Thursday, July 31, 2014

! Collective Punishment in Gaza - By Rashid Khalidi - The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/collective-punishment-gaza



July 29, 2014

Collective Punishment in Gaza

By

Credit Photograph by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum

Three days after the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the current war in Gaza, he held a press conference in Tel Aviv during which he said, in Hebrew, according to the Times of Israel, “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

It’s worth listening carefully when Netanyahu speaks to the Israeli people. What is going on in Palestine today is not really about Hamas. It is not about rockets. It is not about “human shields” or terrorism or tunnels. It is about Israel’s permanent control over Palestinian land and Palestinian lives. That is what Netanyahu is really saying, and that is what he now admits he has “always” talked about. It is about an unswerving, decades-long Israeli policy of denying Palestine self-determination, freedom, and sovereignty.


What Israel is doing in Gaza now is collective punishment. It is punishment for Gaza’s refusal to be a docile ghetto. It is punishment for the gall of Palestinians in unifying, and of Hamas and other factions in responding to Israel’s siege and its provocations with resistance, armed or otherwise, after Israel repeatedly reacted to unarmed protest with crushing force. Despite years of ceasefires and truces, the siege of Gaza has never been lifted.

As Netanyahu’s own words show, however, Israel will accept nothing short of the acquiescence of Palestinians to their own subordination. It will accept only a Palestinian “state” that is stripped of all the attributes of a real state: control over security, borders, airspace, maritime limits, contiguity, and, therefore, sovereignty. The twenty-three-year charade of the “peace process” has shown that this is all Israel is offering, with the full approval of Washington. Whenever the Palestinians have resisted that pathetic fate (as any nation would), Israel has punished them for their insolence. This is not new.

Punishing Palestinians for existing has a long history. It was Israel’s policy before Hamas and its rudimentary rockets were Israel’s boogeyman of the moment, and before Israel turned Gaza into an open-air prison, punching bag, and weapons laboratory. In 1948, Israel killed thousands of innocents, and terrorized and displaced hundreds of thousands more, in the name of creating a Jewish-majority state in a land that was then sixty-five per cent Arab. In 1967, it displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians again, occupying territory that it still largely controls, forty-seven years later.

In 1982, in a quest to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization and extinguish Palestinian nationalism, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing seventeen thousand people, mostly civilians. Since the late nineteen-eighties, when Palestinians under occupation rose up, mostly by throwing stones and staging general strikes, Israel has arrested tens of thousands of Palestinians: over seven hundred and fifty thousand people have spent time in Israeli prisons since 1967, a number that amounts to forty per cent of the adult male population today. They have emerged with accounts of torture, which are substantiated by human-rights groups like B’tselem. During the second intifada, which began in 2000, Israel reinvaded the West Bank (it had never fully left). The occupation and colonization of Palestinian land continued unabated throughout the “peace process” of the nineteen-nineties, and continues to this day. And yet, in America, the discussion ignores this crucial, constantly oppressive context, and is instead too often limited to Israeli “self-defense” and the Palestinians’ supposed responsibility for their own suffering.

In the past seven or more years, Israel has besieged, tormented, and regularly attacked the Gaza Strip. The pretexts change: they elected Hamas; they refused to be docile; they refused to recognize Israel; they fired rockets; they built tunnels to circumvent the siege; and on and on. But each pretext is a red herring, because the truth of ghettos—what happens when you imprison 1.8 million people in a hundred and forty square miles, about a third of the area of New York City, with no control of borders, almost no access to the sea for fishermen (three out of the twenty kilometres allowed by the Oslo accords), no real way in or out, and with drones buzzing overhead night and day—is that, eventually, the ghetto will fight back. It was true in Soweto and Belfast, and it is true in Gaza. We might not like Hamas or some of its methods, but that is not the same as accepting the proposition that Palestinians should supinely accept the denial of their right to exist as a free people in their ancestral homeland.

This is precisely why the United States’ support of current Israeli policy is folly. Peace was achieved in Northern Ireland and in South Africa because the United States and the world realized that they had to put pressure on the stronger party, holding it accountable and ending its impunity. Northern Ireland and South Africa are far from perfect examples, but it is worth remembering that, to achieve a just outcome, it was necessary for the United States to deal with groups like the Irish Republican Army and the African National Congress, which engaged in guerrilla war and even terrorism. That was the only way to embark on a road toward true peace and reconciliation. The case of Palestine is not fundamentally different.

