlan's ambitions clearly coincided with plans drawn up by
White House Middle East policy chief, Elliot Abrams -- a
veteran of the Reagan Administration's Central American dirty
wars -- to arm and train Fatah loyalists to prepare them to
topple the Hamas government. If Mahmoud Abbas has been
reluctant to embrace the confrontational policy promoted by
the White House, Dahlan has no such qualms. And given that
Abbas has no political base of his own, he is dependent
entirely on Washington and Dahlan.

Seeing the disastrous implications of the U.S. policy, the
Saudis appeared to have put the kibosh on Abrams' coup plan by
drawing Abbas into a unity government with Hamas. And as Mark
Perry at Conflict Forum detailed in an excellent analysis
Dahlan was just about the only thing that the U.S. had going
for it in terms of resisting the move towards a unity
government. Although his fretting and sulking in Mecca
couldn't prevent the deal, the U.S. appears to have helped him
fight back afterwards by ensuring that he was appointed
national security adviser, a move calculated to provoke Hamas,
whose leaders tend to view Dahlan as little more than a
torturer and a de facto enforcer for Israel.

But Dahlan appears to have made his move when it came to
integrating the Palestinian Authority security forces
(currently dominated by Fatah) by drawing in Hamas fighters
and subjecting the forces to the control of a politically
neutral interior minister. Dahlan simply refused, and set off
the current confrontations by ordering his men out onto the
street last weekend without any authorization from the
government of which he is supposedly a part.

The new provocation appears consistent with a revised U.S.
plan, reported on by Mark Perry and Paul Woodward, that
emphasized the urgency of toppling the unity government. They
suggest the plan emanates from Abrams, who they say is
operating at cross purposes with Condi Rice's efforts to
appease the Arab moderate regimes by reviving some form of
peace process. They note, for example, that Jewish American
sources have told the Forward and Haaretz that Abrams recently
briefed Jewish Republicans and made clear to them that Rice's
efforts were merely a symbolic exercise aimed at showing Arab
allies that the U.S. was "doing something," but that President
Bush would ensure that nothing would come of them, in the
sense that Israel would not be required to make any
concessions.

Whatever the precise breakdown within the Bush Administration,
it's plain that Dahlan, like Pinochet a quarter century, would
not move onto a path of confrontation with an elected
government unless he believed he had the sanction of powerful
forces abroad to do so. If does move to turn the current
street battle into a frontal assault on the unity government,
chances are it will be because he got a green light from
somewhere -- and certainly not from Mahmoud Abbas.

But the confrontation under way has assumed a momentum of its
own, and it may now be beyond the capability of the
Palestinian leadership as a whole to contain it. If that
proves true, the petulance that has substituted for policy in
the Bush Administration's response to the 2006 Palestinian
election will have succeeded in turning Gaza into Mogadishu.
But it may be too much to expect the Administration capable of
anything different -- after all, they're still busy turning
Mogadishu into Mogadishu all over again.

U.S. pressing Israel to bolster pro-Abbas forces in Gaza

2007-05-20T15:15:00.001-02:00

By Aluf Benn

Haaretz
20 May 2007

The United States is pressing Israel to help bolster security
forces in the Gaza Strip that are loyal to Palestinian
Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Major General Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator,
recently discussed the function of the pro-Abbas Presidential
Guard and National Security forces with senior Israeli
officials.

The Americans believe that strengthening Abbas loyalists and
deploying them in friction points along the north of the strip
and Philadelphi route in Rafah will eventually improve the
security situation.

Western officials who studied the battle near the Karni
crossing last Tuesday concluded, contrary to the IDF's
assessment, that Abbas' forces had performed well despite
their losses and had succeeded in warding off a larger Hamas
force. They found that Hamas had not won a decisive victory in
the battles in the Strip and urged taking steps to strengthen
the pro-Abbas forces.

A 470-strong Presidential Guard force, which had trained in
Egypt, returned to Gaza last Tuesday via the Rafah crossing.
Defense establishment sources said there was no need to
coordinate the force's entry with Israel as the men were
unarmed.

The defense establishment is undecided about helping to
bolster the pro-Abbas forces and enabling Abbas to pay their
wages. Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh is the main
advocate for helping to strengthen the Abbas loyalists.

"The idea is to change the balance, which so far has leaned in
Hamas' favor. Well-trained [pro-Abbas] forces could help tip
the balance," Sneh told The Washington Post.

"We don't give them operative orders, that's Abbas' business,"
he added.

Defense officials rejected the IDF's evaluation that Abbas and
his forces had lost the battle for control of the Gaza Strip
and there was no point in helping them. The officials said the
IDF was prejudiced against Fatah and its troops' capability,
and that their evaluations were not based on a thorough
examination of the battles.

However, there is also a controversy in the U.S. about the
situation in the PA. Senior White House officials say Abbas'
failure to handle the situation and his keeping away from Gaza
reflect his inadequacy.

The IDF believes that Hamas has a considerable advantage over
Fatah in the confrontation with Fatah in the Gaza Strip.
"Hamas men are trained, equipped and more resolved than their
Fatah counterparts, even if the latter outnumber them in
weapons," an IDF source said.

The source said that senior defense officers identified with
Fatah have taken their families out of the Gaza Strip for fear
Hamas would harm them.

The head of the research division of Military Intelligence,
Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz, on Friday told the diplomatic
corps that the Hamas modus operandi in Gaza was identical to
that developed by Hezbollah in South Lebanon. "Hamas is taking
over Fatah and Abbas' properties and equipment that the
international community is bringing into Gaza," he said in an
intelligence briefing at the Dan Hotel.

The Catastrophe Podcast Available!

2007-05-19T14:19:00.001-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, I continue with Pt.2 of my conversation with Israeli academic and activist Ilan Pappe.

Also this week, Professor Norman G. Finkelstein of DePaul University a noted academic scholar on Israel/Palestine, is being attacked by his old nemesis Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School regarding his attempts at tenure at DePaul. I'll speak to attorney Frank Menetrez who published an article regarding the long simmering fued between the two men and the danger of academic freedom on university campuses.

Then later, we'll hear from Aljazeera correspondent Laila el-Haddad about the current situation in the Gaza Strip in light of the 59th anniversary of al-Nakba "The Catastrophe"

And, as always, our weekly commentary by Mumia abu-Jamal.

Fatah Troops Enter Gaza With Israeli Assent

2007-05-19T14:18:00.000-02:00

Hundreds Were Trained in Egypt Under U.S.-Backed Program to
Counter Hamas

By Scott Wilson

The Washington Post
18 May 2007

JERUSALEM, May 17 -- Israel this week allowed the Palestinian
party Fatah to bring into the Gaza Strip as many as 500 fresh
troops trained under a U.S.-coordinated program to counter
Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that won Palestinian
parliamentary elections last year. Fighting between Hamas and
Fatah has left about 45 Palestinians dead since Sunday.

The forces belong to units loyal to the elected Palestinian
Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate Fatah leader
whom the Bush administration and Israel have sought to
strengthen militarily and politically. A spokeswoman for the
European Union Border Assistance Mission at Rafah, where the
fighters crossed into Gaza from Egypt, said their entry
Tuesday was approved by Israel.

The troops' deployment illustrates the increasingly partisan
role that Israel and the Bush administration are taking in the
volatile Palestinian political situation. The effort to
fortify the armed opposition to Hamas, which the United States
and Israel categorize as a terrorist organization, follows
attempts to isolate the radical Islamic movement
internationally and cut off its sources of financial aid.

Israel on Thursday also carried out a series of airstrikes
against Hamas targets across Gaza, killing at least six
gunmen. [Additional airstrikes early Friday killed four
people, doctors in Gaza told the Associated Press.]

Fatah, the movement formerly led by Yasser Arafat, has
recognized Israel, in contrast to Hamas, whose charter calls
for the creation of a future Islamic state across territory
that now includes the Jewish state. The two Palestinian
parties -- one secular, one Islamic -- have been fighting for
control of various security services and, by extension,
political power and patronage since Hamas won democratic
elections in January 2006.

Hamas's militant brand of Islam has given it dominant
political standing in impoverished Gaza, where many of its
leaders were born or arrived as refugees, while Fatah remains
strong in the wealthier and more secular West Bank.

The Bush administration recently approved $40 million to train
the Palestinian Presidential Guard, a force of about 4,000
troops under Abbas's direct control, but both Israel and the
United States, each deeply unpopular among Arabs in the
region, have been trying to avoid the perception of taking
sides in a conflict that this week in Gaza has resembled a
nascent civil war. Many within Fatah are avowed opponents of
Israel, and any alliance with the Jewish state against the
militant movement could damage Fatah's standing among
Palestinians.

"We're not the ones giving these forces operational orders.
That will be up to Abbas," said Ephraim Sneh, Israel's deputy
defense minister, asserting that Hamas's arms smuggling from
the Sinai and military training in Iran have given the
movement a battlefield advantage. "The idea is to change the
balance, which has been in favor of Hamas and against Fatah.
With these well-trained forces, it will help right that
imbalance."

As Palestinian rocket fire into Israel continued Thursday, the
Israeli air force conducted a series of strikes across Gaza,
from which Israel withdrew in 2005 after a nearly four-decade
presence.

The airstrikes killed at least six Hamas gunmen that Israeli
officials said were involved in rocket assaults on Israeli
towns near Gaza. Among those killed was Imad Shabanah, a Hamas
military leader who Hamas officials acknowledged had taken
part in manufacturing rockets. His car was hit as it traveled
through Gaza City.

"All options for our response are open," said Fawzi Barhoum, a
Hamas spokesman in Gaza. Some Hamas military leaders said
specifically that "martyrdom operations," or suicide bombings,
could be used in retaliation for the Israeli airstrikes.

Israeli military officials said Palestinian gunmen fired at
least 17 rockets Thursday from Gaza, bringing the three-day
total to more than 80. At least seven fell Thursday in the
border town of Sderot, wounding several Israelis and damaging
a synagogue, a high school and a building inside an industrial
park, military officials said. One Israeli woman was seriously
wounded by rocket fire earlier this week, and dozens of others
have suffered light to moderate injuries or have been treated
for shock.

A small number of Israeli tanks also pushed just inside
northern Gaza, the first ground operation there this year, and
an artillery battery took up position on the border. Israeli
military officials called both deployments defensive measures.

Israel has used shelling and limited ground operations in the
past to stop Palestinian rocket fire. But the results have
never been decisive against a weapon that is cheap, highly
mobile and difficult to detect until it has been fired. The
Israeli tactics have also resulted in many Palestinian
civilian deaths.

"Hamas has essentially gone back to what we always knew they
were -- a terrorist organization acting as a government," said
Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert. "What they are trying to do is drag Israel back into
Gaza after we left every inch of it. We do not want to rule
Gaza."

The factional fighting cooled Thursday in the shadow of
Israel's stepped-up military operations. But Fatah gunmen
ambushed a Hamas funeral procession in Gaza, killing two men
in the crowd.

Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because
they were not authorized to discuss the subject, said the
decision to allow Fatah troops into Gaza this week was based
on trying to help Abbas take control of northern Gaza. That
area is the prime launching ground for the erratic if lethal
rockets known as Qassams.

"If you look at exit scenarios for what's going on there now,
you could have a force loyal to Abbas in northern Gaza that
could be highly useful to Israel," one Israeli official said.
"But within the larger crisis you have to be careful. We don't
want to be a part of this conflict, so this is a balancing
act."

The troops were trained by Egyptian authorities under a
program coordinated by Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, a special
U.S. envoy to the region who has been working to improve
security in Gaza and the West Bank in order to foster
Israeli-Palestinian economic alliances in the short term and
peace prospects over time.

A State Department official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said Dayton had not yet begun his phase of training
Fatah forces because the funding was only recently approved.
He said none of the troops who arrived in Gaza this week were
trained with U.S. funds.

Although it is under Abbas's authority, the Presidential Guard
is run by Mohammed Dahlan, a Fatah lawmaker who has worked
closely with several U.S. administrations. Abbas named Dahlan
his national security adviser after Hamas and Fatah agreed in
February to establish a power-sharing government.

The appointment infuriated Hamas leaders, who despise Dahlan
for the crackdown he carried out against them as head of the
Preventive Security branch following the 1993 Oslo accords.
Hamas opposed the agreement, which created the Palestinian
Authority.

"This is a complex situation, and we clearly hear Abbas say he
wants to stop terrorism," a second Israeli official said. "But
he has not been able to extend his authority over all of
Gaza."

Israeli officials said the forces, whom one Israeli Defense
Ministry official called "Dayton's guys," were trained in
Egypt and numbered between 400 and 500 men.

Although Israel handed the Rafah crossing over to Palestinian
and Egyptian control after evacuating Gaza, it maintains the
ability to deny entry to anyone it does not want to pass
through the terminal. It frequently employs this prerogative
to prevent known members of armed Palestinian groups from
entering the strip.

Maria Telleria, spokeswoman for the E.U. Border Assistance
Mission deployed at Rafah as part of the turnover agreement,
said the men arrived in several buses. "We had been informed
they were arriving," Telleria said. "But this was coordinated
between Israel and the Palestinian government. All we did was
monitor the crossing."

Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this
report.

Twilight Zone / A day in the life

2007-05-16T11:29:00.001-02:00

By Gideon Levy

We were just sitting down on the plastic chairs in the living room when the noise began. Boom after boom, volleys of gunfire. Closer, farther away, single shots and rounds of automatic fire. Occasionally, too, a brief respite. Jamal poured coffee as usual. Another cup, another cigarette. The firing continues. How are you? What's doing? But it's clear that the shooting is now very close, almost on the other side of the wall. At the Jalama checkpoint, on the way here, we hadn't noticed an ominous sign: a convoy of armored vehicles of the Israel Defense Forces was parked along the roadside. Maybe they were waiting to enter.

Air force planes above, rattling the windows and the thin walls with their sonic booms. On the street, life goes on as usual: It's midday and the children are on the way home from school, backpacks on shoulders, their mothers chatting as they wait for them in the alley, the mobile-grocery man announcing his produce via a noisy loudspeaker attached to his vehicle. The volleys of fire are growing louder and more insistent. That's life. But now it becomes clear even to Jamal Zbeidi, a veteran of suffering and struggle, that something is happening in the camp, something is happening - again.

Late the night before, too, IDF troops had entered the camp and wounded an armed young man in the leg. He managed to get away and reached the adjacent house. The neighbors dressed the wound and tried to persuade him to wait for first light, but his pain intensified and he begged to be taken to a hospital. Jamal called an ambulance. As it approached the house, an IDF Jeep that had been waiting in ambush at the corner of the street suddenly swooped in. The soldiers, who did not dare leave their armored vehicle, ordered the paramedics to turn over the wounded youngster. They bundled him into the Jeep and drove off, ordering the ambulance to drive ahead.

A short time before that, another youth was hurt in the camp and was rushed to the hospital in Nablus with a head injury, after a quarrel among children in the local Internet cafe. Meanwhile, the camp committee tried for hours to calm things down between the two families, the Shalabis and the Ararwis. People in the camp hadn't slept; another restless night, as usual.

The red telephone starts to chirp. Jamal is a member of the camp committee, and people call his mobile to find out what's going on. He too starts to call neighbors and informants. Initially, there are rumors that mistarvim - Israeli soldiers disguised as Arabs - are entrenched in one of the buildings up the road in the alley we are in, and local gunmen are firing at someone inside the house. A municipal foreman didn't come to work today, and the suspicion is that the mistarvim are holding him captive in his house, where they have been taking cover since entering in the dead of night. It's now a little after noon. Jamal says that if there really are mistarvim in that house, the IDF will send forces to extricate them.

Sounds of men breathlessly running in the street. We are glued to the barred window: Three armed men are dashing up the alley, toward the shooting. Jamal says it may be a false alarm. Amir Peretz is on Al Jazeera, on the TV set that is on day and night, without the sound. The camp's muezzin calls worshipers to come to the midday prayer. That's life. If anyone is killed, the youngsters will come to the mosque and use the loudspeaker to announce it. The shooting intensifies.

One's hands break out in a cold sweat. For someone from the outside it's very scary. The ceiling fan turns silently on its axis, dissipating the heat but not the fear. Jamal is a cool character. If it were not for his Israeli guests, he would already be out on the street. The firing is getting closer. Hani Damaj, whose home is in the eye of the storm, reports on the red phone: The word is that an IDF unit is entrenched in the house next door, that of the foreman, Abu-Imad Ghraieb, and the young men are shooting at it. Jamal asks Damaj to get back to him with more details. He reminds us that we once visited the besieged house - when Ariel Sharon was hospitalized.

Ghraieb, about 50, lives in the besieged house with his wife. They have no children. A group of youngsters runs toward the shooting, schoolbags flopping on their backs. Also making their way up the alley, but slowly, are girls in their striped school uniforms. It is very hot outside. Another phone call: Damaj confirms that the soldiers are in the house. Jamal does not let us leave; this is not the time for Israelis to walk around the camp. His children are not home: Anton is at work in a garage, Naim is doing guard duty, and the little ones, Yusuf and Hamudi, are on the way home from the school next to the new cemetery for martyrs of the second intifada. Their father is certain that they have already joined the children who are running toward the gunfire, to throw stones at the Jeeps.

A few months ago, Yusuf was wounded in the leg by a bullet. Jamal keeps his cool. He really has seen it all. With his own hands he removed numerous bodies from besieged alleys after Israel's Operation Defensive Shield five years ago. His son-in-law and two of his nephews were killed, and he was placed in administrative detention [arrest without trial] seven times.

The phone rings. On the line is Khaled Abu al-Haija, a construction worker who is on a job near the besieged house. He relates that there is still traffic on the road between the camp and the city, but there is a great deal of shooting and many explosions. The Jenin version of a traffic report. A few hundred meters from here, I recall, a teenage girl, Bushra al-Wahsh, was killed in her room a few days ago while preparing for an exam.

A powerful blast. It's a roadside bomb that the youngsters planted for the army vehicles. Lately they have been greeting the IDF with gas canisters placed by the roadside. The explosions leave gaping holes in the camp road, which was rebuilt only a couple of years ago.

We tune in the local TV station, which may have more news. The headlines of the Maan news agency crawl by at the bottom of the screen: "Israeli security forces set up roadblocks at entrances to Jenin." And immediately afterward, "Israeli security forces enter Jenin camp."

Al Jazeera is reporting on the French elections. The firing goes on unabated. A minibus drops off the camp's schoolchildren at their homes, but most disappear quickly into the alley, running into the firing zone, to the only action this camp can offer them.

A call is made to Ali Samoudi, the Al Jazeera correspondent in Jenin, who is already at the scene. Panting hard, he tells me that there are already about 20 IDF vehicles next to the house and another group parked below, next to the equestrian sculpture made by a German artist from parts of wrecked ambulances, on the edge of the camp, at the entrance to the government hospital. The hospital is not operating now, because the employees haven't been paid for months. Another explosive device goes off. Samoudi says there are wounded people.

"I hope you get out safely and that we won't have anyone killed today," Jamal, our host, says matter-of-factly. Air force plane serve up another sonic boom. "That has nothing to do with it," he adds reassuringly. "If things go wrong, the Apaches [helicopters] will come. You don't play with the Apaches."

The neighbors' nine-year-old boy runs in, his face sweaty and red, a lemon in his hand. He has come from there, there are already two wounded, one of them seriously. The wail of an ambulance speeding by drowns out his words. Little Usseid says he is not afraid. "What? Me, afraid of them?" the diminutive boy exclaims. Yes, he threw stones at them. Three unarmed youngsters are moving up the hill on their ancient tractor. A taxi turns around and heads back at the sound of the shooting. When the firing intensifies again, Jamal says it's probably the end: Before the soldiers leave, they often step up the shooting, and that is the most dangerous time.

It's 1:20 P.M. Sanaa serves lunch. A tray of ground meat and peanuts on rice, with bowls of yogurt and meat alongside. "Two were wounded, one seriously," she says as she distributes the dishes, giving us a direct report from her situation room: the kitchen on the second floor. On Al Jazeera the German foreign minister is meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. A rickety van drops off a boy in the alley. Ali Samoudi reports that an IDF bulldozer has arrived.

A neighbor rushes out, screaming: He sent his son to work and now he is not there; he must have gone to the scene of the incident. A few years ago, this neighbor lost two nephews within a few days. Now, distraught over his son, he runs back and forth in the alley, grumbling and cursing. "If you see my son, tell him his father is looking for him," he shouts to someone on his mobile phone. More bursts of fire and another ambulance cruises through the alley, siren wailing. The neighbor decides to drive to the hospital, to see if his son is there, heaven forbid. He too has heard that there are wounded.

Hamudi has returned home. In his childish voice and with his captivating smile, the 11-year-old reports from the scene: They are throwing stones at the Jeeps. The word is that the soldiers tried to assassinate someone, but he opened fire and wounded a soldier. A rumor. Did you throw stones, his father asks. "No, I just stood there and watched." They both know the truth. At night, Hamudi sprints into his parents' bed whenever shots are heard, but during the day he is as brave as his older brothers.

The phone doesn't let up. On the line is Atef Abu al-Rub, a field worker from B'Tselem, the human rights organization, who wants to know what happened. Shall we eat now? It's 1:50. Who's at the door, they ask with concern. Fifteen-year-old Yusuf hasn't come home yet. Sanaa's food is wonderfully tasty, as usual in this house. Another close explosive charge goes off as we polish off a second yogurt.

A tractor that sounds like a tank makes us jump to the window with the plastic louver blinds. Two hours have passed. A Jeep carrying helmet-clad reporters speeds up the alley. Another ambulance, too; this time without a siren. Yusuf arrives, and says: "I just watched." Four children were lightly wounded by rubber bullets, he says. "Did you bring back the schoolbag?" his father asks. Yes, when he went there he placed it by the side, and now he collected it on the way back. It's after 3 now, and quiet.

Response of the IDF spokesperson:

As part of IDF operations in the area of Judea and Samaria intended to maintain the security of citizens of the State of Israel and destroy the terror infrastructure, the IDF operates in the area of the city of Jenin in order to eliminate the terror infrastructure and prevent attacks on the home front.

On the date in question, explosives were thrown and there was firing in a number of cases against IDF forces operating in Jenin, there were no injuries, the force returned fire against the sources of the shooting.

Taming The Beast: Ilan Pappe Defends a One State Solution

2007-05-11T23:49:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, the ongoing debate of two states vs. one state in Israel/Palestine is nothing new. However, the debate looms larger when we talk about the issue solely in the peace movement. Today I’ll present part one of a two-part conversation with noted Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.

Also this week, as Israeli incursions onto occupied lands begin to increase, we’ll find out what the true facts are on the ground from our good friend and colleague Sam Bahour in el-Bireh.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia abu-Jamal and The War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of the Stand Independent News Service.

In Israel, Not All Blood is the Same

2007-05-10T15:41:00.001-02:00

The Death of Samir Dari

By NEVE GORDON and YIGAL BRONNER

Almost a year and a half has passed since our friend Samir Dari was gunned down by an Israeli policeman. Samir, an Israeli resident and father of two, approached a group of policemen who had just detained his brother on a street corner not far away from his house and demanded the latter's release. There are conflicting versions about how the events unfolded, but there is no dispute about the following facts: Samir was unarmed and the policeman Shmuel Yechezkel shot him from close range in the back.

