Galilee communities: We're not racist, we just don't want Arabs

Galilee communities: We're not racist, we just don't want Arabs
By Eli Ashkenazi

Residents of the Misgav bloc of communities in the Galilee consider themselves to be liberal, peace-loving people who support coexistence with their Arab neighbors and even root for Bnei Sakhnin, the soccer club based in a nearby Arab town considered a prominent symbol of that community. Which is why they were shocked this week when proposals raised at local council meetings to accept only applicants who shared their Zionist principles drew negative headlines and criticism for alleged racism.

"The label upsets me," South Africa-born lawyer Michael Zetler, who founded the Misgav community of Manof in 1980 with other immigrants from what was then an apartheid state, said Thursday. "It hurt me. I am not a racist."

Although few people will say so, the panic that spurred the submission of the controversial proposals are related to the High Court of Justice's ruling two years ago that upheld the right of Ahmed and Fahina Zubeidat, an Israeli Arab couple, to buy a house in the exclusively Jewish community of Rakefet notwithstanding the local admissions committee's objection.

Since then, some residents of Jewish communal settlements in the Galilee fear that the region's substantial Arab population might seek to buy property in their communities, where the standard of living is far higher, causing Jews to move out. In some areas of the Galilee this has already taken place: Portions of the once-exclusively Jewish town of Upper Nazareth are now populated by newcomers from the nearby Arab city of Nazareth.

"I agree that there is a problem, but whether this is the right way to deal with it, I am not sure," Zetler said yesterday. "Experience will tell. But there is a problem in the Galilee and people are challenging the political right of [Jewish] communities."

Unpleasant to be called Lieberman

Residents of the Misgav bloc are not used to being accused of racism, and dismay at being compared to Jewish settlers in the West Bank. "It's unpleasant and even offensive to wake up one morning and find that you've turned into [Avigdor] Lieberman when in fact it's the other way around," Alon Mayer, another resident of Manof, said, referring to the hawkish Yisrael Beiteinu chairman who proposed that Israeli Arabs be required to take an oath of loyalty to the state.

Mayer pointed out that the right-wing party headed by Lieberman garnered only 2.5 percent of the town's vote in the last Knesset elections - far below the national average. Despite feeling on the defensive, Mayer will not apologize for supporting the demand that applicants who seek to buy property in the communal settlement should adhere to the locals' basic cultural and political beliefs.

"When we decided to move to Manof, we sought a community that chose similar basic principles to our own, such as good education for children, culture, celebrating a Jewish communal lifestyle and protecting the environment," a woman from Manof said. "We joined this community knowing it is founded on these values."

Some Misgav bloc residents accuse Arab rights groups such as Adalah, which would rather Israel be defined as a binational state than a Jewish one and championed the Zubeidats' cause in the courts, of intentionally causing provocations. "An Arab narrative exists that proclaims 'we were not conquered, we did not desert,'" said Danny Ivri, a resident of the Misgav bloc community Yodfat. "They say 'we were manipulated in various ways, such as through military rule and suppressing our development by placing Jewish communities between our own communities."

Misgav bloc residents also fear increased tensions that could result from Arabs and Jews living in close proximity, and point at the occasional spurts of sectarian violence that break out in nearby non-Jewish towns between Muslims, Druze and Christians. "You can't impose a demographic mix on us that will recreate the sort of friction between Muslims, Christians and Druze that exists in Maghar, Peki'in and Rameh," Mayer said, referring to cities prone to periodic unrest. "High Court justices don't understand what it's like to live in a small community which was founded with great hardships, a community which is trying to hold on to a certain way of life."

Zionism's bond of blood

A few weeks ago a ceremony was held in Yuvalim, the largest town in the Misgav bloc, which exemplified its inveterate ties to the state of Israel. The regional council unveiled a promenade in memory of slain Israel Defense Forces soldier Arbel Reich, whose father was among Yuvalim's founders.

"It was an emotional ceremony," recalled regional council head Ron Shani. "This event was part of the community's narrative, part of its spirit, just like the fact that we educate our children to serve in combat units. That's what it's like here and we're proud of that.

"A resident who wishes to join Yuvalim will have to feel comfortable at such a ceremony, and if not he can go elsewhere, where he wouldn't be offended," he said.

Click HERE for full original article.