Instead, the United States puts its thumb on the scales in favor of the stronger party. In this surreal, upside-down vision of the world, it almost seems as if it is the Israelis who are occupied by the Palestinians, and not the other way around. In this skewed universe, the inmates of an open-air prison are besieging a nuclear-armed power with one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world.

If we are to move away from this unreality, the U.S. must either reverse its policies or abandon its claim of being an “honest broker.” If the U.S. government wants to fund and arm Israel and parrot its talking points that fly in the face of reason and international law, so be it. But it should not claim the moral high ground and intone solemnly about peace. And it should certainly not insult Palestinians by saying that it cares about them or their children, who are dying in Gaza today.


Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid-Washington Palestinian-Israeli negotiations of 1991-93. His most recent book is “Brokers of Deceit.”

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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Israel's continued massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza is not without cost to Jews around the world

Israel's continued massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza is not without cost to Jews around the world
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http://www.timesofisrael.com/talk-of-feared-new-holocaust-at-knesset-meeting-on-european-anti-semitism/

The Times of Israel


Talk of feared new Holocaust at Knesset meeting on European anti-Semitism

Incitement against Jews in Germany at levels not seen since 1933, says speaker at emergency session

By Amanda Borschel-Dan July 28, 2014, 8:00 pm 262

Full to capacity room at the Knesset's emergency meeting on rising anti-Semitism in Europe, July 28, 2014. (Israel Bardugo / The Israeli-Jewish Congress)
Full to capacity room at the Knesset's emergency meeting on rising anti-Semitism in Europe, July 28, 2014. (Israel Bardugo / The Israeli-Jewish Congress)

Amanda Borschel-Dan
Amanda Borschel-Dan
Amanda Borschel-Dan is The Times of Israel's Jewish World editor.

The room was packed to capacity at the Knesset on Monday for an emergency meeting on the “rising wave of violent anti-Semitic and anti-Israel demonstrations sweeping Europe,” with MKs and Diaspora Jewish leaders offering testimony and issuing condemnations.

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The meeting, chaired by MK Yoel Razvozov, saw representatives of Jewish communities and diplomats from countries including France, Greece, Hungary, Belgium, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Germany and Italy speaking at a session which went well overtime but ended inconclusively.

The meeting was called by the Knesset’s Diaspora Affairs Committee with the cooperation of the Israeli-Jewish Congress.
Members of Knesset bemoaned the upswing in anti-Semitism since the start of Operation Protective Edge on July 8, and security and academic experts attempted to drive home the dire importance of concrete steps to counter and educate against the rising anti-Semitism throughout Europe.

Vladimir Sloutzker, head of the Israeli-Jewish Congress, said starkly, “Never before since the Holocaust have we seen such a situation as today. We are potentially looking at the beginning of another Holocaust now.”

“These events will only grow in scale across Europe,” he warned.
The Holocaust and the pre-war period were recurrent themes in several speakers’ statements.

Nathan Norman Gelbart, the head of Germany’s Keren Hayesod (United Jewish Appeal), reported that the German Jewish community is scared “because these are things that have not occurred since 1933.” He cited demonstrators shouting “death to the Jews” and other anti-Semitic slogans.

“These demonstrators are marching in the heart of Berlin shouting these slogans, in front of the police. Shouting ‘Jews are pigs’ is an incitement: Why isn’t the Germany police taking the details of these people shouting in an aggressive way ‘Death to the Jews’?” asked Gelbart.

Hebrew University Prof. Robert Wistrich, an expert on anti-Semitism, said, “We have entered a new, very difficult era in all of Europe.” He said there is “a bit” of awareness in some governments, noting France’s aggressive stance against anti-Semitism in any form, from top government officials on down, “but we see it doesn’t make much of a difference — though it is important.”

Wistrich noted that years of “one-sided” anti-Israel media reports have led to an image of the Jewish state that is far removed from reality. Additionally, the constellation of extremists on the political far right and far left, along with jihadist immigrants, have created a new anti-Semitic climate in Europe, he said.