The Israeli police were quick to disseminate a fallacious version of the incident which portrayed the killing as an act of self-defense. This is a typical and almost automatic police response, one which inverts the order between victim and aggressor. When an Arab is killed, he is said to have been violent; when he is beaten up, he is said to have struck the policeman first; when he is oppressed, he is the one who is guilty.

Also typical was the lack of public interest in Samir's death. The killing of an Arab is, after all, not the kind of event that makes headlines in Israel.

The non-violent protest which Samir's friends organized in response to the killing did, however, attract attention. Israeli Jews cannot easily digest angry Arabs in the streets, and many did not hesitate to openly threaten the protesters: "An immediate and forceful response is necessary"; "A missile attack on their village is needed," were some of the responses that appeared in the local newspaper.

But now, a year and a half later, it turns out that the Israeli legal system shares the public's perception, although the way it expresses itself is less strident.

Judge Noam Solburg recently acquitted the policeman Yechezkel. Ironically, in his verdict the judge states that Samir had not threatened Yechezkel, at no point was there physical contact between Samir and the policemen on the scene, and Samir was actually moving away from the policemen when he was shot in the back. "The accused made an awful and terrible mistake," the judge concludes, adding that "The deceased was killed for no reason."

The judge, nonetheless, exonerated Yechezkel because, in his opinion, it is not beyond probable doubt that the policeman felt he was acting in self-defense. Thus, when the "mistake" is killing an Arab, no one pays the price -- except, of course, the victim, his wife and children.

Judge Solburg's verdict sends a message to Samir's family and all Arab citizens of Israel: they should not expect justice and protection from the Israeli state. While the law's role is to protect citizens and the police's responsibility is to uphold the law, often these basic truths are ignored when it comes to Arabs. Since September 2000, thirty-four Arab citizens have been killed at the hands of the police, security guards and soldiers. Nonetheless, only four indictments have been issued, and only after a vigorous public campaign. Not one of these cases has resulted in a conviction.

And yet, at times, naiveté stubbornly tries to challenge political reality. When Samir was killed, we thought it was worth demanding justice. Initially, Samir's family refused to allow an autopsy. Only after considerable pressure from friends and lawyers, who argued that without concrete evidence the policeman would walk free, did the family agree, against their religious convictions, to permit the forensic procedure. The doctor's report was unequivocal: Samir had been shot in the back from short range.

Apparently, Judge Solburg has no patience for naiveté and ensured that political reality would win the day. He did not allow the autopsy results or, in his own words, "the objective dimension" of the case to alter his verdict and thus sent a very clear message to Arab citizens of Israel that evidence is not the most important criteria for determining guilt. It will, accordingly, be no surprise if the next victim's family refuses to consent to an autopsy.

The verdict also sends a clear message to the police: "don't worry." Israeli policemen can rest assured that everything will be done to cover up violence against Arabs. If internal affairs won't do the job, then a judge, who will acquit the policeman, can be found, even when the officer is guilty of shooting a man in cold blood.

Moreover, the verdict reinforces the idea among the Jewish public that not all blood is the same. Not that this should really surprise anyone. A year and a half ago, when Samir was killed, we wrote an article for the Israeli press that ended with the following lines:

"Samir is gone. We would like to hope that someone will be courageous enough to hold the person who shot him in the back accountable. We would like to believe that this incident will begin revealing the web of lies and racism that serves to perpetuate the circle of violence. We would like to know that Samir's children will be the last ones orphaned by the violence of the secret services, police and military. But no. We won't delude ourselves."
To our great sorrow, our pessimism has not been misplaced.

Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel and can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com

Yigal Bronner teaches in the South Asian Department at the University of Chicago, USA and can be reached at ybronner@uchicago.edu

Israel accused of prisoner abuse

2007-05-06T20:06:00.001-02:00

By Tim Franks
BBC News, Jerusalem

Palestinian taken into custody by Israeli soldiers
The groups drew on the testimony of 73 Palestinians
Human rights groups in Israel have accused the security services of routinely mistreating Palestinian detainees.

The two groups said detainees were held in appalling conditions, and were sometimes tortured.

They said the maltreatment was intended to "break the spirit" of those who were being interrogated.

Israel's justice ministry rejected the report - which was published on Sunday - as unrepresentative and inaccurate.

The report lists a number of techniques the two groups, B'Tselem and the HaMoked Centre for the Defence of the Individual, say are deployed by the Israeli Security Agency.

They range from preventing detainees from contacting their lawyers, to painful shackling to a chair, threats and intimidation, beating and sleep deprivation.

The groups drew on the testimony of 73 Palestinians detained over a six-month period.

International law

International law is clear in prohibiting ill-treatment or torture, and it allows for no extenuating circumstances.

However, the human rights groups point to a more ambiguous ruling from the Israeli High Court.

It decreed that members of the security service who abused detainees may be exempted from criminal liability, if they believed that the people they were interrogating had information about an imminent terrorist act.

The human rights campaigners also say that of more than 500 complaints about the behaviour of security service agents, not one criminal investigation has been opened.

The Ministry of Justice said the report was "fraught with mistakes, groundless claims and inaccuracies".

In a statement, the ministry also said that over the past few years, information obtained by security service agents - sometimes through interrogation - had saved the lives of many civilians.

As Tenure Drama Comes Down to the Wire

2007-04-30T23:18:00.000-02:00

Dershowitz v. Finkelstein: Who's Right and Who's Wrong?

By FRANK MENETREZ

The feud between Alan Dershowitz, a senior professor at Harvard Law School, and Norman Finkelstein, a junior professor of political science at DePaul University, is back in the news. Finkelstein is up for tenure this year, and Dershowitz has been waging an aggressive campaign against him. Both Finkelstein's department and an outside committee voted in favor of tenure, but the dean then recommended against it. As of this writing, the university has not made a final decision.

To date, the coverage of the dispute has not included any serious attempt at evaluating the merits of Dershowitz and Finkelstein's charges and countercharges. It's clear enough that these guys don't like or respect each other, and that each claims the other's work is a travesty. But the question remains: Who's right, and who's wrong? Answering that question ought to be relatively straightforward, and it is high time that someone other than Finkelstein or Dershowitz tried to do it publicly.

The feud began when Finkelstein charged that Dershowitz's book The Case for Israel (2003) was partially plagiarized and wholly false. Finkelstein ultimately published his critique as part of a book of his own, entitled Beyond Chutzpah (2005). The book quotes Dershowitz as offering, in an interview, to "give $10,000 to the PLO" if anyone can "find a historical fact in [The Case for Israel] that you can prove to be false." (p. 91) Finkelstein maintains, to the contrary, that "[t]he genuine challenge is to unearth any meaningful historical fact in The Case for Israel." (p. 91) Finkelstein goes on to quote one assertion after another from The Case for Israel, examine Dershowitz's supporting evidence, and then adduce his own evidence that the assertions are false and Dershowitz's evidence is worthless.

Dershowitz has not taken these charges lightly. According to a document posted on Dershowitz's web site ( www.alandershowitz.com), in June 2006 the chairman of Finkelstein's department wrote to Dershowitz concerning his charges that Finkelstein "is guilty of various forms of intellectual dishonesty." The chairman asked Dershowitz to direct him "to the clearest and most egregious instances of dishonesty on Finkelstein's part[.]" Dershowitz's lengthy response, dated September 18, 2006, is contained in the same document on his web site. It begins by stating that "the ugly and false assertions that I will discuss below are not incidental to Finkelstein's purported scholarship; they are his purported scholarship. Finkelstein's entire literary catalogue is one preposterous and discredited ad hominem attack after another." Dershowitz goes on to list a number of alleged lies or fabrications by Finkelstein. He also provides a link to an online copy of chapter 16 of his book, The Case for Peace (2005). That chapter, entitled "A Case Study in Hate and Intimidation" (hereafter "Case Study") deals exclusively with Finkelstein's critique of The Case for Israel.

So there we have it: Finkelstein claims to have proven, in Beyond Chutzpah, that The Case for Israel is riddled with misrepresentations of fact. Dershowitz, in turn, claims that everything Finkelstein has ever written is "false," "preposterous," and "discredited." And Dershowitz has prepared a list of the "clearest and most egregious instances" of Finkelstein's dishonesty (hereafter the "List"), which builds on the evidence previously compiled in his Case Study. If we examine Dershowitz's List and Case Study, then, we might be able to figure out who, if anyone, is right.

In the interest of truth-telling: Before I began researching this article, I had already read all of Finkelstein's books and thought highly of them. Nonetheless, when I first looked into Dershowitz's charges, my aim was to conduct an objective investigation to uncover the truth. If Dershowitz was right that Finkelstein's work was disgraceful, I wanted to know about it.

Also, when I started I had read none of Dershowitz's books. In the course of my research I consulted his books but ultimately found it unnecessary to read any of them from cover to cover, for reasons that will become clear in what follows.

Prior to publication, I emailed drafts of this article to both Finkelstein and Dershowitz for comment. Finkelstein gave me several substantive comments, some of which I incorporated. Dershowitz's response, in its entirety, was "What a rediculous [sic] and biased screed filled with demonstable [sic] falsehoods and half truths[.]" I wrote back, asking him to specify the half-truths and demonstrable falsehoods so that I could correct them. I also asked him for information on three specific issues. His response, in its entirety, was, "Your bias is so obvious you can't seem to help it[.]"

BEYOND BEYOND CHUTZPAH

Beyond Chutzpah purports to refute virtually every aspect of The Case for Israel's account of Israel's human rights record and the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Consequently, the most striking feature of Dershowitz's List is that not a single item on the List is taken from Beyond Chutzpah.

In the Case Study, Dershowitz's examples of Finkelstein's alleged "pattern" of "mak[ing] up quotations and facts" (p. 185) are likewise not drawn from Beyond Chutzpah, but there is a straightforward explanation: Both The Case for Peace, which contains the Case Study, and Beyond Chutzpah were published in August 2005, so it was impossible for either book to contain a response to the other. But when Dershowitz prepared the List in the fall of 2006, he had ample time to identify any instances of dishonesty in Beyond Chutzpah. Still, the List mentions none.

Some of Dershowitz's examples do, however, relate to Beyond Chutzpah. Here's the background for the main example: In The Case for Israel, Dershowitz laments that Israel's methods of interrogating Palestinian prisoners were "universally characterized as torture" even though "they were nonlethal and did not involve the infliction of sustained pain." (pp. 137-138) The endnote to that sentence reads as follows: "One person died following shaking, but an independent investigation attributed his death to an unknown preexisting medical condition." (p. 252, n.9) As support for those claims, the endnote cites a single decision of Israel's Supreme Court. In Beyond Chutzpah (p. 160), Finkelstein quotes the endnote verbatim and then attempts to refute it.

Against Dershowitz's claim that there has been only one interrogation-related death, Finkelstein quotes the reports of two independent human rights organizations, both of which concluded that there have been multiple such deaths. (Beyond Chutzpah, pp. 160-161) And against Dershowitz's claim that the one prisoner who died "following shaking" actually died because of a preexisting medical condition, Finkelstein quotes Amnesty International's report on that prisoner, entitled Death by Shaking: The Case of Abd al-Samad Harizat. According to Finkelstein, Amnesty reports that Israeli officials originally attributed the death to a preexisting medical condition, but "it so happened that Abd al-Samad Harizat was in good health at the time of his sudden death." (Beyond Chutzpah, p. 161) The Amnesty report further states that the official autopsy, which was conducted by two Israeli doctors and observed by a Scottish doctor on behalf of the decedent's family, concluded that Harizat died because of violent shaking. According to Amnesty, the Department of Investigations of Police reached the same conclusion, as did both an "expert opinion" on the official autopsy report and a statement from the Israeli Ministry of Justice. Finkelstein then writes the following (Beyond Chutzpah, pp. 161-162):

The Supreme Court decision cited by Dershowitz (HCJ 5100/94) states that "[a]ll agree" that Harizat "expired after being shaken." The Court decision makes no mention of an "independent investigation" attributing Harizat's death to "an unknown preexisting medical condition." Indeed, no record of this independent investigation exists.

That's the background. What does Dershowitz have to say in response? In his List, Dershowitz writes:

Here is what [Finkelstein] said in Chicago on March 18, 2004: "There was a famous case in 1995 of a Palestinian who was shaken to death while in detention. And nobody disputed the facts the Israeli pathologist's office, the forensic pathologists who were brought into the case, eventually it went to the Israeli High Court of Justice they all agreed. And I'm quoting now from the High Court of Justice Judgment: 'All agree that Harizad [sic.: Harizat] died from the shaking.' If you go to Dershowitz's book, he discusses the case and says, quote, 'An independent inquiry found that he didn't die from the shaking, but from a previous illness.' That was just made up."

It was Finkelstein who made up the quotation. The Supreme Court actually said that "the suspect expired after being shaken." The difference between "died from the shaking" and "expired after being shaken" is considerable, especially since the sentence that follows in the decision attributes the death to an extremely rare complication, and the sentence before summarizes the literature as having no examples of anyone dying from shaking. This is not a translation error. It is an example of a made-up quotation. Remember, Finkelstein said he was "quoting," not paraphrasing, yet the words he purports to quote simply do not exist. Finkelstein has never, to my knowledge, responded to this serious charge of fabricating a quotation from the Israeli Supreme Court.

Finkelstein's pattern of making up quotations . . . should alone disqualify him from any tenured academic position.

Because Dershowitz cites no book or other publication, I will assume that he is quoting an interview or lecture that Finkelstein gave in Chicago on March 18, 2004. I will also assume that he is quoting Finkelstein accurately. Dershowitz makes essentially the same argument in his Case Study (p. 185), though there he quotes from a Finkelstein appearance on C-SPAN2. (p. 233, n. 118)

What should we make of this exchange? On the one hand, in Beyond Chutzpah Finkelstein

(1) accurately quotes both Dershowitz and the Supreme Court decision,

(2) adduces evidence refuting Dershowitz's claim that there has been only one Palestinian death from interrogation,

(3) asserts that the Supreme Court decision cited by Dershowitz makes no reference to any "independent investigation" that concluded Harizat's death was not caused by shaking,

(4) cites multiple independent investigations that did attribute the death to shaking, and

(5) asserts that there is no record of an independent investigation that reached a contrary conclusion.

On the other hand, in his List Dershowitz:

(1) ignores what Finkelstein wrote in Beyond Chutzpah,

(2) quotes some oral presentations in which Finkelstein misquoted two passages that he later quoted accurately in Beyond Chutzpah, and

(3) charges Finkelstein with having "made up the quotation[s]."

Dershowitz never responds to, let alone refutes, any of Finkelstein's substantive claims in Beyond Chutzpah concerning the number of interrogation deaths, the actual independent investigations of Harizat's death, or the fact that Dershowitz's cited source does not mention an independent investigation that attributed the death to a preexisting medical condition.

Thus, continuing to assume that Dershowitz is accurately quoting Finkelstein, we can draw the following conclusions. Finkelstein appears to have made two oral misquotations of material he quoted correctly in Beyond Chutzpah. Dershowitz's The Case for Israel appears to contain multiple serious falsehoods concerning Israel's violent interrogation of Palestinian prisoners.

Moreover, in the Case Study, Dershowitz attempts to conceal the inaccuracies in The Case for Israel by misrepresenting both his own endnote and the Supreme Court opinion that he cited in it. Dershowitz writes (p. 234, n. 120):

What the High Court said was that "medical literature has not, to date, reported a case in which a person died as the direct result of having been shaken." It did reference a case, different from the one I discussed in my book, in which "the suspect expired after being shaken," but explained that "according to the state, that case was a rare exception, [where] death was caused by an extremely rare complication which resulted in pulmonary edema" (emphasis added). . . . In addition, Finkelstein misquotes me as saying "he didn't die from the shaking." I actually said, "one person died following shaking," and he knows I was discussing a different case.

Dershowitz thus claims that the case in which, according to the Supreme Court, "the suspect expired after being shaken" is not the same case Dershowitz discussed in The Case for Israel. That cannot be true: The endnote in The Case for Israel refers to only "[o]ne person [who] died following shaking[;]" Dershowitz mentions that one person as the one potential exception to his claim that Israel's interrogation methods are "nonlethal." The only source Dershowitz has ever cited concerning that one person is this Supreme Court opinion. But the Supreme Court opinion mentions only one case of a person dying after shaking, so they must be the same case.

It should also be noted that in this endnote from the Case Study, Dershowitz largely admits that The Case for Israel's reference to an "independent investigation" was incorrect. Recall that, in The Case for Israel, Dershowitz cited this Supreme Court opinion as his only source concerning the "independent investigation" that found the death was caused by an unrelated medical condition. Now, in the Case Study endnote, Dershowitz acknowledges that the Supreme Court did not assert in its own voice that Harizat's death was caused by "an extremely rare complication." The court did mention that assertion, but the court neither endorsed it nor attributed it to an independent investigation. Rather, as quoted by Dershowitz, the court said that "according to the state," the death was caused by an "extremely rare complication." That is, the assertion that Harizat's death was caused by a rare complication was made by the Israeli government lawyers who were defending the security services' interrogation methods. The court's opinion states no basis for the lawyers' assertion--for all the court tells us, the lawyers might have just made it up.

Dershowitz's List contains no other items related to Beyond Chutzpah. (It mentions the plagiarism issue, which I address below, but the List unequivocally states that Dershowitz is "not answering that charge here.") But his Case Study does contain two others. (p. 185) Dershowitz writes that

Finkelstein claims that in The Case for Israel I "never once--I mean literally, not once--mention[ed] any mainstream human rights organization. Never a mention of Amnesty's findings, never a mention of Human Rights Watch's findings, never a mention of B'Tselem's findings . . . none." But a simple check of the index reveals that I repeatedly discuss--and criticize--the findings of these very organizations.

Dershowitz again cites the C-SPAN2 appearance as his source for the quotation. (p. 233, n. 117) Again, I will assume he is quoting it accurately.

Here is what Finkelstein writes in Beyond Chutzpah (pp. 92-93):

The most fundamental--and telling--fact about the chapters of The Case for Israel devoted to human rights issues is that never once does Dershowitz cite a single mainstream human rights organization to support any of his claims. . . .

Not only does Dershowitz systematically ignore their findings, but in order to justify having done so, he seeks to malign the human rights organizations themselves.

Finkelstein then goes on to discuss some of The Case for Israel's criticism of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and B'Tselem (an Israeli organization monitoring human rights violations in the occupied territories). (p. 93)

Again, what should we make of this exchange? On the one hand, in Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein points out that Dershowitz, in The Case for Israel, purports to defend Israel's human rights record but never once cites a mainstream human rights organization in order to support his claims; rather, Dershowitz cites such organizations only to discredit them. On the other hand, Dershowitz (1) quotes an incorrect oral statement by Finkelstein to the effect that The Case for Israel never cites mainstream human rights organizations at all, (2) points out that The Case for Israel does indeed cite mainstream human rights organizations (in order to discredit them), and (3) charges Finkelstein with "mak[ing] up . . . facts."

Again, Finkelstein appears to have made a fairly trivial oral misstatement. Dershowitz, however, appears to have implicitly admitted that he did precisely what Beyond Chutzpah charged him with doing: The Case for Israel, his bestselling defense of Israel's human rights record, cites mainstream human rights organizations only to discredit them, never for support.

The Case Study contains one other charge relating to Beyond Chutzpah. Background: Dershowitz writes in his book Chutzpah, concerning the plight of the Arab Palestinians who were expelled in 1948, that the expulsion "is a fifth-rate issue analogous in many respects to some massive urban renewal or other projects that require large-scale movement of people." (Chutzpah, p. 215) In Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein accurately quotes part of that statement (he omits "or other projects that require large-scale movement of people"). (p. 47) Later, he cites several prominent Israeli scholars (Baruch Kimmerling, Ilan Pappe, and Benny Morris) as having described the 1948 expulsion as an "ethnic cleansing." (p. 53, n. 29)

In the Case Study, Dershowitz writes the following: "Another made-up quotation by Finkelstein is his claim that in my book Chutzpah I analogized 'ethnic cleansings' to 'urban renewal.' I say nothing of the kind in Chutzpah. I never even mention 'ethnic cleansing.'" (p. 185) As his source, Dershowitz cites a talk by Finkelstein at the Vancouver Public Library in 2004. (p. 234, n. 121)

It is true that the relevant passage in Chutzpah does not employ the phrase "ethnic cleansing." It is also true that in Chutzpah Dershowitz drew an analogy between urban renewal and the 1948 expulsion of the Arab Palestinians, which, according to Finkelstein, has been described by prominent Israeli scholars as "ethnic cleansing." In his List, Dershowitz does not challenge Finkelstein's claim about what the Israeli scholars say, so I have not independently verified it. I also have not checked the accuracy of Dershowitz's quotation from Finkelstein's appearance at the Vancouver Public Library. But it should be noted that it is not clear from Dershowitz's own rendering of the quotation that Finkelstein ever attributed the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to Dershowitz.

That's it. Apart from the plagiarism issue, nothing else in either the List or the Case Study (or elsewhere in The Case for Peace) relates to Beyond Chutzpah.

Skeptical readers may wonder whether Dershowitz's charges could really be this silly and inconsequential. Such readers should not take my word for it. The List is posted on Dershowitz's web site, and it contains a link to an online copy of the Case Study. The texts of The Case for Israel, The Case for Peace, Chutzpah, and Beyond Chutzpah, including endnotes, are also searchable online at Amazon.com. (Not all pages are viewable online, but many of the relevant ones are.)
Recall now that in Beyond Chutzpah Finkelstein quotes and purports to refute claim after claim after claim from The Case for Israel. Recall also that one year later, Dershowitz, when preparing his List of the "clearest and most egregious instances" of Finkelstein's dishonesty, does not even attempt to refute a single claim in Beyond Chutzpah, plagiarism aside. And note that the foregoing discussion seems to tell us something about just how "clear and egregious" some of the instances on the List are.