There is no longer a facade of anti-Zionist expressions not being anti-Semitic, said Wistrich. “You just need to hear the rhetoric to believe. We need a much deeper discussion; we’re just at the outer layer of the problem.”

Various European embassy officials obligingly reiterated their countries’ severe condemnation of anti-Semitism, but attributed official inaction during the recent anti-Israel protests to citizens’ right of free expression against Operation Protective Edge.

Denmark’s Ambassador Jesper Vahr said, “Clearly some of the events we have seen recently are despicable and intolerable.” He added, however, that Denmark “as a society defends the right of people who have a critical position to the Gaza operation.”

Meeting chair Razvozov rebutted, saying that “there is a difference between free speech and incendiary speech.” MK Yoav Bentsur agreed, saying, “It is impossible that in 2014 a Jew needs to take off Jewish symbols before walking the streets of Europe… if you don’t take care of the problem now, it will soon be too late.”

The looming existential threat to the Jewish community was touched upon by Esther Voet, director of the Centre of Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) in the Netherlands. She said although she is seeing more balanced reporting in the press versus during 2009′s Operation Cast Lead, “in the Netherlands we are very aware that it’s not about if something will happen in our country, but when.”

Benjamin Albalas, president of the Jewish Community of Greece, raised a further warning.

“The attitude in Europe is promoting delegitimization of the State of Israel… and is a first step toward the intimidation of the Jews’ right to live in their own home countries,” said Albalas.

Several Israeli speakers warned that the discussion in the Knesset was only touching the tip of the iceberg of the pervasive anti-Semitism in Europe today.

Knesset diplomatic adviser Oded Ben-Hur said, “Unfortunately, the situation is much worse than what you are describing… One of the problems is not just in knowing who is anti-Semitic, but to know that there is a whole swath of people who don’t even know they’re anti-Semitic — but they are.”

One of the very few to offer concrete suggestions, Ben-Hur suggested an increase in interfaith education.

“Emissaries talk until they are blue in the face and there is no end to this discussion… In the name of religion, more people have been killed than in plagues or disasters. There is ignorance between religions: We are comfortable in our own boxes, but we need to show we are the sons of the same God, and not to murder in the name of the God who created us all,” said Ben-Hur.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

For India's rich, a new motto: To have, but not to hold - By Gautam Bhatia - The Times of India, Mumbai

Chronicles of war


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Asif Khan <massif@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 11:21 AM
Subject: The Hole Story of Gaza
Chronicles of War


Warning: Many of these photographs are graphic in nature.

image
Palestinians search for survivors Monday under the debris of a destroyed house in Gaza City.Photo by Wissam Nassar/Xinhua/Zuma Press  

Israeli security personnel look at a window damaged by shrapnel after a short-range rocket landed near the Erez crossing. An Israeli civilian was killed by the rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, the military said, the first Israeli fatality in more than a week of fighting with Palestinian militants. The Islamist group Hamas that rules Gaza claimed responsibility for launching the short-range rocket that struck an area along the border with Gaza. Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters 

Jul 11, 2014. Smoke rises from the peace activists boat 'Gaza's Ark' following an Israeli air strike during the fighting between


 Israeli
 navy and Hamas militants next to the beach in the west of Gaza City.
Smoke rises from the peace activists boat 'Gaza's Ark' following an Israeli air strike during the fighting between Israeli navy and Hamas militants next to the beach in the west of Gaza City. (Momen Faiz—NurPhoto/Corbis)

image
Palestinians search for survivors under the debris of a destroyed house in Gaza City on Monday. Photo by Wissam Nassar/Xinhua/Zuma Press

image
Relatives of Plaestinian Islamic Jihad militant Abduallah El-Buhasi, who medics said was killed in an Israeli airstrike, mourn during his funeral in Deir El-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters.

Palestinian relatives of Roshdi Naser, mourn during his funeral in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Naser and eight others were killed in an early morning Israeli missile strike, officials said. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

A Palestinian woman sits inside her damaged house,
 which police said was targeted in an Israeli air strike,
 in Gaza City July 17, 2014. REUTERS-Finbarr O'Reilly
A Palestinian woman sits inside her damaged house, which police said was targeted in an Israeli air strike, in Gaza City July 17, 2014. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly

image
A Palestinian woman cries as she flees from a Gaza City neighborhood during an Israeli military operation. Photo by
Mohammed Saber/European Pressphoto Agency

image
Palestinians arrive at a hospital in Gaza City on Sunday.Photo by Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse/Getty
Images

Palestinians flee their homes in Gaza's eastern Shejaiya district on July 20, 2014, after heavy Israeli shelling that left casualties lying in the streets, an AFP correspondent reported. Ambulances were unable to reach much of the area along the border because of heavy fire, and emergency services told AFP there were reports of dead and wounded trapped by the bombardment. (Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)

Palestinian medics tend to a boy who they said was wounded in an Israeli shelling, at a hospital, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 21, 2014. REUTERS-Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Palestinian medics tend to a boy who they said was wounded in an Israeli shelling, at a hospital, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa


A Palestinian man holds the hand of a badly wounded woman, who medics said was wounded in an Israeli air strike, in the northern Gaza Strip on July 20, 2014. (Reuters/Abed Abu Reyash)

Lifeless bodies of children lay in the morgue of the Shifa hospital in Gaza City on July 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

image
Children sleep in a medical center in the Gaza Strip on Monday. Photo by Ezz Al-Zanoun/NurPhoto/Zuma Press

A Palestinian medic evacuates the body of a girl from Gaza's eastern Shejaiya district on July 20, 2014. (Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images)

A Palestinian woman wearing clothes stained with the blood of other relatives, who medics said were wounded in Israeli shelling, cries at a hospital in Gaza City July 20, 2014. REUTERS-Mohammed Salem
A Palestinian woman wearing clothes stained with the blood of other relatives, who medics said were wounded in Israeli shelling, cries at a hospital in Gaza City July 20, 2014. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Netream Netzleam holds the body of her
 daughter Razel, 1, who medics said died on Friday from injuries sustained in an Israeli air strike on Thursday
 afternoon, at
 her funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 18, 2014. REUTERS-Finbarr O'Reilly
Netream Netzleam holds the body of her daughter Razel, 1, who medics said died on Friday from injuries sustained in an Israeli air strike on Thursday afternoon, at her funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 18, 2014.
REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly

The aunt of Palestinian boy Mohammed Ayad, who medics said was killed during heavy Israeli shelling, mourns as she looks at his body during his funeral in Gaza City July 21, 2014.REUTERS-Mohammed Salem
The aunt of Palestinian boy Mohammed Ayad, who medics said was killed during heavy Israeli shelling, mourns as she looks at his body during his funeral in Gaza City July 21, 2014.
REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Jul. 9, 2014. Family
 members pray in the mosque in
 Sajeria,
 Gaza, by the bodies of Amir
 and Mohammed during their funeral.
Family members pray in the mosque in Sajeria, Gaza, by the bodies of Amir and Mohammed during their funeral. (Heidi Levine—SIPA)

A man sits next to the bodies of Palestinians from Abu Jama'e family, who medics said were killed in an Israeli air strike that destroyed their house, during their funeral at a mosque in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 21,
 2014.REUTERS-Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
A man sits next to the bodies of Palestinians from Abu Jama'e family, who medics said were killed in an Israeli air strike that destroyed their house, during their funeral at a mosque in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Palestinian touches the forehead of a member of the Abu-Hasira family, who medics said was killed in an Israeli air strike, at a funeral in Gaza City, July 22, 2014. REUTERS-Finbarr O'Reilly
Palestinian touches the forehead of a member of the Abu-Hasira family, who medics said was killed in an Israeli air strike, at a funeral in Gaza City, July 22, 2014. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly


The body of a child lies in the morgue of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on July 20, 2014. At least 40 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli shelling of the Shejaiya district overnight, medics said. (Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)

image
The mother of Israeli soldier Tal Yifrah mourns over his flag-covered coffin during his funeral in Rishon Lezion near Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

image
In Holon, Israel, family members of Major Tsafrir Bar-Or seen by the coffin during his funeral on Monday. The officer was killed during operation Protective Edge.Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images

image
Israeli soldier Tal Yifrah's girlfriend mourns at his grave during his funeral in Rishon Lezion near Tel Aviv on Tuesday. The Gaza conflict's death toll rose on both sides and the U.S. pressed the territory's Hamas rulers to accept an Egyptian cease-fire proposal. Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