From these facts it appears reasonable to conclude that, with the possible exception of the plagiarism issue, Dershowitz has been unable to find a single false statement in Beyond Chutzpah. And it follows that, as far as Dershowitz himself can now determine, his own book The Case for Israel is full of falsehoods concerning Israel's human rights record and the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, while Finkelstein's book contains none.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Although published at the same time as Beyond Chutzpah, the Case Study constitutes Dershowitz's most thorough discussion of Finkelstein's assault on The Case for Israel. The thesis of the Case Study is that Finkelstein's attack was the product of a "well-orchestrated campaign" devised by a left-wing anti-Israel conspiracy whose members are Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and Finkelstein. The chapter opens with an introductory description of the conspiracy. (pp. 167-170) Next come subsections consisting of attacks on each of the alleged conspirators. (pp. 170-172 (Chomsky), pp. 172-175 (Finkelstein), p. 175 (Cockburn)) The next subsection describes the conspiracy's previous work, including its campaign to discredit Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial (1984), the book Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of plagiarizing. (pp. 175-180)

Finally, in the last subsection of the chapter, Dershowitz turns to the conspiracy's attacks against him. (pp. 180-188) The bulk of his discussion, however, either deals exclusively with the plagiarism charge (pp. 180-184) or describes the power and extensive influence of the conspiracy. (pp. 186-188) (E.g., "Finkelstein can get anything he writes published, regardless of its demonstrable falsehoods, because Noam Chomsky has enormous influence on the hard-left press." Beyond Chutzpah was in fact published by the University of California Press after undergoing a rigorous peer-review process.) Apart from the plagiarism issue, just one page of the twenty-two page chapter is devoted to arguing that some of Finkelstein's claims about Dershowitz are false. (p. 185)

That one page contains, by my count, five separate charges against Finkelstein. I have already dealt with three of them (shaking, citation of human rights organizations, and ethnic cleansing) in the previous section. The remaining two do not require extensive discussion. One is based on a quote for which Dershowitz cites no source, so it can fairly be ignored. The other involves a quote from a talk Finkelstein gave in Calgary in 2004. According to Dershowitz, "Finkelstein has even alleged that the autobiographical account of my life in Chutzpah [1991]--growing up as an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn in the 1940s and 1950s--does not 'have much to do [with] what has actually happened in [my] life.'" (p. 185, alterations by Dershowitz)

I have not checked the accuracy of the quote, because I cannot imagine why anyone would care enough to debate this one. I will only note that Dershowitz's own presentation of the quote leaves open the possibility that what Finkelstein actually said was that, although Chutzpah purports to be autobiographical, it spends relatively little time discussing Dershowitz's own life and spends an inordinately large amount of time discussing other matters, such as the 1948 expulsion of the Arab Palestinians. But I don't know whether that's what Finkelstein said, and, if it is, I don't know whether it's true.

Apart from that one page, plus the plagiarism issue, Dershowitz's arguments in his Case Study suffer from the well-known defect inherent in all ad hominem arguments: They attack the messenger but leave the message untouched. That is, it does not matter whether Dershowitz's conspiracy theory is true. Even if it were true, that would not show that any of Beyond Chutzpah's claims about The Case for Israel (and about Dershowitz's other writings) are false.

Because Dershowitz's conspiracy theory thus has no bearing on the merits of the dispute between Finkelstein and Dershowitz, I will not discuss it further.

PLAGIARISM

When Finkelstein first attacked The Case for Israel in a debate with Dershowitz on the radio program Democracy Now! in 2003, one of his principal charges was that Dershowitz had plagiarized significant portions of his book from Peters' From Time Immemorial. Finkelstein has not dropped the plagiarism charge, but he has repeatedly stated that it is of secondary importance, the main issue being the truth about Israel's human rights record. In Beyond Chutzpah, he relegates the plagiarism discussion to one of the book's three appendices, introducing it with the observation that, next to Dershowitz's alleged whitewash of Israel's human rights record, "Dershowitz's academic derelictions seem small beer." (p. 229)

In the Democracy Now! debate, Finkelstein also charged that Dershowitz did not write The Case for Israel himself. Dershowitz claims he can prove he wrote it, because he is still in possession of his own handwritten manuscript for the book. (Case Study, p. 181) Finkelstein informs me that he requested a copy of that manuscript, but Dershowitz refused to provide it. In any event, Finkelstein did not include the charge in Beyond Chutzpah. I therefore will not discuss it further.

Some background on Peters' book is needed to ground an assessment of the plagiarism controversy. From Time Immemorial argues that at the time of Israel's founding in 1948, many of the Arab inhabitants of the areas that became the state of Israel were actually recent immigrants--they and their ancestors had not lived there "from time immemorial." When the book was originally published in the United States in 1984, it received glowing reviews in periodicals across the country and quickly became a bestseller. Later, when a number of scholars (of whom Finkelstein was the first) examined the book carefully, they concluded that it was of no scholarly value whatsoever. It ignores important parts of the documentary record, misuses the sources on which it does rely, and contains straightforward logical errors.

Consequently, Peters' book has been rejected as worthless by the scholarly community around the world, including in Israel. Skeptical readers should not take my word for it. Yehoshua Porath, one of Israel's leading scholars on the Arab population of Palestine during the pre-state period, described the book as a "sheer forgery," adding that "[i]n Israel, at least, the book was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish except maybe as a propaganda weapon." (New York Times, Nov. 28, 1985). Porath, who describes his own politics as "centrist," also tore the book to shreds in a review published in The New York Review of Books. (Jan. 16, 1986) The review is freely available online, together with a subsequent exchange of letters that is also quite illuminating. (March 27, 1986) Given the well-known scholarly repudiation of Peters' book, no scholar would rely on it, any more than a scholar would rely on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Now, back to the plagiarism issue: In Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein argues that in the first two chapters of The Case for Israel Dershowitz plagiarized Peters by lifting numerous quotations and citations directly from Peters' book without acknowledging that he found them there. (Beyond Chutzpah, p. 230)

Dershowitz counters that although he was led to some primary sources by seeing them cited in Peters' book, he always tried to check them before citing them. If he could not find the primary source himself, he cited Peters. If he was able to check the primary source, he cited it directly, without mentioning Peters. He claims that his failure to cite Peters in such circumstances is proper. (Case Study, p. 182)

Finkelstein's principal response is that Dershowitz's quotations and citations of primary sources contain obvious errors that Dershowitz could not have made if he had checked the primary sources himself, and that Dershowitz's errors are identical to Peters' errors concerning the same primary sources. (Beyond Chutzpah, pp. 230-231) Finkelstein infers that Dershowitz copied the quotations and citations from Peters rather than checking the primary sources himself.

Dershowitz has never, to my knowledge, responded to Finkelstein's argument concerning the identical errors in The Case for Israel and From Time Immemorial. He wrote the List, for example, one year after publication of Beyond Chutzpah, but in it he expressly declined to address the plagiarism issue. Dershowitz has not argued that the alleged errors do not exist, or that his errors are not identical to Peters', or that the identity of the errors is just a coincidence and the errors are easy to make even when one checks the primary sources.

Finkelstein's argument concerning the identical errors strikes me as persuasive, and Dershowitz's failure to respond to the argument strikes me as telling. But I expect that reasonable minds could differ.

The entire plagiarism issue, however, seems to me to be of relatively little importance. If Dershowitz had uncovered a little-known but true and important piece of scholarship on the Middle East and had plagiarized it, passing off the original author's work as his own, he would surely have been guilty of a serious breach of academic integrity and would have done an injustice to the original author, who would have been deprived of deserved credit. At the same time, however, Dershowitz would have been doing a substantial public service by bringing the original author's true and important insights to a much wider audience than they had previously received. If that were what he had done, on balance I would probably be glad he had done it.

But that is not what he did. Instead, he relied upon a bestselling book that has been condemned by the international scholarly community. Even if his citations to Peters were impeccable--even if he is right that they are in fact impeccable--it is still true that he repackaged material from Peters' discredited bestseller, From Time Immemorial, and added to it his own imprimatur, as a Harvard law professor, in his bestseller The Case for Israel.

On this issue, Dershowitz has only two potential lines of defense. He could argue that he does not really rely on Peters' book in The Case for Israel, or he could argue that, contrary to the international scholarly consensus, Peters' book really is a legitimate source on which a serious scholar can reasonably rely.

To some extent, Dershowitz pursues both defenses. In The Case for Israel, for example, Dershowitz writes that "Peters's conclusions and data have been challenged. . . . I do not in any way rely on them in this book." (p. 246, n.31) Likewise, in his Case Study, Dershowitz writes, "I disagreed with some of [Peters'] conclusions and said so in my book The Case for Israel." (pp. 175-176) As proof that he had "said" he "disagreed with some of her conclusions," Dershowitz notes that in The Case for Israel he wrote, "Palestine was certainly not a land empty of all people. It is impossible to reconstruct the demographics of the area with any precision, since census data for that time period are not reliable." (The Case for Peace p. 229, n. 60, quoting The Case for Israel, p. 24) The quote does not mention Peters, so it is not in fact an example of Dershowitz having said that he disagreed with Peters' conclusions. Moreover, to my knowledge not even Peters ever claimed that Palestine was "a land empty of all people" before Zionist immigration.

Despite Dershowitz's attempts to distance himself from certain aspects of Peters' book, the fact remains that by his own admission (Case Study, p. 182) he relied upon Peters at least for some primary sources that he was unable to locate himself. Given the scholarly consensus concerning Peters' book, no serious scholar would have done that.

As regards the legitimacy of relying on Peters, Dershowitz writes in his Case Study that, although the book has its flaws, it "was supported by evidence and contributed an important new element to the debate." (p. 176) To support that claim he cites reviews of Peters' book that appeared in the Washington Post in 1984 and the Financial Times in 1985. (p. 229, n. 61) Regardless of what those reviews do or don't prove about Peters' contribution to scholarly debate in the mid-1980s, they prove nothing about whether Peters' book was considered a reputable scholarly source in 2003, when Dershowitz published The Case for Israel.

Dershowitz further states that "[a]ll Finkelstein . . . managed to show was that in a relatively small number of instances, Peters may have misinterpreted some data, ignored counterdata, and exaggerated some findings -- common problems in demographic research that often appear in anti-Israel books as well, including those of Chomsky." (p. 177) He cites no authority for that assessment, and he never sets forth or engages with Finkelstein's arguments in detail. (Readers who are curious about Finkelstein's critique of Peters can find it in his Image and Reality of the Israel/Palestine Conflict (2d ed. 2003) and judge for themselves.)

I take it that Dershowitz has not succeeded in refuting the international scholarly consensus that From Time Immemorial is neither a serious piece of scholarship nor a source on which a serious scholar would reasonably rely. Moreover, Dershowitz's weak disclaimers--e.g., certain aspects of Peters' book have been "challenged," and the book suffers from "common problems in demographic research"--actually make matters worse. They create the misleading impression that the book's flaws are common in other reputable works in the field, and that the book is merely the subject of scholarly controversy. It is not. Serious scholars no longer debate Peters' book--they dismiss it.

There is consequently no way out for Dershowitz here. Either he knew that Peters' book was discredited or he didn't. If he did know it, then he intentionally used a thoroughly disreputable source. If he didn't know it, then he was too ignorant of mainstream scholarly work on Israel/Palestine to deserve to be taken seriously. Either way, by relying on Peters in The Case for Israel and expressly defending her in The Case for Peace, he took himself outside the realm of serious, informed discussion of the topic on which he was writing.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

When I started to research and write this article, I intended to evaluate every charge that Dershowitz's List levels against Finkelstein. I started with the charges related to Beyond Chutzpah, both because they seemed the most relevant to Finkelstein's tenure case and because I thought they would be the easiest to investigate, since the documentary record concerning those charges is extensive and readily accessible. After wrapping those up, I intended to move on to the other items on Dershowitz's List. But I have abandoned that project. Here's why:

The first item on the List is entitled "Burt Neuborne." The first sentence after the title reads: "Finkelstein actually tried to get Burt Neuborne, a professor of law at NYU and one of the country's top civil liberties and Supreme Court advocates, disbarred." Here's some background on Neuborne and Finkelstein: Neuborne was one of the lead attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the litigation against Swiss banks to recover funds in dormant accounts that had belonged to Holocaust victims. The banks ended up settling the suit for $1.25 billion. In his book The Holocaust Industry (2d ed. 2003), Finkelstein is harshly critical of the conduct of that litigation, arguing that the banks were "blackmailed" into settling for an amount far in excess of what was justified by the evidence (which is roughly $60 million, according to Finkelstein), and that much of the $1.25 billion recovery will not actually be paid to Holocaust survivors (hence Finkelstein's label of the affair as a "double shakedown": first the banks are "shaken down" for more than they owe, and then the Holocaust survivors are "shaken down" by being denied the recovered funds). Neuborne vigorously disputes virtually every aspect of Finkelstein's account.

There is an item posted on Finkelstein's web site (www.normanfinkelstein.com) entitled "Should Burt Neuborne be Disbarred?" The text of the item, however, says nothing about disbarment. Rather, it consists almost entirely of a letter from Neuborne that was published in The Nation magazine in December 2000. (The letter responded to another letter in The Nation from Finkelstein, which itself was a response to a previous letter from Neuborne.) Dershowitz reproduces Neuborne's December 2000 letter in its entirety in his List, but he gets the date wrong (2006 instead of 2000). On his web site, Finkelstein prefaces and follows Neuborne's December 2000 letter with some brief critical comments, in which he again calls Neuborne a "blackmailer," and an "outrageous liar" as well.

Those are strong words, to be sure. But Dershowitz claims that "Finkelstein actually tried to get Burt Neuborne . . . disbarred." The posting on Finkelstein's web site does not constitute an attempt to get anyone disbarred. Neuborne is a member of the New York bar. The only way to try to get a New York lawyer disbarred is to send a letter of complaint to a disciplinary committee appointed by the New York state courts.

So I wrote to Finkelstein and asked him whether he had ever tried to get Neuborne disbarred and, if not, whether he was aware of any basis for the charge, other than the posting on his web site. He replied, "Of course not."

I also wrote to Neuborne. I quoted Dershowitz's charge verbatim and asked Neuborne if it was true. I also asked specifically whether Finkelstein had sent a complaint letter to a court-appointed disciplinary committee. Neuborne's reply began, "Frankly, I pay almost no attention to Mr. Finkelstein, so I can't say for certain what he's done." Neuborne referred me to the posting on Finkelstein's web site but said he hadn't seen it himself, because he has never visited the web site. He also said he thought Finkelstein called for his disbarment in a letter to The Nation. I checked; he didn't. And even if he had, writing a letter to The Nation does not constitute an attempt to get anyone disbarred.

But, I thought, what if Finkelstein is lying? How could I find out whether he really did send a complaint letter to a disciplinary committee?

It turns out I can't. Disciplinary proceedings are strictly confidential. The information becomes public only if the committee determines that the complaint has sufficient merit to warrant disciplining the attorney. I didn't bother to check Neuborne's disciplinary record, because I have absolutely no reason to believe it is anything but spotless. Also, I learned that the disciplinary committees sometimes investigate and resolve meritless complaints without ever informing the subject attorney. So the fact that Neuborne does not know of any complaint letter filed by Finkelstein does not prove that no such letter exists.

But here's the problem: In this investigatory endeavor, Dershowitz is in no better position than I am. Neither of us can lawfully get at the relevant records, assuming they exist. If Dershowitz is in possession of disciplinary records of a complaint by Finkelstein against Neuborne, he apparently didn't get them from Finkelstein or Neuborne, because they know of no such records. So Dershowitz would have to be in unauthorized possession of highly confidential information about a fellow attorney's disciplinary history. That would be a serious transgression and, I assume, not one that Dershowitz would want to trumpet.

So, giving Dershowitz the benefit of every doubt, I have to conclude that he has no more evidence to support his charge than I do. That is, he has nothing more than the posting on Finkelstein's web site. But Dershowitz knows as well as I do that the posting on Finkelstein's web site does not constitute an attempt to get anyone disbarred.

Recall that Dershowitz did not say "Finkelstein called for Neuborne's disbarment," or "Finkelstein asked whether Neuborne should be disbarred." Rather, in his List he wrote "Finkelstein actually tried to get Burt Neuborne . . . disbarred." Thus, Dershowitz drafted his charge in a way that readers would interpret to mean Finkelstein took at least some of the procedurally necessary steps to get Neuborne disbarred. And, giving Dershowitz the benefit of every doubt, he has no evidence that that's true.

Thus, putting aside Finkelstein's unequivocal denial (which we have been given no reason to question), the best that can be said for the charge is that we cannot independently confirm whether it is true or false. But the only reasonable inference from the available evidence is that the charge, interpreted in the way that any ordinary reader of the List would interpret it, is fraudulent, because Dershowitz has no evidence to support it.

On that basis, I concluded that the first sentence of the first item on Dershowitz's List of the "clearest and most egregious instances" of Finkelstein's lies is itself a fraud. And on that basis I concluded that my original project--to sift through and evaluate every single claim on Dershowitz's List--should be abandoned.

My work on the project, however incomplete, does nonetheless raise the following interesting question: If this is the best that an adversary as clever and dedicated as Dershowitz can come up with, how could Finkelstein possibly not deserve tenure?

Frank J. Menetrez received his PhD in philosophy and JD from UCLA. His
article The Real Reason to Get Out of Iraq appeared on ZNet last fall. He can be reached at frankmenetrez@yahoo.com.

Ghosts in The Machine Podcast Available!

2007-04-27T23:22:00.000-02:00

This week on a special Crossing The Line, since 1997 the United States has sent hundreds of people away to places unknown, innocent, yet accused of having terrorist ties; they have been drugged, imprisoned and tortured. I’ll speak with award-winning investigative journalist Stephen Grey about his new book that exposed the CIA’s torture program.

Also this week, our special correspondent Dahr Jamail reports from Lebanon about not only the country’s current political crisis and stalled recovery after the war with Israel, but also the influx of refugees from the Iraq war.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia abu-Jamal and The War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service, all this coming up. But first a look back at the week’s press in Palestine reported by Kristin Ess.

What cease-fire?

2007-04-26T11:19:00.000-02:00

Amira Hass
Haaretz
26.04.07

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/852315.html

Talking
about making and breaking a cease-fire spares the Palestinians from
having to admit the failure of their Qassam missile publicity stunts.
Proposals to widen the cease-fire to the West Bank sidestep any need
for an inter-Palestinian debate on the destructive uselessness of a
suicide-based `armed struggle.`

`Cease-fire` is yet another
hollow term, showing that the Palestinian representatives - elected or
not, Hamas or Fatah or Palestine Liberation Organization-Tunis, from
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to the last spokesman of
the Al-Aqsa Martyrs` `Brigades` - keep falling into the traps set for
them by the politics of Israeli occupation.

Talking for and
against the cease-fire fits in with the distorted picture of reality
that Israel has been constructing since September 2000, of two
symmetric, fighting sides - in which the Palestinians are the
aggressors and Israel, attacked, defends itself and retaliates.

On
the Saturday and Sunday before the Palestinians `broke the cease-fire,`
Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed nine Palestinians. Among them was
a 17-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy and a policeman who was on the
roof of his house and was not involved in any `battle.`

At 5
A.M. on April 21, an IDF force attacked Kufer Dan, near Jenin. The
force took over a few houses and turned them into shooting posts. Most
of the fire was aimed at a certain house in a western neighborhood.
Mohamed Abed, 23, was shot and killed on the roof of another house. The
soldiers said they had detected an armed man and shot him. Palestinian
sources say Abed was unarmed and merely wanted to check what was
happening outside.

Between 9 P.M. and 10 P.M. on Saturday, an
IDF force attacked the Jenin refugee camp - a routine activity.
Military vehicles surrounded the Bargheesh family`s house. One member
of the family, who is an Islamic Jihad activist, is wanted by Israel.
According to media reports, the IDF said its forces had called on the
family to come out of the house and `for un unclear reason the girl
remained inside.`

This is not true, people in the refugee camp
say. The parents and their daughter, Bushra, were all at home when she
was shot in the head and killed. Camp residents believe the soldier who
shot the schoolgirl dead had fired from a distant shooting post. The
wanted brother was not found.

On Sunday at 10 A.M., an IDF
force raided the village of Deir Abu Masha`al, north of Ramallah,
blocked all the entrances and imposed a curfew. Youngsters, including
Khaled Zahran, 15, threw stones at the soldiers. The soldiers fired
back. Zahran was wounded in the abdomen and died later.

Five
of those killed were Islamic Jihad and Fatah gunmen. They were killed
in Jenin and Nablus, in routine raids. Nobody bothers to check any more
when exactly these raids took place and whether they were intended to
effect an arrest or to carry out a death sentence without trial.

The
sixth person killed was a Gaza municipal employee, aged 43, who was in
his car in Beit Hanun when it was struck by an Israeli missile on
Saturday night. According to Palestinian sources, he was not a
`military` activist. Half an hour earlier, another missile missed three
Islamic Jihad activists.

But even if none of the nine had been
killed, there would have been no cease-fire on Saturday and Sunday,
just as there was no cease-fire last week and in the weeks before that.
Because the military occupation, even when it does not kill, is Israeli
fire, which has not ceased for 40 years - regardless of the
Palestinians` reactions or lack thereof.

Israeli fire includes
the Civil Administration`s every refusal of a permit to build a
Palestinian house, every person who is denied passage from Gaza to the
West Bank, every shekel of tax money that is not transferred to the
Palestinians, every roadblock in the West Bank, every dunam of land
stolen since June 1967, and every settlement - old or new, big or
small, within the Israeli consensus or not. Neither the Qassams nor any
negotiations process has managed to stop this Israeli fire.

A Long Road to Freedom: An Update on the Case of Sami al-Arian

2007-04-20T14:23:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, professor Sami al-Arian has been incarcerated for over four years in federal custody. Although he was acquitted of all charges to ties with a Palestinian terrorist organization, a Federal judge remanded him indefinitely. I’ll speak to Sami’s wife about his current situation, and the affect that a recent 60-day hunger strike had on him and his family.

Also this week, our special correspondent Dahr Jamail reporting from Damascus will update us on the Iraqi refugee crisis and the ongoing war in Iraq.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service.

What the persecution of Azmi Bishara means for Palestine

2007-04-16T19:28:00.001-02:00

By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 16 April 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6798.shtml

The Israeli state and the Zionist movement have begun
their latest assault in their century-long struggle to rid
Palestine of its indigenous people and transform their
country into a Jewish supremacist enclave: the persecution
of Azmi Bishara, one of the most important Palestinian
national leaders and thinkers working today. This case has
enormous significance for the Palestinian solidarity
movement.

Bishara is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, one of more
than one million who live inside the Jewish state, who are
survivors or their descendants of the Zionist ethnic
cleansing that forced most Palestinians to leave in
1947-48. Elected to the Knesset in 1996, Bishara is a
founder of the National Democratic Assembly, a party which
calls for Israel to be transformed from a sectarian
ethnocracy into a democratic state of all its citizens.

On Sunday, Bishara appeared on Al-Jazeera, after weeks of
press speculation that he had gone into exile and would
resign from the Knesset. He revealed that in fact he is
the target of a very high level probe by Israeli state
security services who apparently plan to bring serious
"security" related charges against him. Censorship on this
matter is so tight in "democratic" Israel that until a few
days ago Israeli newspapers were prohibited from even
mentioning the existence of the probe. They are still
forbidden from reporting anything about the substance of
the investigation, and Ha'aretz admitted that due to
official censorship it could not even reprint much of what
Bishara said to millions of viewers on television.

Bishara himself was vague about the allegations. If he
even knows all the details, he could place himself in
greater jeopardy by talking about them. He said he is
still thinking about his options, including when to return
to Israel. While he questioned the value of spending years
proving his innocence of things he does not consider
illegal, such as maintaining broad contacts with the Arab
world of which he feels a part, he poignantly reflected
that ultimately he faced a choice between prison, exile or
martyrdom. These indeed are the only choices Israel has
ever placed before Palestinians who refuse to submit to
the racist rule of Zionism.

What he was clear about was that he is the target of a
campaign, coordinated at the highest levels of the Israeli
state to destroy him and his movement politically. He is
undoubtedly right about this and there is long precedent.
In 2001, Israel's attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein
charged Bishara with "endangering the state" because of
comments he made during a visit to Syria, and the Knesset
voted for the first time in its history to lift the
immunity of one of its members so Bishara could be
prosecuted. In 2003, the Israeli Central Elections
Committee attempted to disqualify Bishara and his party
from standing in national elections, on the grounds that
the party did not adhere to the dogma that Israel must
remain a "Jewish state." Under Israeli law all parties are
required to espouse the dogma that Israel must always
grant special and better rights to Jews, meaning truly
democratic parties are always flirting with illegality.
That decision was eventually overturned by the courts.
(Though it should be noted that the ban was supported by
former attorney general Rubinstein, who is now a Supreme
Court judge!). Such persecution against Palestinians in
Israel has been the norm since the state was founded.
Until 1966, they lived under "military government," a form
of internal military occupation similar to that
experienced by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
today. Laws, practices and policies that continue to deny
their fundamental human rights are well described in
Jonathan Cook's recent book Blood and Religion: Unmasking
the Jewish and Democratic State. In recent years opinion
polls show that a majority of Israeli Jews consistently
support government efforts to force Palestinians citizens
out of the country. (In recent weeks, former Israeli prime
minister and current Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu
declared that it would be best if Bishara never returned).

Bishara sees Israel's latest gambit as signalling a change
in the "rules of the game." If he, an elected official, a
well-known public figure can face such tactics, what will
the rest of the community face? Indeed, the recent
publication by leading Palestinians in Israel of a report
calling for mild reforms to the Israeli state prompted
Israel's secret police, the Shin Bet (which operates
torture and death squads in the occupied territories) to
warn that it would "disrupt the activities of any groups
that seek to change the Jewish or democratic character of
Israel, even if they use democratic means" ("Arab leaders
air public relations campaign against Shin Bet," Ha'aretz,
6 April 2007). (There is precedent for such disruption not
only against Palestinians, but even against Israel's
Mizrahi Jews whose attempts to organize against Ashkenazi
discrimination were destroyed by the Shin Bet -- see
Joseph Massad's book The Persistence of the Palestinian
Question.)

Palestinian solidarity activists must understand and act
on the signal Israel is sending by persecuting Bishara.
For years, the mainstream Palestinian movement and its
allies have buried their heads in the slogan "end the
occupation." If it ever was, this vision is no longer
broad enough. We must recognize that Israel's war against
Palestinians does not discriminate among Palestinians,
sparing some and condemning others. It does however take
different forms, depending on where Palestinians are.
Those in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip live
under an extreme form of military tyranny now often called
"apartheid," though it is increasingly apparent that it is
something even worse. Palestinians inside Israel's 1948
borders live under a system of laws, policies and
practices that exclude them politically and oppress them
economically and socially. Millions of Palestinians
outside the country are victimized by racist laws that
forbid their return for the sole reason that they are not
Jews.

In practice this means that the Palestinian solidarity
movement needs to fashion a new message that breaks with
the failed fantasy of hermetic separation in nationalist
states. It means we have to focus on fighting Israeli
racism and colonialism in all its forms against those
under occupation, against those inside, and against those
in exile. We need to educate ourselves about what is
happening all over Palestine, not just in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip. We need to stand and act in solidarity
with Azmi Bishara and all Palestinians inside the 1948
lines who have for too long been marginalized and
abandoned by mainstream Palestinian politics. Support for
the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment
and sanctions is particularly urgent (see
http://www.pacbi.org/). In practice we need to start
building a vision of life after Israeli apartheid, an
inclusive life in which Israelis and Palestinians can live
in equality sharing the whole country. If Sinn Fein's
Gerry Adams and hardline Northern Ireland Unionist leader
Ian Paisley can sit down to form a government together, as
they are, and if Nelson Mandela and apartheid's National
Party could do the same, nothing is beyond the realm of
possibility in Palestine if we imagine it and work for it.

Azmi Bishara is the only Palestinian leader of
international stature expressing a vision and strategy
that is relevant to all Palestinians and can effectively
challenge Zionism. That is why he is in fear for his life,
safety and future while the quisling "president" Mahmoud
Abbas in Ramallah receives money and weapons from the
United States and tea and cakes from Ehud Olmert.

Whose government is this?

2007-04-16T01:27:00.001-02:00

By Gideon Levy

A call should be made to the Consumers Council: This is a case of wholesale fraud. In the sea of thieves, embezzlers and crooks around us, this is the largest deceit of all. The majority of Israeli citizens voted for a centrist government, perhaps even a bit left of center, and received one of the most extreme right-wing governments in the history of Israel.

We voted for Kadima, which promised convergence and an end to the occupation. We voted for Ehud Olmert, the left flank of Ariel Sharon, who was carried aloft (solely) on the wings of the disengagement's success. We voted for Shimon Peres, who always promises peace. We voted for the Pensioners, who did not speak like right-wingers. We voted for the Big Bang, which was supposed to be a harbinger of a pragmatic turnabout. And what did we receive? The world already knows and we should also recognize this: a benighted, right-wing government.

The 28,000 participants in a recent survey by the BBC World Service in 27 countries ranked Olmert's Israel, together with Ahmadinejad's Iran, as the countries having the most negative influence on the world. The current government is largely responsible for the fact that Israelis do not care that they are viewed this way. In a country where people are quick to sue a travel agency for a vacation package that did not meet their expectations, the masses of voters who fell victim to the great fraud remain silent.

The settlers establish another illegal outpost in Hebron, and most Israelis are not interested in the most criminal settlement of them all. And what does their government say? A front is already forming to oppose the evacuation. The Arab League extends its hand for peace and the 52 percent of Israelis who have heard of the Saudi initiative say it could constitute a basis for negotiation. And what does their government say? It makes a sour face and quashes the chance. There are signs of a chance to liberate Gilad Shalit and create a new atmosphere with the Palestinians; 45 percent of Israelis are in favor of releasing prisoners "with blood on their hands" and only 36 percent are opposed. And their government? It categorically rejects the Palestinian proposal. The majority of Israelis tell the pollsters that they are in favor of establishing a Palestinian state and evacuating settlements. And what is their government doing to realize the aspirations of its voters? Not a thing. It has been a long time since such a wide disparity has existed between the views of the public and the government, a disparity that makes democracy look like a bandage.

This gap reaches its peak in the case of the building in Hebron. In a government that raised the banner of evacuating settlements, there are quite a few ministers who are opposed to evacuating a building that was inhabited without a permit. Even a single building. Who are these opponents? Is it only Avigdor Lieberman? The prime minister himself has already promised not to evacuate the building, according to MK Effi Eitam. There is also Roni Bar-On from the "moderate" Kadima party, Eli Yishai from Shas and even Rafi Eitan from the Pensioners. "Israeli territory" is what Eitan calls the heart of the Palestinian city, where nearly 20,000 residents have already been forced to flee in fear of the settlers.

Never have the settlers been in a worse situation in terms of public opinion. Never has their situation been better in the government. After we thought the disengagement had rid us of their caprices and that they had been proved a paper tiger, the government is again intimidated by them, as in their heyday. The Marzels are provoking again, and they are winning again. How many Israelis have ever visited Hebron? How many of them have seen the dreadfulness with their own eyes? And look at how many of them are willing to continue to suffer the misdeeds of the settlers, to pay such a steep price for them, and to remain silent.

There is no protest in Israel and no center. Only radicalism speaks: The fragments of the far left still go out to protest, and the settlers continue with their extortion. If once their source of strength was broad public support, their source of strength now is an all-encompassing apathy. In a comatose society, the settlers can terrorize Olmert, Bar-On and Eitan. In a comatose government, inaction is turning into extreme right-wingedness.

But now we are also coming under suspicion. Perhaps when we are voting for the center and the left, we actually want the right? Maybe what we really want is a nationalistic, rightist government, and that all of the rest - the ostensibly enlightened talk about ending the occupation and evacuating settlements, human rights and a Palestinian state - is nothing more than a loathsome falsehood and self-deception?

AIPAC's Bully Pulpit Podcast Available

2007-04-13T22:39:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, it describes itself as the most important organization affecting the US relationship with Israel. But who is AIPAC? I’ll speak with award-winning investigative journalist Dave Lindorff about the lobby group whose annual budget is more than 65 million dollars and claims a membership of over 100,000. Also this week, we’ll her from our special correspondent Nora Barrows-Friedman who is currently in occupied Palestine abut the violence that raged over the most holiest weekend in the Christian calendar.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent news Service.

Slideshow: Old Damascus by Dahr Jamail

2007-04-11T12:26:00.000-02:00

Picture Balata

2007-04-10T12:51:00.000-02:00

MIDEAST: Israelis Torturing Palestinian Children

2007-04-10T12:25:00.000-02:00

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37283


Nora Barrows-Friedman

DHEISHEH REFUGEE CAMP, Occupied
West Bank, Apr 10 (IPS) - Mohammed
Mahsiri, a resident of Dheisheh
refugee camp in the occupied West Bank,
sits in a crowded café, a red
kuffiyeh wrapped around his neck and an
iconic portrait of Che Guevara
emblazoned on his black t-shirt.

About a year and a half ago, he
tells IPS, he and his friend were walking
down the street when Israeli
military jeeps surrounded them, shouted at
them in Hebrew to stop,
and forced them inside a jeep.

"I was taken to a detention centre
and interrogated," Mohammed says. "The
interrogation would begin at 2 o'clock
in the afternoon and would finish
after eleven pm. I was beaten all
the time, especially if the soldiers did
not get the answers they wanted.

"I was sent to be beaten by other
soldiers and forced to stand in the rain
with only thin clothes on. They
would try to convince me that I did
something that I did not do in order
to get the confession they wanted.
After being tortured at the
detention centre for one month, I was in
prison for 13 months."

Shocking photographs of torture
at U.S. military bases and detention
centres in Iraq and Afghanistan
outraged people across the globe, but
Palestinians say they have endured
similar treatment inside Israeli
interrogation centres since the
1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

But Mohammed Mahsiri's story is
different. He endured considerable
physical and psychological torture
by Israeli interrogators and prison
guards when he was just short of 17 years old.

What is being witnessed and documented
within the detention centres and
prison camps is widespread, systematic
violation of international laws
experienced by Palestinian children
under 18 years old, including torture,
interrogation, physical beatings,
deplorable living conditions and no
access to fair trial, according to
reports by human rights groups and
legal observers.

Under Israeli military orders in
force inside the occupied West Bank and
Gaza, any Palestinian over the age
of 16 is considered an adult, while
inside Israel the age of an adult
is 18 -- even though Israel is a
signatory to the International
Convention of the Rights of the Child,
which defines all children as under 18 years old.

Moreover, Palestinian children
over 14 years old are tried as adults in an
Israeli military court, and are
often put into prisons with adults. These
are also direct violations of international law.

According to the latest figures
offered by an independent group, there are
398 Palestinian children currently
inside Israeli detention centres and
prisons. Ayed Abuqtaish, research
cocoordinator with Defence for Children
International's Ramallah offices,
told IPS that the youngest child being
held in prison is just 14 years old.

"Usually, the Israeli troops invade
the child's house in the middle of the
night, in order to frighten the child
and his family," Abuqtaish told IPS.
"Many Israeli soldiers and vehicles
surround the house, and other soldiers
invade or force their way into the house.

"They intimidate the child to prepare
him for interrogation. When the
child arrives at the interrogation
centre, they employ different methods
of torture."

There are widespread reports of
physical beatings, Abuqtaish says, "but
currently, they concentrate mainly
on psychological torture like sleep
deprivation, or depriving him of
food or water, or putting him in solitary
confinement, or threatening him
with the demolition of his home or the
arrest of other family members.
Children have also reported that the
Israeli interrogators have
threatened to sexually abuse them."

Israel has consistently defended
its policies of interrogation inside
detention centres and prisons, saying
that it is a necessary tool against
the war on terror. In 1987,
according to Israel's Landau Commission of
Inquiry into interrogation policies,
the state determined that "a moderate
degree of pressure, including
physical pressure, in order to obtain
crucial information, is
unavoidable under certain circumstances."

"Israel is a state party to the
International Convention Against Torture,"
Abuqtaish said. "In its reports
to the committee, Israel always says that
their use of 'moderate physical
pressure' is consistent with the
obligation of the treaty, but,
needless to say, 'moderate physical
pressure' is obviously torture in itself."

Palestinian children in the Israeli
prison system are not given any legal
advocacy and are denied most of
their rights, involved lawyers say.

Arne Malmgren, a Swedish lawyer,
has worked as a legal observer inside
Israeli military courts during
trials of Palestinian children. "The
Israeli court system does not
look like any other court system in the
world," Malmgren told IPS.
"Israeli military staff, the judge, the
prosecutor, the interpreter -- they
are all in military uniform. There are
plenty of soldiers with weapons inside the courtroom.

"The small children come into the
courtroom in handcuffs and full chains;
there can be up to seven children
at the same time in the courtroom. One
lawyer described it as a cattle
market. The trial is more like a plea
bargain -- before the proceedings,
the prosecutor and the lawyer have
already agreed on the child's
sentence, and then they just ask the judge
if he agrees, and he almost always does.

"There are no witnesses, nothing.
And the worst thing is what happened
before the child arrives at the
courtroom -- when they interrogate these
young boys and girls to get them
to sign confessions to things they may or
may not have done."

As negotiations between Palestinian
and Israeli officials move forward
this week in a possible prisoner
exchange deal that may include the
release of all imprisoned Palestinian
women and children in a swap for an
Israeli occupation soldier captured
by Palestinian groups in Gaza last
June, many Palestinians, including
Mohammed Mahsiri, are hoping to see
relatives, friends and loved ones come home.

"When I was released from prison, it
was the best day of my life," Mahsiri
tells IPS. "We were beaten every day.
The food was very bad. It was the
hardest thing we had to face.
No child should ever have to experience
that."

How Can Children of the Holocaust Do Such Things?

2007-04-08T12:57:00.000-02:00

A Jewish Plea

By SARA ROY

We have nothing to lose except everything.

Albert Camus

During the summer my husband and I had a conversion ceremony for our adopted daughter, Jess. We took her to the mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath where she was totally submerged in a pool of living water -- living because it is fed in part by heavenly rain -- and momentarily suspended as we are in the womb, emerging the same yet transformed. This ritual of purification, transformation and rebirth is central to Judaism and it signifies renewal and possibility.

The day of Jess's conversion was also the day that Israel began its pitiless bombing of Lebanon and nearly three weeks into Israel's violent assault on Gaza, a place that has been my second home for the last two decades. This painful juxtaposition of rebirth and destruction remains with me, weighing heavily, without respite. Yet, the link deeply forged in our construction of self as Jews, between my daughter's acceptance into Judaism and Israel's actions-between Judaism and Zionism -- a link that I never accepted uncritically but understood as historically inevitable and understandable, is one that for me, at least, has now been broken.

For unlike past conflicts involving Israel and the Palestinian and Arab peoples this one feels qualitatively different -- a turning point -- not only with regard to the nature of Israel's horrific response -- its willingness to destroy and to do so utterly -- but also with regard to the virtually unqualified support of organized American Jewry for Israel's brutal actions, something that is not new but now no longer tolerable to me.

I grew up in a home where Judaism was defined and practiced not so much as a religion but as a system of ethics and culture. God was present but not central. Israel and the notion of a Jewish homeland were very important to my parents, who survived Auschwitz, Chelmno and Buchenwald. But unlike many of their friends, my parents were not uncritical of Israel. Obedience to a state was not a primary Jewish value, especially after the Holocaust. Judaism provided the context for Jewish life, for values and beliefs that were not dependent upon national or territorial boundaries, but transcended them to include the other, always the other. For my mother and father Judaism meant bearing witness, raging against injustice and refusing silence. It meant compassion, tolerance, and rescue. In the absence of these imperatives, they taught me, we cease to be Jews.

Many of the people, both Jewish and others, who write about Palestinians and Arabs fail to accept the fundamental humanity of the people they are writing about, a failing born of ignorance, fear and racism. Within the organized Jewish community especially, it has always been unacceptable to claim that Arabs, Palestinians especially, are like us, that they, too, possess an essential humanity and must be included within our moral boundaries, ceasing to be "a kind of solution," a useful, hostile "other" to borrow from Edward Said. That any attempt at separation is artificial, an abstraction.

By refusing to seek proximity over distance, we calmly, even gratefully refuse to see what is right before our eyes. We are no longer compelled, if we ever were, to understand our behavior from positions outside our own, to enter, as Jacqueline Rose has written, into each other's predicaments and make what is one of the hardest journeys of the mind. Hence, there is no need to maintain a living connection with the people we are oppressing, to humanize them, taking into account the experience of subordination itself, as Said would say. We are not preoccupied by our cruelty nor are we haunted by it. The task, ultimately, is to tribalize pain, narrowing the scope of human suffering to ourselves alone. Such willful blindness leads to the destruction of principle and the destruction of people, eliminating all possibility of embrace, but it gives us solace.

Why is it so difficult, even impossible to incorporate Palestinians and other Arab peoples into the Jewish understanding of history? Why is there so little perceived need to question our own narrative (for want of a better word) and the one we have given others, preferring instead to cherish beliefs and sentiments that remain impenetrable? Why is it virtually mandatory among Jewish intellectuals to oppose racism, repression and injustice almost anywhere in the world and unacceptable -- indeed, for some, an act of heresy -- to oppose it when Israel is the oppressor, choosing concealment over exposure? For many among us history and memory adhere to preclude reflection and tolerance, where, in the words of Northrop Frye, "the enemy become, not people to be defeated, but embodiments of an idea to be exterminated."

What happens to the other as we, a broken and weary people, continually abuse him, turning him into the enemy we now want and need, secure in a prophecy that is thankfully self-fulfilling?

What happens to a people when renewal and injustice are rapturously joined?

A new discourse of the unconscious

We speak without mercy, numb to the pain of others, incapable of being reached-unconscious. Our words are these:

* " . . . [W]e must not forget,' wrote Ze'ev Schiff, the senior political and military analyst for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, "the most important aspect of this war: Hezbollah and what this terrorist organization symbolizes must be destroyed at any price. . . .What matters is not the future of the Shiite town of Bint Jbail or the Hezbollah positions in Maroun Ras, but the future and safety of the State of Israel." "If Israel doesn't improve its military cards in the fighting, we will feel the results in the political solution."

* "We must reduce to dust the villages of the south . . ." stated Haim Ramon, long known as a political dove and Israel's Minister of Justice. "I don't understand why there is still electricity there." "Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah. . . What we should do in southern Lebanon is employ huge firepower before a ground force goes in." Israel's largest selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth put it this way: "A village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire. This decision should have been made and executed after the first Katyusha. But better late than never."

* "[F]or every katyusha barrage on Haifa, 10 Dahiya buildings will be bombed," said the IDF Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz. Eli Yishai, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, proposed turning south Lebanon into a "sandbox", while Knesset member Moshe Sharoni called for the obliteration of Gaza, and Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, suggested an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses followed by a parade of prisoners in their underwear in order "to strengthen the home front's morale."

* "Remember: distorted philosophical sensitivity [sic] to human lives will make us pay the real price of the lives of many, and the blood of our sons," read an advertisement in Ha'aretz.

* "[A]ccording to Jewish law," announced the Yesha Rabbinical Council, "during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents of the enemy'."

* "But speaking from our own Judaic faith and legal legacy," argued the Rabbinical Council of America, "we believe that Judaism would neither require nor permit a Jewish soldier to sacrifice himself in order to save deliberately endangered enemy civilians. This is especially true when confronting a barbaric enemy who would by such illicit, consistent, and systematic means seek to destroy not only the Jewish soldier, but defeat and destroy the Jewish homeland. New realities do indeed require new responses."

* The Israeli author, Naomi Ragan, after learning that many of the war dead in Lebanon were children, wrote "Save your sympathy for the mothers and sisters and girlfriends of our young soldiers who would rather be sitting in study halls learning Torah, but have no choice but to risk their precious lives full of hope, goodness and endless potential, to wipe out the cancerous terrorist cells that threaten their people and all mankind. Make your choice, and save your tears."

Many of us, perhaps most, have declared that all Palestinians and Lebanese are the enemy, threatening our -- Israel and the Jewish people's -- existence. Everyone we kill and every house we demolish is therefore a military target, legitimate and deserving. Terrorism is part of their culture and we must strengthen our ability to deter. Negotiation, to paraphrase the Israeli scholar, Yehoshua Porat, writing during the 1982 Lebanon war, is a "veritable catastrophe for Israel." The battlefield will preserve us.

The French critic and historian, Hippolyte Taine, observed:

"Imagine a man who sets out on a voyage equipped with a pair of spectacles that magnify things to an extraordinary degree. A hair on his hand, a spot on the tablecloth, the shifting fold of a coat, all will attract his attention; at this rate, he will not go far, he will spend his day taking six steps and will never get out of his room."

We are content in our room and seek no exit.

In our room, compassion and conscience are dismissed as weakness, where pinpoint surgical strikes constitute restraint and civility and momentary ceasefires, acts of humanity and kindness. "Leave your home, we are going to destroy it." Several minutes later another home in Gaza, another history, is taken, crushed. The warning, though, is not for them but for us-it makes us good and clean. What better illustration of our morality: when a call to leave one's home minutes before it is bombed is considered a humane gesture.

Our warnings have another purpose: they make our actions legitimate and our desire for legitimacy is unbounded, voracious. This is perhaps the only thing Palestinians (and now the Lebanese) have withheld from us, this object of our desire. If legitimacy will not be bestowed then it must be created. This explains Israel's obsession with laws and legalities to insure in our own eyes that we do not transgress, making evil allowable by widening the parameters of license and transgression. In this way we insure our goodness and morality, through a piece of paper, which is enough for us.

What are Jews now capable of resisting: tyranny? Oppression? Occupation? Injustice? We resist none of these things, no more. For too many among us they are no longer evil but necessary and good-we cannot live, survive without them. What does that make us? We look at ourselves and what do we see: a non-Jew, a child, whose pain we inflict effortlessly, whose death is demanded and unquestioned, bearing validity and purpose.

What do we see: a people who now take pleasure in hating others. Hatred is familiar to us if nothing else. We understand it and it is safe. It is what we know. We do not fear our own distortion -- do we even see it? -- but the loss of our power to deter, and we shake with a violent palsy at a solution that shuns the suffering of others. Our pathology is this: it lies in our struggle to embrace a morality we no longer possess and in our need for persecution of a kind we can no longer claim but can only inflict.

We are remote from the conscious world -- brilliantly ignorant, blindly visionary, unable to resist from within. We live in an unchanging place, absent of season and reflection, devoid of normality and growth, and most important of all, emptied-or so we aim -- of the other. A ghetto still but now, unlike before, a ghetto of our own making.