APTOPIX Mideast Israel Palestinians
A Palestinian youth, holding a Quran, Islam's holy book, poses for photographers as he stands in the rubble of the Al Aqsa Martyrs mosque in Gaza City, destroyed by an overnight Israeli strike, Tuesday, July 22, 2014. Diplomatic efforts intensified to end the two week war that has killed hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis.
Lefteris Pitarakis | AP

A Palestinian shepherd holding a white cloth flees her house with her herd following an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 19, 2014. REUTERS-Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
A Palestinian shepherd holding a white cloth flees her house with her herd following an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 19, 2014. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/pictures/index.html?image=1#

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

In Photos: Worldwide protest against Israeli attack on Gaza (Updated) - Annie Robbins - MONDOWEISS

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/worldwide-protest-israeli.html


The War of Ideas in the Middle East

In Photos: Worldwide protest against Israeli attack on Gaza (Updated)

Chicago
Chicago
Cape Town, South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa
Rabat, Morocco
Rabat, Morocco
London
London
Nazareth
Nazareth (Photo:Activestills.org)
Bethlehem, Palestine
Bethlehem, Palestine
Aukland, New Zealand
Auckland, New Zealand
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Maldives
Maldives
Valparaiso, Chile
Valparaiso, Chile
Amman, Jordan
Amman, Jordan
Nablus
Nablus (Photo:Activestills.org)
Madrid, Spain
Madrid, Spain
Dublin
Dublin
Tunisia
Tunisia
Philadelphia
Philadelphia
France
Metz, France
Haifa
Haifa
Washington D.C.
Washington D.C.
South Korea
South Korea
San Francisco, USA
San Francisco, USA
Ottawa, Canada
Ottawa, Canada
Santiago, Chile
Santiago, Chile
Sweden
Stockholm, Sweden
Chicago
Chicago,USA
Paris, France
Paris, France
Glasgow, Scotland
Glasgow, Scotland
Lebanon
Lebanon (photo:AP)
Tokyo, ,Japan
Tokyo, ,Japan
London
London
Greece
Greece
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Norway
Norway
Edinburgh, Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland
Iceland
Iceland
Amman, Jordan
Amman, Jordan
Pro-Palestinian demonstration in Kansas City, July 20,photo by Billy Jo Larmore
Kansas City, Missouri (photo: Jo MacNiven)
Milan, Italy
Milan, Italy
Seattle
Seattle
Seattle
Seattle
Tunisia
Tunisia
Ft. Lauderdale, FL Woman with sign is Elena Stein
Ft. Lauderdale, FL
eattle
Seattle
BuenosAires, Argentina
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sydney
Sydney, Australia
Spain
Italy
San Francisco
San Francisco
Bogata, Columbia
Bogota, Colombia
Chicago
Chicago, USA
Germany
Germany
Frankfurt, Germany
Frankfurt, Germany
france
France
Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Dublin, Ireland
Dublin, Ireland
Rome, Italy
Rome, Italy
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Copenhagen, Denmark
Copenhagen, Denmark
Vienna, Austria
Vienna, Austria
Montreal, Canada. Photo courtesy of Under the Olive Tree which airs on CKUT 90.3 FM every Thursday from 11am – 12 noon. Learn more at http://www.mixcloud.com/UnderTheOliveTree/.
Montreal, Canada. Photo courtesy of Under the Olive Tree which airs on CKUT 90.3 FM every Thursday from 11am – 12 noon. Learn more at http://www.mixcloud.com/UnderTheOliveTree/
New York
New York
Montreal, Canada. Photo courtesy of Under the Olive Tree which airs on CKUT 90.3 FM every Thursday from 11am – 12 noon. Learn more at http://www.mixcloud.com/UnderTheOliveTree/
Montreal, Canada. Photo courtesy of Under the Olive Tree which airs on CKUT 90.3 FM every Thursday from 11am – 12 noon. Learn more at http://www.mixcloud.com/UnderTheOliveTree/
Kansas City, July 20, by Billy Jo Larmore. More photos here
Kansas City, Missouri (Photo: Jo MacNiven)
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio

About Annie Robbins

Annie Robbins is Editor at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area. Follow her on Twitter @anniefofani
Posted in Israel/Palestine | Tagged

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Ram