What is our narrative of victory and defeat? What does it mean to win? Bombed cars with white civilian flags still attached to their windows? More dead and dismembered bodies of old people and children littered throughout villages that have been ravaged? An entire country disabled and broken? Non-ending war? This is our victory, our achievement, something we seek and applaud. And how do we measure defeat? Losing the will to continue the devastation? Admitting to our persecution of others, something we have never done?

We can easily ignore their suffering, cut them from their food, water, electricity, and medicine, confiscate their land, demolish their crops and deny them egress -- suffocate them, our voices stilled. Racism does not allow us to see Arabs as we see ourselves; that is why we rage when they do not fail from weakness but instead we find ourselves failing from strength. Yet, in our view it is we who are the only victims, vulnerable and scarred. All we have is the unnaturalness of our condition.

As an unconscious people, we have perhaps reached our nadir with many among us now calling for a redefinition of our ethics-the core of who we are -- to incorporate the need to kill women and children if Jewish security required it. "New realities do indeed require new responses," says the Rabbinical Council of America. Now, for us, violence is creation and peace is destruction.

Ending the process of creation and rebirth after the Holocaust

Can we be ordinary, an essential part of our rebirth after the Holocaust? Is it possible to be normal when we seek refuge in the margin, and remedy in the dispossession and destruction of another people? How can we create when we acquiesce so willingly to the demolition of homes, construction of barriers, denial of sustenance, and ruin of innocents? How can we be merciful when, to use Rose's words, we seek "omnipotence as the answer to historical pain?" We refuse to hear their pleading, to see those chased from their homes, children incinerated in their mother's arms. Instead we tell our children to inscribe the bombs that will burn Arab babies.

We argue that we must eliminate terrorism. What do we really know of their terrorism, and of ours? What do we care? Rather, with language that is denuded and infested-give them more time to bomb so that Israel's borders can be natural-we engage repeatedly in a war of desire, a war not thrust upon us but of our own choosing, ingratiating ourselves with the power to destroy others and insensate to the death of our own children. What happens to a nation, asks the Israeli writer David Grossman, that cannot save its own child, words written before his own son was killed in Lebanon?

There are among Israelis real feelings of vulnerability and fear, never resolved but used, intensified. Seeing one's child injured or killed is the most horrible vision -- Israelis are vulnerable, far more than other Jews. Yet, we as a people have become a force of extremism, of chaos and disorder, trying to plow an unruly sea-addicted to death and cruelty, intoxicated, with one ambition: to mock the pauper.

Judaism has always prided itself on reflection, critical examination, and philosophical inquiry. The Talmudic mind examines a sentence, a word, in a multitude of ways, seeking all possible interpretations and searching constantly for the one left unsaid. Through such scrutiny it is believed comes the awareness needed to protect the innocent, prevent injury or harm, and be closer to God.

Now, these are abhorred, eviscerated from our ethical system. Rather the imperative is to see through eyes that are closed, unfettered by investigation. We conceal our guilt by remaining the abused, despite our power, creating situations where our victimization is assured and our innocence affirmed. We prefer this abyss to peace, which would hurl us unacceptably inward toward awareness and acknowledgement.

Jews do not feel shame over what they have created: an inventory of inhumanity. Rather we remain oddly appeased, even calmed by the desolation. Our detachment allows us to bear such excess (and commit it), to sit in Jewish cafes while Palestinian mothers are murdered in front of their children in Gaza. I can now better understand how horror occurs-how people, not evil themselves, can allow evil to happen. We salve our wounds with our incapacity for remorse, which will be our undoing.

Instead the Jewish community demands unity and conformity: "Stand with Israel" read the banners on synagogues throughout Boston last summer. Unity around what? There is enormous pressure -- indeed coercion -- within organized American Jewry to present an image of "wall to wall unity" as a local Jewish leader put it. But this unity is an illusion -- at its edges a smoldering flame rapidly engulfing its core -- for mainstream Jewry does not speak for me or for many other Jews. And where such unity exists, it is hollow built around fear not humanity, on the need to understand reality as it has long been constructed for us -- with the Jew as the righteous victim, the innocent incapable of harm. It is as if our unbending support for Israel's militarism "requires putting our minds as it were into Auschwitz where being a Jew puts your existence on the line. To be Jewish means to be threatened, nothing more. Hence, the only morality we can acknowledge is saving Israel and by extension, ourselves." Within this paradigm, it is dissent not conformity that will diminish and destroy us. We hoard our victimization as we hoard our identity -- they are one -- incapable of change, a failing that will one day result in our own eviction. Is this what Zionism has done to Judaism?

Israel's actions not only demonstrate the limits of Israeli power but our own limitations as a people: our inability to live a life without barriers, to free ourselves from an ethnic loyalty that binds and contorts, to emerge, finally, from our spectral chamber.

Ending the (filial) link between Israel and the Holocaust

How can the children of the Holocaust do such things, they ask? But are we really their rightful offspring?

As the Holocaust survivor dies, the horror of that period and its attendant lessons withdraw further into abstraction and for some Jews, many of them in Israel, alienation. The Holocaust stands not as a lesson but as an internal act of purification where tribal attachment rather than ethical responsibility is demanded and used to define collective action. Perhaps this was an inevitable outcome of Jewish nationalism, of applying holiness to politics, but whatever its source, it has weakened us terribly and cost us greatly.

Silvia Tennenbaum, a survivor and activist writes: "No matter what great accomplishments were ours in the diaspora, no matter that we produced Maimonides and Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn and hundreds of others of mankind's benefactors -- not a warrior among them! -- we look at the world of our long exile always in the dark light of the Shoah. But this, in itself, is an obscene distortion: would the author . . . Primo Levi, or the poet Paul Celan demand that we slaughter the innocents in a land far from the snow-clad forests of Poland? Is it a heroic act to murder a child, even the child of an enemy? Are my brethren glad and proud? . . . And, it goes without saying, loyal Jews must talk about the Holocaust. Ignore the images of today's dead and dying and focus on the grainy black and white pictures showing the death of Jews in the villages of Poland, at Auschwitz and Sobibor and Bergen-Belsen. We are the first, the only true victims, the champions of helplessness for all eternity."

What did my family perish for in the ghettos and concentration camps of Poland? Is their role to be exploited and in the momentary absence of violence, to be forgotten and abandoned?

Holocaust survivors stood between the past and the present, bearing witness, sometimes silently, and even in word, often unheard. Yet, they stood as a moral challenge among us and also as living embodiments of a history, way of life and culture that long predated the Holocaust and Zionism (and that Zionism has long denigrated), refusing, in their own way, to let us look past them. Yet, this generation is nearing its end and as they leave us, I wonder what is truly left to take their place, to fill the moral void created by their absence?

Is it, in the words of a friend, himself a Jew, a "memory manufactory, with statues, museums and platoons of 'scholars' designed to preserve, indeed ratchet up Jewish feelings of persecution and victimhood, a Hitler behind every Katyusha or border skirmish, which must be met with some of the same crude slaughterhouse tools the Nazis employed against the Jews six decades ago: ghettos, mass arrests and the denigration of their enemy's humanity?" Do we now measure success in human bodies and in carnage, arguing that our dead bodies are worth more than theirs, our children more vulnerable and holy, more in need of protection and love, their corpses more deserving of shrouds and burial? Is meaning for us to be derived from martyrdom or from children born with a knife in their hearts? Is this how my grandmother and grandfather are to be remembered?

Our tortured past and its images trespass upon our present not only in Israel but in Gaza and Lebanon as well. "They were temporarily buried in an empty lot with dozens of others," writes a New York Times reporter in Lebanon. "They were assigned numbers, his wife and daughter. Alia is No. 35 and Sally is No. 67. 'They are numbers now,' said the father. There are no names anymore."

"They were shrunken figures, dehydrated and hungry," observes the Washington Post. "Some had lived on candy bars, others on pieces of dry bread. Some were shell-shocked, their faces blank . . . One never made it. He was carried out on a stretcher, flies landing on lifeless eyes that were still open."

As the rightful claimants to our past we should ask, How much damage can be done to a soul? But we do not ask. We do not question the destruction but only our inability to complete it, to create more slaughter sites.

Can we ever emerge from our torpor, able to mourn the devastation?

Our ultimate eviction?

Where do Jews belong? Where is our place? Is it in the ghetto of a Jewish state whose shrinking boundaries threaten, one day, to evict us? We are powerful but not strong. Our power is our weakness, not our strength, because it is used to instill fear rather than trust, and because of that, it will one day destroy us if we do not change. More and more we find ourselves detached from our past, suspended and abandoned, alone, without anchor, aching-if not now, eventually-for connection and succor. Grossman has written that as a dream fades it does not become a weaker force but a more potent one, desperately clung to, even as it ravages and devours.

We consume the land and the water behind walls and steel gates forcing out all others. What kind of place are we creating? Are we fated to be an intruder in the dust to borrow from Faulkner, whose presence shall evaporate with the shifting sands? Are these the boundaries of our rebirth after the Holocaust?

I have come to accept that Jewish power and sovereignty and Jewish ethics and spiritual integrity are, in the absence of reform, incompatible, unable to coexist or be reconciled. For if speaking out against the wanton murder of children is considered an act of disloyalty and betrayal rather than a legitimate act of dissent, and where dissent is so ineffective and reviled, a choice is ultimately forced upon us between Zionism and Judaism.

Rabbi Hillel the Elder long ago emphasized ethics as the center of Jewish life. Ethical principles or their absence will contribute to the survival or destruction of our people. Yet, today what we face is something different and possibly more perverse: it is not the disappearance of our ethical system but its rewriting into something disfigured and execrable.

As Jews in a post-Holocaust world empowered by a Jewish state, how do we as a people emerge from atrocity and abjection, empowered and also humane, something that still eludes us? How do we move beyond fear and omnipotence, beyond innocence and militarism, to envision something different, even if uncertain? "How," asks Ahad Haam, the founding father of cultural Zionism, "do you make a nation pause for thought?"

For many Jews (and Christians), the answer lies in a strong and militarized Jewish state. For others, it is found in the very act of survival. For my parents-defeating Hitler meant living a moral life. They sought a world where "affirmation is possible and . . . dissent is mandatory," where our capacity to witness is restored and sanctioned, where we as a people refuse to be overcome by the darkness.

Can we ever turn away from our power to destroy?

It is here that I want to share a story from my family, to describe a moment that has inspired all of my work and writing.

My mother and her sister had just been liberated from concentration camp by the Russian army. After having captured all the Nazi officials and guards who ran the camp, the Russian soldiers told the Jewish survivors that they could do whatever they wanted to their German persecutors. Many survivors, themselves emaciated and barely alive, immediately fell on the Germans, ravaging them. My mother and my aunt, standing just yards from the terrible scene unfolding in front of them, fell into each other's arms weeping. My mother, who was the physically stronger of the two, embraced my aunt, holding her close and my aunt, who had difficulty standing, grabbed my mother as if she would never let go. She said to my mother, "We cannot do this. Our father and mother would say this is wrong. Even now, even after everything we have endured, we must seek justice, not revenge. There is no other way." My mother, still crying, kissed her sister and the two of them, still one, turned and walked away.

What then is the source of our redemption, our salvation? It lies ultimately in our willingness to acknowledge the other-the victims we have created-Palestinian, Lebanese and also Jewish-and the injustice we have perpetrated as a grieving people. Perhaps then we can pursue a more just solution in which we seek to be ordinary rather then absolute, where we finally come to understand that our only hope is not to die peacefully in our homes as one Zionist official put it long ago but to live peacefully in those homes.

When my daughter Jess was submerged under the waters of the mikvah for the third and final time, she told me she saw rainbows under the water. I shall take this beautiful image as a sign of her rebirth and plead desperately for ours.

Sara Roy is Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studie, Harvard University. "A Jewish Plea" will be published in The War on Lebanon: A Reader . Nubar Hovsepian (ed), Interlink Publishing, Spring 2007. Sara Roy can be reached at sroy@fas.harvard.edu

What Have We Done To Desrve This? (Podcast Available!)

2007-04-06T22:20:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing the Line, the catastrophe of the sewage spill in the north of Gaza is yet another part of an ongoing crisis in the occupied territories. As rescue workers and aid agencies scurry to help the victims and their families, we’ll here from Dr. Mona al-Fara about the current situation, that’s coming up. Also this week, we’ll hear from our special correspondent Nora Barrows-Friedman who is attending the 3rd Annual International Media Forum in Doha, Qatar.

Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and the War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service

Ilan Pappe to quit Israel for UK

2007-04-05T12:27:00.000-02:00

"Ilan Pappe, a senior lecturer in the
University of Haifa's
Department of Political Science,
says he is moving to the UK because it
is "increasingly difficult to live
in Israel" with his "unwelcome views
and convictions."

In an interview in The Peninsula,
Qatar's leading English-language
daily, during a visit last week
to Doha as a guest of the Qatar
Foundation, Pappe said:
"I was boycotted in my university and
there had been attempts to
expel me from my job. I am getting
threatening calls from people every day.
I am not being viewed as a threat
to the Israeli society but
my people think that I am either
insane or my views are irrelevant.
Many Israelis also believe
that I am working as a mercenary for the
Arabs."

Pappe is to join the History
Department at Exeter University,
in southwest England. He is active in anti-Israel
academic boycott efforts.

Referred to in the Peninsula
article as "the only
Jewish academic in Israel who
is vehemently critical of Zionism," Pappe
said the only solution to the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict was the
creation of a single state,
shared by Jews, Arabs and others. He said
that two independent states
cannot coexist in "the land of Palestine."

He also said there was "no
immediate solution to the crisis
and only international pressure
can force Israel to end the occupation
and the continuing atrocities against the Palestinians."
"Over the past six years, the
Israeli government has become more
oppressive, thanks to the strong
support from the Bush administration.
They now feel that they can do anything they want," he said.

The interviewer in Qatar
admitted to being "a bit surprised" by
Pappe's support for Hamas.

"A bit surprisingly," the
paper wrote, Pappe said: "I support
Hamas in its resistance against
the Israeli occupation, though I
disagree with their political ideology.
I am for separating state from
religion."

Pappe also questioned Israeli
democracy: "Any state that
perpetrates occupation cannot be
called a democratic state," he said,
adding that Israeli democracy
was meant "only for Jews" and there is
"no space for other communities."

The interview then looks at what
has shaped Pappe's opinions: "Pappe's
transformation from a 'typical
Jew' to a strong critic of Zionism
started in the 1980s while studying in the UK," it wrote.

"I reexamined the events of 1948,
which changed my perceptions,
and I realized how the Israeli
state was formed at the expense of the
Palestinians. I don't subscribe
to the view that a community
which has a claim to a land
that goes back thousands of years had the
right to occupy it by dispossessing
indigenous communities," Pappe
said......."

Bush, AIPAC and Palestine

2007-04-04T01:25:00.001-02:00

The Political Economy of a Disaster

By JAMES PETRAS

On Monday, March 26, 2007 in Northern Gaza a river of raw sewage and debris overflowed from a collapsed earth embankment into a refugee camp driving 3,000 Palestinians from their homes. Five residents drowned, 25 were injured and scores of houses were destroyed.

The New York Times, Washington Post and the television media blamed shoddy infrastructure. The Daily Alert (the house organ of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations) blamed the Palestinians who they claimed were removing sand to sell to construction contractors thus undermining the earth embankment. The disaster at Umm Naser (the village in question) is emblematic of everything that is wrong with US-Israeli politics in the Middle East. The disaster in this isolated village has its roots first and foremost in Washington where AIPAC and its political allies have successfully secured US backing for Israel's financial and economic boycott of the Palestinian government subsequent to the democratic electoral victory of Hamas.

AIPAC's victory in Washington reverberated throughout Europe and beyond ñ as the European Union also applied sanctions shutting off financing of all new infrastructure projects and the maintenance of existing facilities. At the AIPAC conventions of 2005 through 2007, the leaders of both major American parties, congressional leaders and the White House pledged to re-enforce AIPAC's boycott and sanctions strategy. AIPAC celebrated its victory for Israeli policy and claimed authorship of the legislation. In addition to malnutrition, the policy undermined all public maintenance projects.

Equally central to the disaster, Israel's massive sustained bombing attack on Gaza in the summer of 2006, demolished roads, bridges, sewage treatment facilities, water purification and electrical power plants. Northern Gaza was one of its many targets, putting severe strain on already precarious infrastructure and government budgets ñ including the maintenance of sewage treatment plants and cesspools.

The Israeli economic blockade of Gaza increased unemployment, poverty and hunger to unprecedented levels. Out of work Gazans reached over 60% of the population ñ large families with young children were reduced to one meal a day. Family heads desperately looked for any way to earn funds to buy a pound of chickpeas, oil, rice and flour for bread. It is possible that forced by the AIPAC- induced US-EU boycott and Israeli bombing and blockade, that some desperate workers removed some sand around the cesspool. The pretext cited by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) for blaming the Palestinian victims for their own suffering, and exonerating the Israelis, AIPAC and their congressional clients.

The PMAJO has justified thirty-nine years of Israeli occupation and criminal neglect of Gaza's basic sewage treatment facilities. Israel spends less than 2% on a per capita basis for basic services in the Occupied Territories that it is obligated under international law to provide responsibly than it spends in Israel. The United Nations and Israeli human rights groups have documented Israel's callous lack of responsibility toward the Palestinian civilians under its brutal occupation. It is not surprising that the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations can think of nothing better than to blame the destitute Palestinians for the collapse of a primitive earth embankment and the horrific
deaths.

To the extent that any Palestinian leader can be held responsible, the finger points to the US and Israeli-backed PLO and its titular head Abbas who receives whatever ëhumanitarian' aid flows into Palestine. The tens of millions of dollars of Palestinian import taxes held by Israeli banks were handed over to Mahmoud Abbas , to arm the anti-Hamas vigilantes. Over the past two decades the US-backed ëmoderate' PLO leaders and crony ëcapitalists' have diverted tens of millions of dollars and euros to their private overseas bank accounts, with the acquiescence of their European, US and Israeli patrons. What is a bit of Palestinian corruption if it means propping up an incompetent group of
pliant ëleaders'?

The plight of the Umm Naser villagers deluged by their own sewage was neither an act of fate nor a result of local negligence or theft: It was a direct consequence of all that is wrong in US-Middle East politics, the taking sides with a brutal colonial power and its powerful voices and organizations in Washington. Umm Naser is written large throughout Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon: Millions of Arab villagers suffer the consequences of pre-emptive wars to secure Greater Israel as both President Bush and Vice President have publicly stated in justifying their aggression.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and the State: Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, will be published in October 2005. He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu

Fatah training new force in Egypt for renewed infighting

2007-04-01T11:13:00.001-02:00



By Avi Issacharoff

Haaretz
31 March 2007

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/844277.html

Fatah has established a new security apparatus in the Gaza
Strip and is recruiting thousands of militants in
preparation for another round of violent clashes with
Hamas. So far the organization - known as the Special
Force - has recruited 1,400 combatants, a thousand of
which have undergone military training.

Fatah intends to recruit an addition of at least 1,000 men
to the organization, loyal to Palestinian Authority
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The organization is headed by Sami
Abu Samhadana, a notable operative in the first intifada.

Palestinian sources told Haaretz that the new recruitment
effort was initiated some six weeks ago. According to the
sources, officers from Palestinian General Intelligence
service and the National Security Force were assigned to
the ranks of the new organization.

They added that the organization is designed to function
as an intervention force in case of a second conflagration
of hostilities in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and Fatah.

The sources, loyal to Fatah, add that the cease-fire
between the two rival factions is regarded as a temporary
arrangement, to be terminated as soon as Hamas "perceives
itself strong enough to overtake Fatah militarily."

Therefore, the sources say, the Special Fatah Force along
with Abbas' Presidential Guard will have an important role
in deterring Hamas from resuming hostilities.

Abu Samhadana was appointed commander of the Special Force
several years ago, but it was only recently decided to
transform his relatively insignificant organization into a
new major apparatus loyal only to Fatah and Abbas. Abu
Samhadana is nonetheless considered an ally of Mohammed
Dahlan, head of the Palestinian National Security Council
and aide to Abbas.

Abu Samhadana's brother, Jammal, had been head of the
Popular Resistance Committees, a breakaway Fatah militia,
until Israel assassinated him last June. During the second
intifada, Sami Abu Samhadana was sent to Egypt for medical
attention due to heart problems. Upon his return, Israel
barred him from re-entering the Strip, so he stole across
the border with Egypt into the Strip through a tunnel in
Rafah where his wife's family lives.

Palestinian sources say some 350 combatants from the
Special Force were sent to Egypt at the beginning of March
to participate in a training course under the tutelage of
officers from the Palestinian Authority and Egyptian army.

The combatants of the Special Force training in Egypt were
joined by several hundred soldiers of the Presidential
Guard. Other soldiers of the Guard are currently training
within the PA, in Gaza and in Jericho, where 500 new
Presidential Guard recruits have only recently completed
their training program.

The sources say both the Special Force and the
Presidential Guard are exercising strict discretion in
accepting new recruits. "Anyone with any sort of
affiliation to Islamist groups will not be accepted," they
say. Sources add that Hamas is well aware of the mass
recruiting and training in organizations loyal to Fatah,
and that senior Hamas figures are pressing to militarily
engage Fatah as soon as possible. They fear Dahlan and
Abbas' military force would greatly surpass Hamas' forces
in several months' time, the sources explain.

Currently, however, there appears to be a shortage in
weapons in Fatah's ranks. According to the sources, Egypt
shipped some 200 assault rifles to Abbas' forces three
months ago, with Israel's consent. During the visit to the
region of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her
Middle East envoy, David Welsh, Abbas demanded that Israel
allow the transfer of weapons to Fatah forces. The request
was made both to Israel and to the Americans, but was
rejected by both parties.

Meanwhile, the violent clashes between Fatah and Hamas in
the Gaza Strip have continued over the weekend with the
assassination Friday of an officer in the National
Security Force. Fatah accused Hamas for the killing of
Sheikh Adnan al-Mansara as part of a dispute on control
over a new mosque in Gaza's Shajaiyeh neighborhood. Fatah
and Hamas militants have exchanged fire in Beit Hanun. In
addition, unknown parties have set off an explosion in a
local Internet services business.

Another Day in Paradise Podcast available!

2007-03-31T01:48:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, it is not often one receives the opportunity to hear how life is really like in a refugee camp. I’ll speak with a young Palestinian woman about growing up in an environment where one is an alien within an alien environment. That’s coming up, then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand independent News Service.

You can go to the podcast by clicking here.

U.S. to vet Abbas's forces before training begins

2007-03-30T02:18:00.001-02:00



By Adam Entous

Reuters
28 March 2007

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070328/wl_nm/palestinians_usa_dc

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Members of Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard eligible for
U.S.-funded training and equipment will be screened in
advance for militant ties, U.S. documents showed on
Wednesday.

The Bush administration is trying to allay concerns raised
by some U.S. lawmakers and Israeli officials that a
portion of the $59.4 million program for the presidential
guard could inadvertently benefit militants from al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade, which is linked to Abbas's Fatah faction,
or Hamas.

The groups are considered "terrorist organizations" by the
United States and Israel.

Under the program, the United States will provide $14.5
million for "basic and advanced training" for the
presidential guard and $23 million for non-lethal
equipment.

Another $2.9 million in U.S. funds will be used to upgrade
the presidential guard's training facilities, including a
sprawling new base being build in Jericho, in the occupied
West Bank.

A U.S. government document, a copy of which was obtained
by Reuters, said members of the presidential guard will
undergo a series of local background checks before
receiving any U.S.-funded training.

Their names also will be run through terrorism databases
maintained by the FBI and the State Department.

In addition, Israel will be able to screen individual
trainees before they are allowed to travel to Jordan for
U.S.-funded training.

A Western diplomat close to the U.S. program said the
screening process would create a "firewall against any
terrorists becoming part of this program."

But it was unclear whether the safeguards would satisfy
U.S. lawmakers and Israelis.

Presidential guard recruits already undergo screenings by
local commanders. Some recruits have been dropped or moved
to other branches, either because they are affiliated with
non-Fatah groups or their family members are, Palestinian
sources say.

The Israeli army has raised objections in the past to U.S.
plans to equip the presidential guard with more advanced
body armor and other battle gear.

The $59.4 million security program was scaled back from an
initial $86.4 million after Abbas agreed to form a unity
government with Hamas Islamists.

Less than two weeks old, the new government is already
showing signs of internal strain.

Factional fighting has flared up in Gaza and Abbas's
appointment of one of Hamas's long-time foes, Mohammad
Dahlan, as national security adviser, has stoked tensions.

The U.S. security program includes $3 million for Dahlan's
office.

Let Him Go, Now!

2007-03-28T21:47:00.000-02:00

The Ongoing Persecution of Sami Al-Arian

By NICOLE COLSON

After 60 days without food, an ailing Sami Al-Arian called off his hunger strike last week at the urging of his wife and children. But just hours later, a federal appeals court upheld a civil contempt ruling that could keep Al-Arian behind bars indefinitely.

Al-Arian has been imprisoned since 2003 on trumped-up charges of supporting terrorism--even though a Florida jury acquitted him or deadlocked on all counts in 2005.

Faced with the possibility of a retrial, Al-Arian agreed to plead guilty to a single count of supporting the nonviolent activities of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The deal specified that Al-Arian would be given a short additional sentence, followed by voluntary deportation--even though Al-Arian has lived in the U.S. since 1975, and his five children are all U.S. citizens.

Instead, the U.S. government continued its witch-hunt.

First, a Florida judge imposed the maximum sentence, despite the recommendations of federal prosecutors in Florida for a lesser sentence. Then, federal prosecutors in Virginia demanded that Al-Arian testify in an investigation into Muslim charities in that state--despite a verbal agreement, recorded in court transcripts, that he would be exempt from future testimony.

The appeals court's decision last week upholds the contempt ruling against Al-Arian for refusing to testify--claiming that the plea agreement "contains no language which would bar the government from compelling appellant's testimony before a grand jury."

* * *

THIS IS just is just the latest chapter in the persecution of Al-Arian that led the former University of South Florida professor to go on hunger strike.

"It was unbelievable," said Al-Arian's wife, Nahla Al-Arian, in an interview. "I'm sure the government would have let him die."

According to Nahla, Virginia's Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg has gone out of his way to prolong Sami's suffering. Kromberg has reportedly made anti-Muslim statements regarding Al-Arian's case--including allegedly complaining about the "Islamization" of the U.S. justice system.

"This man was very upset when my husband got this deal from the government," Nahla said. "He wanted my husband to stay in jail forever. He ignored the plea agreement terms that said that my husband didn't want to cooperate."

When Al-Arian refused to take the stand, he was given an additional 18-month sentence, a move that will keep him imprisoned beyond his original April 13 release date. "When the judge did this to him, he said, 'I'm going to start a hunger strike, because what's happening to me is very unfair and unjust,'" Nahla said.

Al-Arian began refusing all food on January 22. His hunger strike was also designed to draw attention to the racist abuse he has suffered at the hands of prosecutors and prison guards, and the inhumane conditions he has been subjected to--including being housed in a rat- and roach-infested cell.

"We Muslims here are, unfortunately, the new target of racism," said Nahla. "All of these things that they did to him, without any necessity except just to humiliate him and to torture him--and every time he would ask, 'Why are you doing this to me?', they would answer, 'Because you are a terrorist.' As if we didn't go through a lengthy trial for six months, and our innocence wasn't proven. The racism is unbelievable."

By the end of his hunger strike, Al-Arian had lost 55 pounds--more than a quarter of his original body weight--and he was confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk or stand on his own.

As he approached his 60th day without food, his family had become particularly concerned about his health. Irish Republican prisoners on hunger strike in the 1980s began dying around the 60th day without food.

"We were shocked and scared when we saw him," Nahla said, of a recent visit that she and her children made to the North Carolina prison medical facility where Sami is housed. He looked like those in an African famine, or a Holocaust survivor. His body, his ribs, everything was showing. He looked very, very weak. His cheekbones were also showing...There was no flesh, he was only bones and skin."

* * *

THE FEDS aren't finished with Sami Al-Arian yet.

The federal appeals court decision against him means that prosecutors are now free to once again drag Al-Arian in front of a grand jury--and have the court re-impose a sentence for civil contempt until he testifies. In essence, he can be held hostage indefinitely.

"Unfortunately, we are going through a very dark time in the history of America with the courts," said Nahla. "The courts are...affected by the atmosphere of fear and intimidation. There are very few times now where you can see courageous rulings in terms of foreigners."

"If they can get away with it," she says, "they will keep him forever."

Nahla adds that the family has received support in their battle, which is giving them the strength to go on.

"Just being here with my fellow Americans, fighting for justice, rallying together, writing letters together--the sense of working together as one family, loving each other and caring about each other is so beautiful," she says. "That's what's happening in our situation, and that's what the government, I'm sure, is not happy to see."

Organizations including Amnesty International, the National Council of Churches, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition have all circulated statements on Al-Arian's behalf.

And on March 24, as many as 100 people gathered near the federal prison facility in Butner, N.C., to rally for Al-Arian's release.

"This person has been tortured," said one of the protesters, Margaret Misch, of the Orange County Bill of Rights Defense Committee. "He's already given up his citizenship. Everything's gone for him now. The decent thing is to let him go."

How You Can Help

Demand that Dr. Sami Al-Arian be set free. Write to: Honorable Judge Gerald Lee, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314--and request that Dr. Al-Arian be released from detention and allowed to leave the country with his family.

For more information on the case and what you can do to help, visit the Free Sami Al-Arian Web site.

Nicole Colson is a reporter for the Socialist Worker.

A Mid-Winter's Hell Podcast Available!

2007-03-23T14:11:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line; the long winter in Palestine heats up as Israeli occupation forces stormed into Nablus injuring and killing civilians, targeting resistance fighters, and using residents as human shields. I’ll speak to Anna Baltzer who witnessed and investigated the event, that’s coming up. Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service.

Lies and Damn Lies!

2007-03-19T19:31:00.000-02:00

This past weekend hundreds of thousands of prostestors took to the street to protest the fouth anniversary of the Iraq war. Today March 19th is the actual commemoration. This weekend seven more US service personnel were killed. Also the New York Times gave a half-hearted apology for its coverage of the war. Many in corporate media say that they made the right call based on the information at hand at the time. But why was it that so many in the Indy media circles didn't get on board. Why did shows like Democracy Now!, Flashpoints, Laura Flanders, Phil Donahue believe the hype? Why was it that weapons experts like David Kay and Scott Ritter vilified by a White House that appointed both to do their jobs? How could lowly journalists such as Dahr Jamail, Ali Abunimah, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Amy Goodman and the like have the same information as the corporate media had and be able to debunk the ridiculous lies that the White House, Judith Miller and Co at the New York Times, FOX news, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS couldn't? The media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) has come up with a list of the most sensational lies that made up journalism in the run-up to the failed war in Iraq. Click here to it check out

Washington Stakeout Podcast Avaialble!

2007-03-16T22:38:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line with numerous revelations of The White House’s failed policies concerning the Near East, and in particular Palestine and Congress’ complicity in appeasing Israel; why won’t journalists stand up and ask the tough questions of lawmakers? I’ll speak with Sam Husseini founder of Washingtonstakeout.com, about the lack of hard-hitting journalism concerning Israel. That’s coming up, then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand independent news Service.

As Least Carter Has A Backbone

2007-03-13T13:25:00.000-02:00

The week AIPAC is holding its annual policy conference in the Nation's capital. Amongst the scheduled speakers are Vice President Dick Cheney as well as Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi (my very own representative no less.)

No doubt during this week other men and women in Congress will be glad-handing with the lobbyists to re-iterate their unwavering support for Israel. Of course I'm not telling you anything new. Most of you who read this blog know all of this.

But what you may not know is that former President Jimmy Carter will not be one of those that attends. Ever since the publication of his new book; Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Carter has been inundated with cries of anti-Semitism from the likes of such Israeli hawks as Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and Professor Alan Dershowitz. Yet Carter has remained stead-fast in his characterization that Israeli occupation mirrors the South African government's repression of Blacks, so-called coloureds and the Indian communities.

Carter's definition of apartheid is, "the forced segregation of one people by another." Not a bad comparison but it doesn't go far enough. With this forced segregation comes the inhumane treatment of one people over another; the sub-standard education of one people over another, the continued violence for all; and the perpetuation of stereotypes that are so prevalent in both Israel and Palestine.

Carter's book only targets the treatment of Palestinians in the territories and says he feels that those Arabs living in Israel as citizens get equal treatment. Well, not quite sir. In fact, not at all. Sure they're allowed to vote in elections, but many other conditions exist that foster more discrimination to some of Israel's so-called citizens. For instance, Palestinian Israelis cannot freely move into any neighborhood that they want, their education system receives less money on average than that of Jewish children and many have family that live in the territories whom they are, by law, forbidden to go and see.

But aside from all of this, Carter is a brave man to stand up to the juggernaut of the Israeli lobbies. He has grown something that has been sorely lacking from most lawmakers past and present; a spine. Good on you Jimmy Carter, good on you!

B'Tselem: IDF used Palestinian girl as human shield in Nablus

2007-03-12T22:46:00.000-02:00




Reuters
9 March 2007

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834937.html

Israel Defense Forces soldiers used an 11-year-old
Palestinian girl as a "human shield" during an operation
against militants in the West Bank town of Nablus last
week, an Israeli human rights group said on Thursday.

The IDF said it was checking the information from the
B'Tselem group, which monitors Israeli actions in the
occupied territory. Israeli law bans the military from
using human shields.

B'Tselem said the girl, Jihan Daadush, told its
interviewers that IDF soldiers had entered her family home
and questioned her and her relatives about the whereabouts
of gunmen who had fired at them during the raid.

The soldiers, she said, threatened to arrest her unless
she led them to a nearby house.

"[A soldier] ordered me to go towards the house," B'Tselem
quoted the girl as saying. "Three soldiers walked behind
me. When we reached the house, there were a lot of
soldiers. The soldiers ordered me to go inside the house
and I went inside."

B'Tselem said Jihan told them the soldiers shone
flashlights and asked about the rooms of the house. There
was no mention in the report of whether troops found
militants inside. The girl said two soldiers then returned
her home.

"[One of the soldiers] told me, 'Thank you, but don't tell
anyone,'" the girl said, according to B'Tselem. "I was
afraid they would kill me or put me in jail. I am still
afraid the soldiers will invade the city again and take me
away."

B'tselem also said the army had used a 15-year-old
Palestinian boy and a Palestinian man for a similar
purpose during the five-day raid of Nablus, a militant
stronghold.

The IDF ended the operation on March 1. During the
incursion, troops shot dead a Palestinian civilian who had
observed the raid from his rooftop. Soldiers also detained
11 suspected militants.

New Podcast Available!

2007-03-10T02:25:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, I'll speak to Hannah Mermelstein, co-founder of Birthright Unplugged about their alternative tours to Palestine for young Jewish men and women, thats coming up. Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand independent News Service.

Injured Palestinian dies after being held up at gate

2007-03-06T00:41:00.000-02:00



B'Tselem
3 March 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6620.shtml

On 17 February 2007, around 9:40 P.M., three young men
from 'Azzun 'Atmah were summoned to help free a car that
was stuck in a field in the village. They drove to the
area in a tractor without lights. The tractor went up onto
a boulder and flipped over. One of the men, 'Adel 'Omar,
21, was pinned under the tractor and seriously injured.
One of the men ran to the village to get somebody to bring
a bigger tractor to aid in the rescue. The bigger tractor
then lifted up the tractor under which the man was pinned.
The injured man was evacuated in a private car, in order
to get him to the hospital in Qalqilya as quickly as
possible.

The village of 'Azzun 'Atmah is surrounded by the
separation barrier, and lies between Israel 's green line
and the separation barrier. The only way out of the
village is through a gate in the barrier, which closes at
10:00 P.M. When the young men reached the gate, it was
after ten o'clock. The soldiers had closed the gate and
were positioned in the guard tower. For an hour, the young
men begged the soldiers to open the gate so they could
take their friend to the hospital. Only after the hour
passed did the soldiers come down from the tower and
verify that a person had been injured and needed emergency
medical treatment. It took the soldiers another ten
minutes to open the gate.

They men rushed to the hospital. On the way, they checked
their friend's condition and saw that he was moving and
was breathing. At the hospital, he was pronounced dead on
arrival.

The army contends that the injured person was already dead
when he reached the gate. The army did not explain the
basis for its contention. It is clear, however, that it
took the soldiers an hour to come down from the tower (a
fact that the army did not deny), and that they were not
competent to determine that the man was dead. Following
B'Tselem's exposure of the incident, the army announced
that the gate itself would be staffed twenty-four hours a
day.

B'Tselem demanded that the Chief Military Prosecutor order
the opening of an investigation of the incident.

Ali Abunimah on The podcast!

2007-03-02T14:58:00.000-02:00

The ongoing war between Israelis and Palestinians has been called the world's most intractable conflict. It is by now a commonplace that the only way to end the violence is to divide the territory and seperate the two peoples. But how can this be achieved? I'll speak to Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada about his bold proposal for a one state solution, then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service, all this and more coming up.

Bedouin girl critically hurt when shot, apparently by IDF soldiers

2007-03-01T14:15:00.000-02:00




By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent

Haaretz
28 February 2007

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/831805.html

A Bedouin girl was critically wounded on Wednesday when
she sustained bullet wounds to the head in the northern
Negev. The shots were apparently fired by an Israel
Defense Forces soldier.

The military police has opened an investigation into the
incident.

The girl, 12, was hospitalized at the Soroka Medical
Center in Be'er Sheva with life-threatening wounds.

The girl, who had been herding her sheep in the area of
the incident, was brought to an IDF base near Kibbutz Orim
in the northern Negev in the early afternoon by a Bedouin
man. The man said that the girl had been shot by IDF
soldiers after she had wandered into a firing zone.

The paramedic who treated the girl confirmed that she had
severe head wounds.

The girl was evacuated to the hospital by ambulance. The
IDF has not confirmed any details of the incident.

It is still unclear whether the girl's family had a permit
for herding in the area of the incident. The herding
season has begun and many Bedouin complained that there is
a shortage in herding permits.

Since 1999, no new herding permits have been issued.

Last year, the issue of herding permits resurfaced after a
12-year-old boy was killed when a dud mortar exploded
while he was herding his flock in a firing zone near
Kiryat Gat without a permit.

Over a week ago, 120 shepherds infiltrated a firing zone
with their herds to protest the shortage of permits.

Israeli Army Invades Nablus

2007-02-26T18:26:00.000-02:00

(Nablus) Amin Abu Wardeh
Monday, 26 February 2007

For the second consecutive day Israeli forces are invading the
northern West Bank's Nablus with continued raids and attacks on
residents and their homes. The Israelis killed a 41 year old man and
injured his son.

Eyewitnesses said that Israeli forces were firing at homes in order
to warn residents against aiding members of the armed resistance. The
Red Crescent reports that Israeli forces would not allow its crews in
to assist the injured.

The Director of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees,
Dr. Ghassan Hamdan, reports that Israeli forces are restricting
movement throughout the region, particularly when trying to bring
food and medical supplies to residents.

Universities, schools and kindergartens have been closed since Sunday
morning. The Director of Education cited the Israeli-imposed curfew,
and told PNN that Israeli forces are "shelling anything that moves."

Israeli forces stormed the Sanabil TV studios, confiscated its
contents and arrested the owner on Monday. That station has been the
target of numerous attacks in the past, with Israeli forces accusing
it of having links to Fateh's armed resistance wing, Al Aqsa
Brigades. The Palestinian Journalists Union issued a condemnation
last night against Israeli attacks on journalists.

During yesterday's invasion, Israeli forces overtook the radio waves
and made announcements warning residents against coming to the Old
City or putting their lives in mortal danger due to an ongoing
Israeli military operation. The Israelis also declared curfew
throughout the city and overtook a number of tall buildings for
sniper and observation posts.

This morning Israeli forces surrounded two buildings and open heavy
fire with bulldozers waiting. Soldiers shouted for all residents to
surrender themselves. An Israeli military spokesperson says the
invasion is against those on its "wanted" list.  Israeli forces
arrested 16 Palestinians from throughout the city and took them to
unknown locations at dawn this morning.

Members of the armed resistance issued a statement Monday pointing
out that the armed resistance is merely an excuse, as is the notion
of "security."  Israeli invasions do not stop, whether or not they
resist, and land confiscation and destruction, including of Al Aqsa
Mosque, continues when there is no resistance at all. Therefore, the
statement read, the armed resistance will do what it can to ward off attacks.

The bulldozers destroyed a home in the Old City this morning under
the pretext that a "wanted" man was there. Nablus' Old City is one of
the most ancient in the world and is severely damaged after years of assaults.

Palestinian security sources report Monday that dozens of houses in
the Old City neighborhoods of Yasmina, Aqaba and others are being
targeted. Israeli soldiers are forcing residents to gather in a
single room in each of the  houses and are holding the families at
gunpoint. No one is allowed to move.

The Cultural Connection

2007-02-25T22:02:00.000-02:00

Zionism and the United States

By LARRY PORTIS

Not long ago, I met Eyal Naveh, an Israeli historian, who explains that the United States has been the "model" for the Israeli state and society. He claims that the US was first a model for the Zionist pioneers, then for the founders of the state of Israel. Like the US, Israel was to be an entirely new country created in a savage, untamed land peopled only by savages. Like the US, Israel would be unique in its democratic institutions, its multicultural society and its modernity. Israel would also, like the US, apply the most advanced technology in the resolution of existential problems and towards the achievement of a high standard of living.

I agree with Naveh that the US influence over the Zionist enterprise is important. What is less understood is how Israel has become a model for the US. Recently the work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has raised the question of how Israel, through the Zionist lobby in the US, has perhaps come to exercise a virtually direct control over US policy in the Middle East. This is an important debate in which others, such as Noam Chomsky and Bill and Kathleen Christison have made important contributions. In this debate, in my opinion, the cultural connections between Zionism and the United States should not be minimized.

Because the state of Israel was created in part under the inspiration of the US the frontier society forged in North America images of the US have come to constitute an essential element of the vision that many Americans have of Israel and Palestine. In great part, the US understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves an image of the US itself, an image first projected onto the Zionist settlements, and then onto the state of Israel. This is a process of "image transfer" which began long before the recognition of the state of Israel in 1948 and the substitution of US authority in the region for that of Great Britain.

The US presence, or involvement, in Israeli and Palestinian affairs was prepared long in advance of any concern for the "peace process". This US involvement has been not only the initiative of individual presidents-whatever their motivations-but an emotional commitment generated by a sense of identification. Identification between the American experience and the Zionist-Israeli experience was prepared by the refraction of a certain image of the United States through the prism of Zionist propaganda and colonization in Palestine. In the history of the United States in relation to Israel, this refracted image is both the means and the end (the objective) in the process of ideological formation.

How did the historical experience of the United States help shape the image of Palestine? How did the "New Jerusalem" contribute to a change in the vision of the "old Jerusalem"?

A first connection is between an understanding of the Jewish Diaspora and the Protestant-puritan Diaspora of the seventeenth century. Despite deep currents of anti-Semitism, the parallel between John Winthrop leading the brave Puritans to the Promised Land and Moses leading the children of Israel back to the Holy Land has been regularly exploited in (what is today) the United States. For example, Thomas Jefferson suggested that the official seal of the United States could depict the "Children of Israel" following a pillar light sent by God.

The associations envisioned by Jefferson are eloquent: the notion of a chosen people-the Elect-to whom providence has assigned a spiritual mission linked to the conquest of a particular land. All this provides the basis for an affinity that is, in fact, more than elective-it is divine. More specifically, both chosen peoples were, ultimately, "people without a land" called upon to colonize "a land without a people".

When we speak of the colonizers, of America and Palestine, it is logical to forget the indigenous inhabitants of both places, for it was the land that was colonized--not the people living on it. The importance of the American Indians and the Palestinians comes from the fact that they have figured as obstacles to the fulfillment of the missions in question. Both groups have, in different ways, been characterized as lower forms of civilization slowing the march of progress. Both peoples have been described as savage and cruel.

This image, at its worst racist and genocidal, at its best paternalistic, is well documented as it concerns Native Americans. As regards non-Jewish Palestinians, there is less documentation and more controversy. The rise of cultural prejudice and even racism concerning the non-Christian and Jewish populations of the Middle and Near East is not a popular subject in the West. The ideas presented in, for example, Edward Saïd's Orientalism, or in Martin Bernal's Black Athena, are in no way flattering to Western culture or to Western people in general.

The history of this negative form of "Orientalism" is being written today. I, for one, have attempted to elucidate how an already prejudiced perception of Palestinians was sharpened in the 1920s by Zionist spokespersons. Over a period of several years, religious designations, or territorial designations, ceased to be used in reference to non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. By the mid-1920s, only two parties in conflict were referred to-the "Jews" and the "Arabs". A concurrent tendency existed to refer to both groups as "races". I call this the "racializing of ethnicity". Although the vogue of racializing social terminology was abandoned (in most informed circles) after the outbreak of World War II, the cultural prejudices have persisted.

The development of a more exclusionary terminology used to designate the undesirable populations is certainly one characteristic of colonization. In order to preserve their own dignity, the colonizers are morally constrained to denigrate the human obstacles to the accomplishment of their project. Comparison of the two colonial experiences reveals how one borrowed from another, and vice-versa.

The history of the British colonies in North America, and then the history of the United States throughout the nineteenth century is that of continuous colonization. The religious and economic motives typical of the seventeenth century continued to inspire settlers until the "closing" of the Frontier in the 1890s. What appear as the real novelty of the nineteenth century were the various utopian experiments in communal living. Hundreds of socialistic communities were established throughout the United States during the nineteenth century. To our day, such initiatives continue as part of the social and cultural landscape.

The Zionist settlements in Palestine combined all these same motivations. Not only were the Zionist colonies of different types, they sometimes-as in the case of the Kibbutzim-united in themselves religious Puritanism and secular socialistic modernity. This was a phenomenon appealing to United-Statesians reared on frontier myths, such as the idea of cultural-spiritual regeneration through a confrontation with adversity and violence.

The "closing" of the US frontier in the early 1890s, accompanied by the rapid development of a mythologized literature and cinema concerning the Western hero, certainly facilitated support for the Zionist project. The idea of pioneers struggling to establish themselves in a hostile environment was romantic, and familiar.

Related to the settlement of frontiers by hardy pioneers, another affinity between Americans is the development and application of new agricultural techniques. "Making the desert bloom" was a powerful slogan and image for both emergent national cultures. US botanical technology, such as new plant varieties, insecticides, and chemical fertilizers, contributed to the success of Jewish settlements in Palestine. Going from the Great American Desert to Palestine was more than a symbolic transfer of images. In addition, in both cases, it involved a denial of the agricultural achievements of the indigenous inhabitants.

Another affinity between the creations of the American and Israeli "nations" is the demographic importance of immigration. Both populations are considered the product of disparate "waves" of new immigrants and their assimilation into a "New World" culture including a new language seen as deriving from those existing (although "American" cannot be said to be as innovative as modern "Hebrew"). The interconnection of American and Zionist immigration has meant the projection of an image of the United States onto the Zionist project. This projection has been assisted by 1) the idea of immigration as the means of recomposing or regenerating a population and, 2) the fact that so many Jews from Russia, Poland and elsewhere immigrated to the United States. Jewish immigrants in the US were prone to support emigration to Palestine. (In the latter half of the twentieth century, a significant number of their descendants immigrated to Israel.)

Other factors in the development of support for Zionism in the United States include a Christian education tending to reinforce revulsion for the "loss" of the Holy Land to Islam. The Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages tended to be particularly celebrated in the US towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Anti-Semitism also encouraged acceptance of the Zionist project in Palestine. Those who resented their presence viewed favorably the transfer of Jews to a relatively desolate part of the world. This factor intensified after World War II when the Jewish refugees became an embarrassment to Western governments, even though anti-Semitism was declining.

Such are some of the cultural affinities and conditions that have contributed to the orientation of US policies relative to the Israel-Palestine conflict. In some significant ways, US nationalism is linked to, or seen as having affinities with Jewish nationalism as represented first by the Zionist movement and then by the Israeli state. It is why Israel is not seen in the United States as an alien culture in the Middle East, but rather as an extension of American historical experience. It is perhaps in this cultural-ontological sense that Israel is the "51st state" (and not primarily because of the extensive economic, financial and military ties).

For all of these reasons, the rhetoric of nationalism in the Israel-Palestine conflict tends to reinforce established cultural values, values stemming from American historical experience. It is also why, in the United States, many people find it difficult to take seriously Palestinian claims, just as they could not take seriously the claims of the "Indian Nations". The similarities, in any case, are striking. One century later, the Palestinian resistance to colonization and ethnic cleansing is being dealt with in much the same ways as that of the Indians: forced evacuation, concentration in "reservations" (which could be called "Bantustans" or "autonomous territories"), periodic massacre and racist humiliations.

Consider, in the above light, how differently Israeli and Palestinian leadership must be perceived. On the one hand, there have been Israeli leaders like Golda Meir and Benjamin Netanyahu, Americans or American-educated, speaking faultless "American". On the other hand, the Palestinian leaders most often have an alien aspect; not to speak of the late Yassir Arafat, with his colorful headdress and his strange uniform of dubious origin. The cultivated descendants of brave Western-like pioneers make a singular contrast with the Palestinians.

The analogies and metaphors are there, underlying a US policy conceiving of "peace" mostly in terms of acquiescence or accommodation to the image and interests of the United States projected onto the Israeli state, an Israeli state considered by US policy makers to be a model for the Middle East in general.

For these US policymakers, it is not only a question of propagandistic manipulation, of the conscious deception of the public. The metaphors and analogies founded upon the special affinities between the US and the state of Israel are rather rooted in the social and cultural histories of both their societies and politics. If hypocrisy and bad faith are integral to political behavior, in the service of collective interests as much as in the service of individual designs, it is to be expected that such self-deception should be pronounced in, on the one hand, the critical, early phases of nation-state-making and, on the other hand, during the construction of an imperial presence in the Middle East.

Larry Portis is a professor of American studies at the University of Montpellier, France and a founding member of Americans for Peace and Justice in Montpellier. He can be contacted at larry.portis@univ-montp3.fr

El Hajj Malik El Shabaaz Podcast Available!

2007-02-24T20:48:00.000-02:00

This past week marked the 42 year anniversary of the assassination of "Our own Black Shinning Prince" . Though his death has left a void in our activist family, his spirit and words live on. This week on Crossing The Line we replay one of El Hajj Malik El Shabaaz's most famous speeches; Message To The Grassroots. The insight he speaks of in the speech are as relevant today as it was when the words came fresh from his mouth over forty years ago. Please continue to spread the word about this podcast program to all those you feel would benefit. I appreciate all the comments you all have given!

For the P.A. and Mahmoud Abbas, a Bad Day on Capitol Hill

2007-02-19T20:13:00.000-02:00



By Nathan Guttman

Forward
16 February 2007

Washington - If Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas wanted to get a feel for just how upset Congress is
over his decision to form a coalition government with
Hamas, he should have caught Rep. Gary Ackerman’s opening
comments Wednesday at the meeting of the Middle East
subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Ackerman, the New York Democrat who chairs the
subcommittee, had been a leading proponent on Capitol Hill
of the position that the United States should be doing
more to back Abbas in his power struggle with Hamas.

Not anymore.

“What has Abu Mazen done to strengthen himself? He’s
capitulated to Hamas,” Ackerman said. “The Mecca Accord
neither strengthens him nor helps the cause of peace…. We
now have what Secretary Rice once said we could not
accept: a Palestinian Authority with one foot in terror
and one foot in democracy.”

Ackerman concluded that Abbas “has gutted his own
credibility.”

Ackerman’s attack on the Mecca accords set the tone for
the rest of the meeting. The ranking Republican on the
subcommittee, Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, asked how
Congress could be expected to support funding for the P.A.
when Abbas sides with Hamas. Other lawmakers followed a
similar line, urging the administration to continue
insisting that the new Palestinian government recognize
Israel and to avoid linking the situation in Iraq to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In just one session, the Democratic-led subcommittee made
it clear that at least on issues regarding the Palestinian
conflict, it stands to the right of the Bush
administration.

The three experts invited to testify — Martin Indyk, a
former American ambassador to Israel; David Makovsky,
director of the Middle East Peace program of the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Daniel
Pipes, of the hawkish Middle East Forum – were critical of
the new Palestinian national unity government. Indyk tried
to find a silver lining that would enable the renewal of
the peace process, Makovsky called on the administration
to re-examine its relations with the Saudis in light of
the Mecca agreement and Pipes said that there was never
any peace process with the Palestinian to start with.

M.J. Rosenberg of the dovish Israel Policy Forum
criticized the inclusion of Pipes in an e-mail he sent to
his group’s supporters. He called Pipes a “crank” whose
constant refrain is that “the Palestinians are bad people
with whom negotiations are impossible” and slammed the
failure to invite any Arab Americans to testify. Indyk,
Makovsky and Pipes are all Jewish and have worked for
pro-Israel groups.

The rough day for the Palestinians on Capitol Hill did not
end in the committee room. As the Middle East subcommittee
was wrapping up its discussion, in the adjacent office
building the inaugural event of the Congressional Israel
Allies Caucus was beginning. The new caucus, co-chaired by
Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel of New York and Republican
Rep. Dave Weldon of Florida, is a sister organization to a
similar caucus in the Israeli Knesset that promotes ties
between Israeli lawmakers and Christian supporters of
Israel around the world. Israeli lawmaker Benny Elon, who
heads the Knesset caucus, was the guest of honor at the
event and spoke of the Bible as the bridge between Jews
and Christians. Elon, who belongs to the right-wing Ichud
Leumi party, is a proponent of encouraging Arabs to leave
Israel and the territories.

At the event, Engel called on the administration and
Congress to “be resolute in supporting no negotiations and
no financial assistance to the Palestinians until they
accept the three conditions.” Engel, who represents a
district that is about 15% to 20% Jewish, with many
Orthodox families, praised the Bush administration as
being “a big supporter of Israel.”

With only 16 members — at least as of Wednesday — the new
caucus is focusing on two issues: the Palestinians and
Iran. Pro-Israel bills and resolutions relating to these
issues easily gain the support of at least 300 House
members in any vote, so it is difficult to gauge the new
caucus’s importance. Indeed, only two reporters attended
its inaugural press conference, with the empty seats in
the room filled by pro-Israel activists. Weldon, however,
said that caucus membership could “double, triple and
quadruple,” adding that no one approached by him or by
Engel had refused to join.

But for advocates of the Palestinian cause and those who
think the White House should be backing Abbas in his
struggles with Hamas, it was not Ackerman or Engel, but
rather a third New York Democrat, who dealt them the most
severe blow.

Rep. Nita Lowey, who chairs the foreign operations
subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee,
decided to put a hold on an $86 million aid request aimed
at strengthening armed forces under Abbas’s control. The
decision to put the money on hold was made even before the
Mecca agreement was signed. Now, in the wake of the
Palestinian deal, the hold is gaining support of other
members of Congress, including Ackerman and other members
of his subcommittee, who want to receive more information
from the administration before giving approval to the
transfer the funds.

The proposed funding is intended to bolster Palestinian
forces loyal to Abbas in order to help him maintain calm
in Gaza and confront challenges from Hamas forces.

A senior Bush administration official told the Forward
Wednesday that even though the atmosphere on the Hill does
not currently seem conducive to securing the aid, the
White House is not pulling back the notice on providing
the funds. “Is there still a need to have the good guys
empowered? Of course there is,” said the official.
“Nothing has changed on the ground.”

At the same time, he acknowledged, it might be more
difficult at this juncture to convince Congress that the
aid is needed.

“This is just another reason for the Palestinians to
clarify exactly where their new government stands,” the
official said.

"Israel Can Do What It Wants": The Stark Truth From Ilan Pappe

2007-02-16T23:44:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, with the recent singing of a unit government deal between rival groups Hamas and Fatah, what does this mean for Palestinians and Israelis on the ground. I’ll speak to Professor Ilan Pappe a noted historian and author. Then later in the podcast, our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The WAR’S TOLL compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service, all of this and more coming up.

The House Negro Speaks; Just Like Every Other Tepid Democrat!

2007-02-16T13:58:00.000-02:00

Obama will soon make the case that he'll be as strong on
Israel as anyone

By Shmuel Rosner

Haaretz
16 February 2007


My weekend column for the Hebrew print edition is a
lengthy piece on U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois). Most
Israelis don't know him, and my editors thought he was
enough of a political phenomenon to make him worth writing
about, even at this early stage of the campaign. Most of
the piece was not translated into English, as much of the
material in it will not be of any value to American
readers who have gotten more than their fair share of
Obamania in the last couple of months. The only part of it
that's worth presenting here is the section on Obama and
Israel. (You can read a news story on Obama's comments
about Israel here.)

I've written about Obama and Israel before, in the context
of The Israel Factor project. My goal at the time was to
try to explain why this bright, charismatic, viable
candidate was not getting high marks from our Israel
Factor panelists: What is it about Obama that makes them
uncomfortable about his possible future attitude toward
Israel?

If you don't know someone, then you don't trust him. And
"if you don't trust someone, you try to be careful with
him," one panelist told me. It's "the unknown factor,"
another one explained. "What kind of constituency does he
bring with him, and how will they influence his
positions?"

"We need more time to trust him," a panelist told me.
"Voting for Israel a couple of times doesn't constitute
enough of a track record on which to make a more favorable
judgment." Nathan Diament of the Orthodox Union, who knows
Obama from their days at Harvard, made a similar argument
this week in his blog: The short political life of Obama
hasn't "provide[d] many opportunities for a new politician
to establish the kind of record that longer-serving
officeholders have built up over time."

Obama has not been deaf to such suspicions. And now that
he is not just a "possible candidate" but an officially
declared one, he will try to fix these perceptions.
"Israelis want more than anything to live in peace with
their neighbors, but Israel also has real - and very
dangerous - enemies," were Obama's words to Haaretz. "My
view is that the United States' special relationship with
Israel obligates us to be helpful to them in the search
for credible partners with whom they can make peace, while
also supporting Israel in defending itself against enemies
sworn to its destruction."

In my 60-minute interview with him last week, Obama was
not shy about explaining why a viable peace has not yet
been achieved. Like all the other major Democratic
candidates, he will be a strong advocate for American
involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Nonetheless, he said he is yet to see - "particularly in
the Palestinian community - "leaders who have both the
will and the capacity to renounce violence as a strategy
to resolve the problems and to actually enforce any
agreement that might be reached with the Israelis."
Talking about the current prospects for an agreement,
Obama said that under the existing conditions, "I think
we're not going to see much progress."

But this is just the short version of the policy Obama
will be officially presenting soon. This week I was told
that while the venue has yet to be selected, the Jerusalem
Center for Public Affairs conference in Washington at the
end of February is one possibility. There's also a chance
that he will make his comments on Israel at a Washington
rally calling for the release of the abducted Israeli
soldiers or while speaking to a group of Chicago Jews. One
thing is quite clear: It will happen in the next two to
three weeks.

I asked about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) convention in March and was told that he will
speak there too, but wants to have another speech sooner.
Obama doesn't want to wait such a long time - not when he
is running a campaign in which he will need the support of
many people who care deeply about Israel. (Oh, let's just
say it: Jewish voters are major donors to the Democratic
Party and its nominees.) He also wants to make sure that
people will hear him, and him alone. After all, Obama will
not be the only candidate speaking and getting attention
at the AIPAC conference.

On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Dan Shapiro, a senior
adviser to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida), was saying
goodbye to the job he has held for six years. He is as
knowledgeable as anyone on Israel and the Middle East, and
apart from the "real" job he got himself now, he has
joined Obama's campaign as an adviser on issues related to
Mideast policy.

I spoke to Shapiro about Obama and his views earlier this
week, and I asked him to highlight for me the differences
between Obama and the current Bush policy regarding
Israel. The first difference, he said, will be a greater
emphasis on the need for constant engagement by the U.S.
Obama will tell you that Bush wasted some long years
without investing in diplomacy. You can either agree with
him on that or not, but this has become the Democratic
party line. All candidates condemn Bush for the hands-off
approach.

A second possible difference will involve the question of
whether to talk to Syria. Obama believes that America
should talk to the Assad regime, so it's hard envisioning
him objecting to an Israeli-Syrian dialogue. And then
there's the question of Iran - the most important of them
all.

A Washingtonian familiar with the Obama campaign reminded
me that Obama is the anti-war candidate, and thus will
have some maneuvering to do on Iran. He will probably warn
of a possible deterioration in relations that could lead
to an unintentional war, but by the same token he can also
be expected to agree that Iran should not be allowed to
acquire nuclear weapons and that no U.S. president should
take any of the options off the table.

This will be a position similar to those of other
Democratic candidates. Some might say that it's a
problematic position when it comes to the real world -
what if talks with Tehran do not provide an agreement that
can actually prevent a nuclear Iran - but nevertheless,
it's a good one politically. It sounds anti-war enough for
the Democratic Party at large, and anti-Iran enough for
those who really understand the significance of the issue
at hand.

All these policy points will not even wait for the
promised speech. A position paper outlining Obama's views
is in the making, and will be distributed to as many
Jewish voters as possible.

Will he be able to win over these voters?

After talking to people about him all week, I can tell you
this: They very much want to be persuaded that Obama
should win their backing, as they all understand the
excitement and enthusiasm surrounding his candidacy and
the importance of Obama's adding his voice to the camp of
Israel supporters.

With such an attitude, it is relatively easy to be
convinced.

New directive hampers entry of Arabs, Palestinians into Gaza

2007-02-14T13:31:00.001-02:00



By Amira Hass

Haaretz
13 February 2007



Israeli Arabs, West Bank residents and Palestinian
residents of East Jerusalem face tougher border control
regulations at the Erez Crossing on the Israel-Gaza border
in light of a new directive requiring Israeli citizens to
present a passport or a laissez-passer when seeking to
enter the Gaza Strip.

The new directive, effective February 1, adds weight to
Israel's declaration that Gaza is no longer an occupied
territory.

One of the implications of this directive, however, is
that East Jerusalem residents living mostly in the Gaza
Strip now run the risk of losing their Israeli
citizenship.

A group of some 800 to 1,000 Israeli Arab citizens married
to Gazans are required to renew their stay permits in the
Strip every month. Jerusalem residents belonging to this
group are required to undergo a prolonged bureaucratic
procedure with the Civil Administration and the Interior
Ministry.

According to the Center for the Defense of the Individual,
the law stipulates that Palestinian East Jerusalem
residents whose permanent place of resident is not
Jerusalem must lose their Israeli citizenship.

The Center says the state should have announced an
adaptation period that would allow Israeli citizens
entering Gaza to prepare the documentation required by the
new directives.

In the past two weeks the Center interceded on behalf of a
few Israeli citizens who were not allowed to enter Gaza
without their passports.

Interior Ministry spokesperson Sabine Hadad told Haaretz
there is "no blanket decision and that we make decisions
on a case-to-case basis." Arab women with Israeli
citizenship who are married to Gazans have expressed their
fear of losing their citizenship, but Hadad says in
response that "one cannot lose one's Israeli citizenship
automatically."

The experience of those women contradicts Hadad's
statement to Haaretz that "no date has been set for
barring the entry into the Gaza Strip without a passport.
If and when such a directive is put in place, we will
ensure it is advertised on the media."

At this point, West Bank and Gaza residents are exempt
from presenting their passports at the crossing and use
permits issued by the Civil Administration, under a
directive that took effect in 1991.

The vast majority of Israelis affected by the new
directive are Israeli Arabs and residents of East
Jerusalem who do not have Israeli citizenship. Most of
these have relatives in the Gaza Strip.

According to Gisha, the Center for the Legal Protection of
the Freedom of Movememnt, a West Bank resident who works
in the Gaza Strip was required to present a passport in
addition to the laissez-passer in his possession. This
incident shows the bureaucratic indeterminacy that
pervades border control authorities.

Hadad clarified that, "West Bank residents are required to
coordinate their entry [into Gaza] with the Army, their
entry is not related to the Interior Ministry."

Olmert: We neither accept nor reject Mecca deal

2007-02-12T18:03:00.001-02:00



By Gideon Alon

Haaretz
12 February 2007

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday softened Israel's
stance on the "Mecca agreement" for a Palestinian unity
government. Last week, the government had said the
agreement was unacceptable. Yesterday, however, Olmert
told the cabinet that "at this stage, Israel neither
rejects nor accepts the agreement. Like the international
community, we are studying what was achieved in the
agreement, what it says and the basis of the consensus."

Olmert's decision to stop criticizing the accord stemmed
from the Quartet's announcement that it continues to
demand that any Palestinian government abide by the
conditions it laid down last year: recognizing Israel,
renouncing terror and accepting previous
Israeli-Palestinian agreements, as well as the road map.
In light of this statement by the Quartet, whose members
include the U.S., European Union, United Nations and
Russia, Olmert opted to lower the profile of his response,
so as not to appear rejectionist.

Olmert also told the cabinet that since the Palestinian
unity government has not yet actually been formed, there
is no reason not to attend next week's tripartite summit
with PA President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice.

The prime minister spoke yesterday with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel and told her that as a first step, the new
Palestinian government should be required to release
kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Germany holds the EU's
rotating presidency, and EU foreign ministers will meet
today to discuss the Mecca agreement.

Olmert also called Russian President Vladimir Putin
yesterday, and told the cabinet that Putin had promised to
toe the Quartet line.

Major General Amos Yadlin, head of Military Intelligence,
told the cabinet that Hamas was the big winner from the
Mecca agreement, since the deal enables the Islamic
movement to retain control of the Palestinian government
without giving up its ideology.

The U.S. is Playing Checkers: An Interview with Dahr Jamail

2007-02-10T01:42:00.000-02:00

This week on a special Crossing The Line, I'll speak to Dahr Jamail an independent, award-winning journalist about the ongoing war in Iraq and the broader implications the conflict has on Palestine and the region in general. Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of the Stand Independent News Service, all this and more coming up.

Muslim protests as Israel digs at holy site

2007-02-08T03:04:00.001-02:00



By Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem

The Guardian
7 February 2007


Israeli archaeologists began digging up a stone ramp near
the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City yesterday,
bringing immediate protests from Palestinians and
condemnation from the king of Jordan.

The work is the first stage in a scheme to build a new,
raised walkway up to the site, which is known as the Haram
al-Sharif to Muslims and the Temple Mount to Jews. Next to
the walkway is the Western Wall, which dates from the time
of the Second Temple and is the holiest site in Judaism.

Israeli archaeologists say the work is necessary on safety
grounds, but Muslim leaders fear damage to the foundations
of the site.

Archaeological work in Jerusalem's Old City is frequently
contentious and has triggered violence in the past.

The second intifada erupted after the then Israeli prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, walked on to the Haram al-Sharif
in 2000.

Experts from the Israel Antiquities Authority are also
excavating at three places to the south-west corner of the
site in what is now the Jerusalem Archaeological Park,
where engineers plan to install a series of pylons to
support the proposed new walkway.

Dozens of armed police stood guard yesterday as two
mechanical diggers began taking up the stone ramp. Large
numbers of police kept Palestinian men under the age of 45
away from the site, but there were at least three protests
elsewhere in Jerusalem.

King Abdullah of Jordan, whose family has custodianship of
the Muslim shrines, condemned the work as a "blatant
violation" and a "dangerous escalation".

"These measures will only create an atmosphere that will
not at all help in the success of efforts being undertaken
to restore the peace process," he said.

At the site, Dr Gideon Avni, director of excavations and
surveys at the Israel Antiquities Authority, said there
would be no damage to the mosques or the site. "The claims
about damage to the stability of the Temple Mount we
believe are baseless because we are working only outside
the walls of the Temple Mount in a very limited area," he
said.

The work was first planned after a storm three years ago
damaged the stone ramp leading up to the Mugrabi gate of
the holy site, an entrance generally used by tourists. An
engineering survey declared the ramp unsafe and a
temporary, wooden walkway was built next to it on stilts.
Eventually the wooden structure will be removed and
replaced by the new 100 metre-long raised walkway.

Wars and Scandals

2007-02-05T23:23:00.000-02:00

The Fatal Kiss

By URI AVNERY

It sounds like a promo for a second rate soap opera: a 21- year old woman appears with a much older celebrity, who grabs her, forces a kiss on her and pushes his tongue into her mouth.

This scene has been occupying the attention of the Israeli public for months now, more than any other topic, except perhaps the allegation that the President of the State sexually assaulted several of his employees. The war and its consequences have been pushed aside.

The interest stems, of course, from the identity of kisser and kissee: Haim Ramon was at the time Minister of Justice and a central figure in the government; the young woman, who was identified only as H., was a lieutenant in the office of the "military secretary" of the Prime Minister, an important military-political liaison point. The fatal encounter took place at the Prime Minister's office, shortly before a cabinet meeting.

This week, three judges--two female, one male--unanimously found Ramon guilty of an indecent act. It seems that the prosecution will not call for the maximum penalty--three years in prison--but the political career of Ramon has, so it seems, come to an end.

This might have been nothing more than a juicy piece of gossip, except for one small detail, which has hardly been mentioned: the fateful kiss took place in the room adjacent to that where a cabinet meeting was due to start, and in which it was decided to start the war in Lebanon.

A short time before that, the Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz, also found the time and energy for an un-warlike act: he called his broker and instructed him to sell his shares.

The background must be remembered: a few hours earlier, Hizbullah fighters had crossed the border and captured two Israeli soldiers. Two soldiers had been killed during the operation, and six more died in pursuit of the captors. Obviously the cabinet was about to decide upon a military operation in which many soldiers and civilians, Israeli and Lebanese, would lose their lives. Yet the supreme commander of the army was handling his shares and a prominent minister was handling a female soldier.

* * *

IN THE course of the 1948 war, I wrote reports of the battles from the point of view of a simple soldier. After the war, when I was collecting these reports for a book, it crossed my mind that it would be interesting to add a description of the war as seen from the point of view of the commander, who had made the decisions that affected our fate.

I approached my brigade chief, a commander highly admired by all of us, and he gave me a detailed description of the campaigns. Before my eyes, a different war unfolded. True, the place names and the battles were the same, but there was no similarity between our war, the war in which the fighters' main concern was to survive from day to day, and the war of the high command, which moved figures on the board in an intricate game of chess with the enemy commanders. The difference between the two levels fascinated me. Perhaps it was that which helped to make the book, "In the Fields of the Philistines, 1948", into a run-away bestseller.

All the great writers who wrote about war--from Leo Tolstoy ("War and Peace") to Erich Maria Remarque ("All Quiet on the Western Front") and Norman Mailer ("The Naked and the Dead") highlighted this huge difference. The soldier crawls through the thorns, sinks into the mud and cowers in his foxhole; the commanders move arrows on the map.

For the simple soldier, and even more so for the civilian, it is difficult to penetrate the mental world of a general who decides upon an operation, knowing that there will be so and so many "casualties", dead and wounded. But after all, that is his profession: to weigh the gains of a move against the expected losses. He receives the order to capture Hill 246 and works out a plan, which he expects will cost the lives of a hundred or so of his soldiers. While he is calculating, those hundred soldiers are horsing around, talking with their parents on the phone, trying to catch some sleep.

* * *

I AM not writing this in a philosophical or literary mood, but in order to draw attention to the unbearable lightness with which politicians and generals decide on starting a war. The shares of Halutz and the kiss of Ramon are but symptoms of this phenomenon.

The day before yesterday, Ehud Olmert appeared before the Board of Inquiry (which he had appointed himself) and described how his cabinet
decided to start the Second Lebanon War. The testimony is being kept secret, but it may be assumed that Olmert did not forget to express his condolences to the bereaved families and his hopes for the speedy recovery of the wounded. But did any of his ministers really weigh the price of the operation in human lives--on our side and on the other? Did the Chief-of-Staff, who had just disposed of his shares, raise the subject? Was the Minister of Justice, who had just enjoyed a little adventure with consequences he could not dream of, in an appropriately serious mood?

This is not a uniquely Israeli problem. Did George W. Bush and his clique of Neo-Conservatives really consider the casualties, when they decided to invade Iraq? Let's ignore for a moment the lies they spread, the fabricated stories about "weapons of mass destruction", the imaginary connections between Saddam and Osama and all the other falsehoods and deceptions. Let's concentrate only on the two real aims of the war (which we exposed at the time): (a) to get their hands on the oil of Iraq and the entire region, including the Caspian, and (b) to place an American garrison in the heart of the Middle East.

If Bush had to face a Board of Inquiry in Washington DC as Olmert did in Tel-Aviv, he would certainly be asked some questions (which this column asked in real time): Did you consider how many soldiers and civilians would be killed and wounded? What led you to think that the invading army would be received with showers of flowers? Why did you believe that the Air Force would determine the issue so that the ground forces would have to play only a minor role? Did you imagine that the planned little war would still be going on three years and more later? Did you take into consideration that the Iraqi state would be blown to pieces and that the three peoples living there would soon be at each other's throats? Did you expect that the war would strengthen Iran's position in the Middle East? In short, did you have any idea at all of the place that you were about to invade?

Clearly, nobody with any influence in the US government raised these questions at the time. A foolish and power-drunk president, a rapacious vice-president and a cabal of arrogant and ignorant ideological fanatics decided upon an adventure whose end is not in sight even now. And afterwards the statesmen and strategists went to their elegant restaurants to enjoy sumptuous meals, while the 3000 US soldiers who have been killed up to now spent the day in blissful ignorance of what was going on at the highest level. The media and the senators, of course, were ecstatic.

* * *

IT'S NOT the past I am writing about, but the future.

At this moment, people in Washington and in Jerusalem are thinking about a war in Iran. Not if it should be started, but when and how.

If this is to be an American war, its consequences will be many times more grievous than the war in Iraq. Iran is a very hard nut. The Iranian people are united. They have a glorious national tradition, a highly developed national pride and a tough religious ideology. One can bomb their oil facilities, but it is a big country, not dependent on a sophisticated infrastructure, and it cannot be subdued by bombing alone. There will be no alternative to a military attack on the ground.

Bush is already preparing the war. This week he instructed his soldiers in Iraq to hunt down and kill all "Iranian agents" there. That is reminiscent of the infamous "Kommissarbefehl" of June 6, 1941, on the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in which Adolf Hitler ordered the summary execution of every captured political commissar of the Red Army. Since the commissars were uniformed soldiers, every commander who carried out the order became a war criminal.

It is quite certain that if the United States does go to war, the Iranian people will rally behind their government. They will draw the conclusion that everything their leaders told them about the West was true. The opposition, which has lately raised its head, will fall silent and disappear. The big-mouthed president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose wisdom is now being questioned by many of his own people, will turn overnight into a national hero. It will be a war of many years, and many thousands of American soldiers--not to mention Iranians--will fall.

President Bush may hesitate and pass the task over to Israel. Lately, Olmert has hinted that it was the Americans who pushed him into the Lebanon war. They believed that the Israeli army would defeat Hizbullah easily, and that this would help the American clients in Beirut. (A similar foolish calculation caused the Americans to give their blessing to Sharon's First Lebanon War in 1982.)

Nowadays, our politicians and generals speak freely about the inevitable attack on Iran. The pro-Israeli lobby in the US, both Jewish and Christian, is toiling mightily to push American public opinion in this direction. All these gentlemen and ladies, in their comfortable villas far from the prospective battlefields, yearn for a war which will cost the lives of the sons and daughters--of other people.

The advocates of the war declare that it is necessary in order to prevent a "Second Holocaust". That has already become a mantra. This week, Jacques Chirac nearly exploded it, when he expressed the self-evident: that if an Iranian nuclear bomb were launched at Israel, Israel would wipe Tehran from the face of the earth. The Iranian rulers are not mad and the "balance of terror" will do its job. But the "friends" of Israel and the USA started to pelt Chirac with verbal rocks, and he hastily retracted.

* * *

LET'S ASSUME for a moment that the Israeli Air force, with the help of the American naval forces that are now being steadily built up in the Persian Gulf, succeeds in bombing targets in Iran. What will happen then?

Iranian missiles will rain down on Tel-Aviv and Haifa. The promise of our Air Force to destroy them on the ground is worth no more than the similar promises we heard about Lebanon. In order to defend Israel, American soldiers would have to go into Iran. Israel's account would be debited with every casualty. If Israel is, God forbid, the first to use a nuclear bomb there, the shame will last forever.

The masses of the Arab--indeed the entire Muslim world, both Sunnis and Shiites, will rally around Iran. The Sunni heads of state, who are embracing Israel now in secret, will run away in panic. We shall be left alone to face the revenge that will come sooner or later. Will we be able to rely on the heirs of Bush, who may be less reckless and more inclined to listen to world public opinion, which will inevitably blame us for this whole adventure?

Iran is not a second Iraq, neither is it Hizbullah multiplied by ten. It is an entirely different story.

But is anyone here thinking about it seriously? Will the successors of the share-selling Chief-of-Staff and the tongue-pushing minister be more thoughtful? Or will they decide upon a new military adventure with the same unbearable lightness?

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Thirteen dead as Palestinian truce in tatters

2007-02-03T13:58:00.000-02:00



By Adel Zaanoun

Agence France Presse
2 February 2007

GAZA CITY, Feb 2 2007--Thirteen Palestinians have died in
24 hours of fighting between warring factions in the Gaza
Strip, with shootings, mortar attacks and the storming of
a university torpedoing yet another truce.

Sustained clashes between Hamas and Fatah were raging
across the territory Friday on what should have been the
fourth day of a ceasefire aimed at halting the
bloodletting that has boiled over from a year-long power
struggle.

Three members of the mainstream Palestinian intelligence
service, including a deputy chief commander, were killed
in fighting with Hamas militants in the Jabaliya refugee
camp, security and medical sources said.

Another four bodies were discovered on Friday and around
170 Palestinians have been wounded in violence over the
last 24 hours, said a medical source, with clashes most
concentrated on Friday in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Dozens of members of Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas's
presidential guard were wounded when Hamas militants and
members of a controversial "executive force" controlled by
the Islamist government fired a mortar into their training
camp in Gaza City.

"Between 40 and 50 new recruits of the presidential guard
were wounded and there are perhaps some killed," a Force
17 official told AFP.

Presidential guards had overnight stormed the Islamic
University in Gaza City, a known Hamas bastion and the
most prestigious centre of higher education in the
impoverished territory largely sealed off from the outside
world.

Several gunmen were detained, while weapons and explosives
were confiscated during a sweep of the campus, a security
source said.

Fatah said the operation had been ordered after Hamas
militants apparently hunkered down at the university fired
mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades towards Gaza's
main presidential compound.

The fighting deteriorated as the four sponsors of the
stalled Middle East peace process, the European Union,
Russia, United Nations and United States, were to meet in
Washington Friday in a bid to fast-track peace efforts.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to press for a
renewed push to bolster Abbas in his battle for power with
Islamist party Hamas, which won a general election last
year and which the West blacklists as a terrorist outfit.

The latest clashes flared after Hamas accused Washington
of trying to provoke a Palestinian civil war by granting
86 million dollars to bolster Fatah security forces and
claimed an Arab country had shipped arms to Fatah.

A ceasefire had come into effect on Tuesday amid
increasing international pressure on the factions to
resolve their differences and negotiate a power-sharing
agreement after months of broken talks and collapsed
ceasefires.

Six Palestinians were killed and another 70 wounded on
Thursday, after a Hamas ambush of a presidential guard
supply convoy from Egypt left one guard dead although
Fatah flatly denied the trucks had been transporting
weapons.

Hamas condemned the Fatah storming of the university and
denied that the institution had been used to hide fighters
or weapons.

"We heavily condemn this action of the presidential guard
and its acts of vandalism committed at the Islamic
University, which is an academic institution without armed
men or stashes of weapons," said spokesman Ismail Radwan.

A Fatah security source charged that two top leaders in
Hamas's executive force -- branded "illegal" by Abbas --
had been arrested but a Hamas spokesman denied the report,
saying a commander in central Gaza was detained instead.

The presidency has blamed Hamas for the latest Gaza
violence, just days after the deadliest bout of
internecine Palestinian violence in a year ended with 35
people dead as Arab diplomats battled to secure a
ceasefire.

Fatah, moderate and secular, and Hamas, radical and
Islamist, have tried for months to form a national unity
government in the hope that Western aid payments will
resume and reverse an unprecedented economic crisis.

Hamas has steadfastly refused to accept Western conditions
that it renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by
past peace deals.

The political showdown turned violent after Abbas
announced in December that he would call new elections in
the hope of wresting control from Hamas.

And The Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Interview with Anarchists Against The Wall

2007-02-02T23:43:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line I'll speak to Jonathan Pollock of Anarchists Against The Wall about their non-violent efforts in conjunction with Palestinians in bringing about the collapse of the wall. Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and The War's Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of The Stand Independent News Service, all of this coming up.

PM approves eastward move of section of separation barrier

2007-02-01T00:54:00.001-02:00



By Meron Rapoport

Haaretz
31 January 2007


Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has approved the moving of the
separation barrier at least five kilometers eastward from
the Green Line in the area of Modi'in Ilit, in order to
take in the settlements of Nili and Na'aleh, according to
security sources and a brief submitted by the state to the
High Court of Justice.

The new route will create two Palestinian enclaves
containing about 20,000 people. Nili and Na'aleh together
have some 1,500 residents.

Olmert approved the change in response to pressure from
residents of the two settlements, both of which would have
been left outside the barrier, according to the route
approved by the cabinet last April. The new route will
lengthen the fence by about 12 kilometers, which will cost
an estimated NIS 120 million.

If the cabinet approves Olmert's decision, it will be the
first time part of the fence has been moved eastward after
receiving cabinet approval. Hitherto, all such changes
have moved the fence westward, toward the Green Line, the
pre-1967 border that separates Israel and the West Bank.

Nili and Na'aleh, both secular settlements, are located
some five kilometers from the Green Line. Originally, they
were supposed to be surrounded by a "double fence" ¬ one
along the Green Line and one to their east ¬ that would
have trapped five Palestinian villages, with some 17,000
residents between them. In June 2004, however, the High
Court ordered a section of the fence near Jerusalem
dismantled on the grounds that it caused disproportionate
harm to local Palestinians, and the defense establishment
feared that the court would do the same to the
Nili-Na'aleh section. It therefore proposed a new route
that eliminated the eastern fence and left Nili and
Na'aleh outside the western fence, and in April 2006, the
cabinet approved this route.

Rani Hernik, chairman of the Na'aleh local council, said
that leaders of both settlements then began intensive
lobbying in an effort to get the route changed again.
Their main argument, he said, was that both settlements
are on state land and would thus not interfere with the
Palestinians' "fabric of life," and therefore, the court
would be likely to approve a route that included them.

Colonel Danny Tirza, then the official in charge of
planning the fence's route, was the main person pushing to
include Nili and Na'aleh, Hernik said. (The Defense
Ministry subsequently removed Tirza from his position,
because of an inaccurate affidavit he submitted to the
High Court.)

Hernik said that the proposal to include the two
settlements within the fence ended up on Olmert's desk,
"and as far as I know, received his authorization."
Security sources confirmed that Olmert approved the change
in principle last November and asked the defense
establishment to prepare a formal proposal for the
cabinet.

And in response to a petition against the route approved
by the cabinet last April, the Justice Ministry recently
told the High Court that "a proposal to change the route
of the security fence to include the Israeli settlements
of Nili and Na'aleh and part of the road connecting the
Nili-Na'aleh Junction to Kiryat Sefer (Modi'in Ilit) is
due to be presented to the Israeli government."

Hernik said that a new road is also due to be paved, which
will connect Modi'in Ilit, Nili and Na'aleh with the
settlement of Ofarim. Palestinians will not be permitted
access to this road, but two tunnels will be built under
it to allow Palestinian traffic to transverse it.

The result is that some 17,000 Palestinians will be stuck
in an enclave bounded by the fence along the Green Line to
the west, and the road and the Nili-Na'aleh fence to the
east. Another village, with some 2,000 residents, will be
enclosed by the new fence route on three sides.

Olmert's office said in response that he has received a
proposal to connect the defenses around Nili and Na'aleh
to the barrier and is currently studying it. When he
finishes, he will bring it to the cabinet for discussion.

The Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces said
that the defense establishment "is currently engaged in
staff work to examine the various alternatives," including
proposals to encompass the two settlements with a security
fence and to protect the access road connecting them with
Kiryat Sefer.

US questions Israel's use of cluster bombs in a rare rebuke

2007-01-30T13:36:00.000-02:00




By Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian
30 January 2007

The US government delivered a mild but rare rebuke to
Israel yesterday when the state department said ith might
have misused American-made cluster bombs in its offensive
against Lebanon last summer. A state department spokesman,
Sean McCormack, said that after a US investigation, a
preliminary classified report had been sent to Congress so
that it could decide whether to pursue the issue. "There
were likely violations," he said.

The UN said last year that Israel had dropped 100,000
cluster bombs that remained unexploded, 90% of them in the
last few days of the war, calling it "immoral".

The UN mine office said last week it had found hundreds of
bomblets of types made by the US among unexploded ordnance
recovered in nearly 250 locations in southern Lebanon.
Given the close relationship between Israel and the US,
with Washington providing huge financial aid, it is
unusual for the US to criticise the country.

When Israel buys cluster bombs and other lethal equipment
from the US, it must agree in writing to restrictions on
their use.

Mr McCormack said the report "is not a final judgment". He
declined to speculate on what action might be taken
against Israel if a violation was confirmed.

The Reagan administration imposed a six-year ban on
cluster weapon sales to Israel in 1982, after a
congressional investigation found misuse of the weapons
during Israel's war that year with Lebnon.

There is no international ban on using cluster bombs
against fighters. But the Red Cross called for a ban
because their indiscriminate nature means civilians are
often the victims. The US, Russia and the UK have resisted
a complete ban.

Mr McCormack said Israeli officials had been cooperative.
The Israeli army has said all the weapons it uses "are
legal under international law and their use conforms with
international standards".

An Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev, said he was
not aware of the state department report but when the US
had raised cluster bombs in the past, Israel had been
"forthcoming, detailed and transparent".

PA source: Abbas security aides amassing arms to bolster forces

2007-01-30T00:55:00.000-02:00




Reuters
28 January 2007



Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's security
advisers have been amassing weapons in the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank to build up a wider range of forces than
just the presidential guard, Palestinian security sources
said.

The sources said several thousand assault rifles and other
weapons have been set aside in storehouses for members of
Preventive Security and other services that are dominated
by Abbas's Fatah faction and are locked in an increasingly
violent power struggle with the ruling Hamas movement.

Previous arms shipments were earmarked solely for Abbas's
presidential guard with U.S. and Israeli backing. Up to
$170 million, including U.S. funds and Palestinian tax
revenues released by Israel, will provide training,
equipment and other support to the guard, according to
U.S. and Israeli officials.

Palestinian sources did not disclose the source of the
weapons or when they arrived in the Palestinian
territories.

The Palestinian security sources, who spoke on condition
of anonymity, said Abbas has yet to authorize distribution
of the assault rifles in storage to the other security
forces.

But Hamas officials say forces loyal to Abbas appeared to
be better equipped during clashes over the weekend across
the Gaza Strip, which killed at least 24 people. In most
previous flare-ups, Fatah suffered heavier losses than
Hamas.

Violence between the factions has increased sharply in the
last month since unity government talks broke down and
Abbas called for new elections.

Islamist Hamas beat secular Fatah in parliamentary
elections a year ago. Hamas says holding another vote
would amount to a coup.

The senior Palestinian security sources said between 3,900
and 4,900 Kalashnikovs and M-16 rifles and other weapons
were being stored in the West Bank city of Jericho and in
Gaza for Preventive Security as well as Abbas's National
Security and General Intelligence services.

Several previous shipments of guns, ammunition and other
lethal equipment were delivered to Abbas's presidential
guard from U.S. allies Egypt and Jordan with Israeli
permission.

A senior Israeli official said Israel was unaware of any
weapons going to forces beyond the presidential guard.

Of the $100 million in Palestinian tax revenues that
Israel transferred to Abbas's office earlier this month,
$85 million will go towards a U.S.-led program to bolster
the guard, said Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert.

Washington plans to use $86 million of its own money in
coming months to provide the presidential guard with
training and non-lethal equipment, officials said.

Though its leaders are seen as loyal to Fatah, Preventive
Security is not eligible for direct U.S. assistance
because it technically falls under the jurisdiction of the
Hamas-led Interior Ministry.

Western officials said Abbas's military build-up was meant
to counter strides by Hamas in smuggling more powerful
weapons into Gaza for its fast-growing "Executive Force"
and armed wing, known as the Izz el-Din al-Qassam
Brigades.

The West Bank is dominated by Fatah but the group fears
Hamas is secretly training forces there. Of the new
weapons for Abbas's wider forces, 3,000 have been
earmarked for the occupied West Bank, Palestinian security
sources said.

Some analysts have warned that fighting between Hamas and
Fatah could turn into a proxy war, with the United States
supporting Abbas and Iran backing Hamas.

But David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy said the security aid was "defensive" and that
the goal was to avoid a situation in which "Hamas believes
it can swallow or even intimidate non-Hamas forces and
take over Gaza."

Western diplomats say Hamas appeared to have a military
edge in any prolonged fight with Fatah for control of
Gaza.

First deployed by the Hamas-led government in the narrow
coastal strip in May, Hamas says its "Executive Force" has
grown from an estimated 3,000 members to nearly 6,000.

With U.S. support in the coming months, Abbas's
presidential guard is expected to expand from 4,000 to
4,700 men. Palestinian officials say the force could
eventually grow to 10,000 members.

Preventive Security and Abbas's General Intelligence
service have about 6,000 members each. The National
Security forces have up to 40,000 members in total.

The United States and Israel have also backed a proposal
by Abbas to let about 1,000 members of the so-called Badr
Brigade, a Fatah-dominated force based in Jordan, into the
Palestinian territories, though no date has been set.

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid podcast available!

2007-01-27T14:50:00.000-02:00

The latest podcast is available here. This week's show talks about Jimmy Carter's controversial book Palesine: Peace Not Apartheid. Tell your friends!

IDF source admits 44 barriers allegedly removed did not exist

2007-01-22T11:59:00.001-02:00




By Avi Issacharoff

Haaretz
22 January 2007

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/816346.html

The Israel Defense Forces admitted on Sunday that the 44
dirt obstacles it said had been removed from around West
Bank villages did not actually exist.

Last Tuesday, the IDF announced that it had removed 44
dirt obstacles that blocked access roads to West Bank
villages, to fulfill promises made by Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
during their meeting a month ago. Olmert had pledged
measures to ease the lives of Palestinian civilians.

However, a military source admitted on Sunday that these
obstacles "had either been removed before the political
level decided on the alleviations or had been bypassed by
Palestinians earlier, and a decision had been made not to
rebuild them."

This statement confirms a claim made recently by United
Nations organizations operating in the territories: that
most of these barriers were not removed, because they had
not existed for months.

In response, the IDF Spokesman's Office said: "The IDF
recently removed 44 barriers in an effort to ease the
movement of the Palestinian population in Judea and
Samaria. These actions are being carried out in line with
assessments of the situation."

The IDF has erected close to 400 such dirt obstacles in
recent years.

New Podcast available

2007-01-21T03:06:00.000-02:00

This week on Crossing The Line, I’ll speak to Nora Barrows-Friedman reporting live from The West Bank for Flashpoints Radio about the ongoing situation in occupied Hebron, Bethlehem and her work with young Palestinian journalists in Diehesha refugee camp. Then later in the podcast our weekly commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal, plus the War’s Toll compiled and read by Scott Burgwin of the Stand Independent News Service. All of this coming up,