Amira Hass / Israel bans books, music and clothes from entering Gaza

by: Amira Hass
Haaretz (Israel), 5/17/09

Israel allows only food, medicine and detergent into the Gaza Strip. Thousands of items, including vital products for everyday activity, are forbidden.

Altogether only 30 to 40 select commercial items are now allowed into the Gaza Strip, compared to 4,000 that had been approved before the closure Israel imposed on Gaza following the abduction of Gilad Shalit, according to merchants and human rights activists.

The number of items changes according to what is determined by The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. COGAT has refused the PA representative's request for an updated list of the items permitted into Gaza in writing, and passes the information only via the telephone.

Gaza merchants are forbidden to import canned goods, plastic sheeting, toys and books, although the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other aid organizations are permitted to bring them into the strip.

The few items merchants are allowed to trade in are divided into three categories: food, medicine and detergent. Everything else is forbidden - including building materials (which are necessary to rehabilitate Gaza's ruins and rebuild its infrastructure), electric appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, spare machine and car parts, fabrics, threads, needles, light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, cutlery, crockery, cups, glasses and animals. Many of the banned products are imported through the tunnels and can be found in Gaza's markets.

Pasta, which had been forbidden in the past, is now allowed, after U.S. Senator John Kerry expressed his astonishment at the ban during a visit to Gaza in February. But tea, coffee, sausages, semolina, milk products in large packages and most baking products are forbidden. So are industrial commodities for manufacturing food products, chocolate, sesame seeds and nuts. Israel does allow importing fruit, milk products in small packages and frozen food products as well as limited amounts of industrial fuel.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that during the first week of May, 2.2 million liters of industrial fuel - some 70 percent of the weekly supply required to operate the power station - was allowed into Gaza. UNRWA receives petrol and diesel supplies separately. A daily 270-300 tons of cooking gas - 54 percent of the required amount - is allowed.

Petrol and diesel for private cars and public transportation have not been imported from Israel since November 2, 2008, except for a small amount for UNRWA. The union of Gaza's gas station owners estimates that some 100,000 liters of diesel and 70,000 liters of petrol are brought through the tunnels daily.

Egypt, which in the past two months has been restricting the trade movement through the tunnels, does not limit the supply of gas and fuel. But since Egyptian fuel is heavier than Israeli fuel, it damages the newer cars in Gaza and causes malfunctions.

In the past, Israel allowed wood for home furnishings to be brought into Gaza for some time, but not wood for windows and doors. Now Israel has resumed the ban on wood for furniture.

The ban on toilet paper, diapers and sanitary napkins was lifted three months ago. A little more than a month ago, following a long ban, Israel permitted the import of detergents and soaps into Gaza. Even shampoo was allowed. But one merchant discovered that the bottles of shampoo he had ordered were sent back because they included conditioner, which was not on the list.

Five weeks ago Israel allowed margarine, salt and artificial sweetener to be brought into Gaza. Legumes have been allowed for the past two months and yeast for the past two weeks. Contrary to rumors, Israel has not banned sugar.

COGAT commented that, "The policy of bringing commodities derives from and is coordinated with Israel's policy toward the Gaza Strip, as determined by the cabinet decision on September 19, 2007."

A COGAT forum convenes with representatives of international organizations weekly to address special requests of the international community regarding humanitarian equipment and the changing needs of the Palestinian population, the statement says.

Click HERE to read full original article.

Democracy Now! | Israeli Journalist Amira Hass on the Start of the UN’s Probe into Possible Israeli War Crimes during Gaza War Gaza-un-web

The actions of the Israeli army during its twenty-two-day assault on the Gaza Strip earlier this year are back in the spotlight with the arrival of a United Nations delegation in Gaza this Monday. The fifteen-member team will be investigating possible war crimes and other violations of international law during Israel’s military assault. It’s headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone, who was the former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Israel opposes the investigation and denied the delegation visas, forcing them to enter Gaza through the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing.

Click HERE to view, download, listen to, or read the interview [includes rush transcript].

No exception on Israeli settlement: Clinton

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said there must be no exceptions to President Barack Obama's demand that Israel stop its settlement activity.

Correspondents say it is the first time in years that US officials have been so vocal in calling for a settlement freeze in the Palestinian territories.

The comments come hours before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to meet Mr Obama at the White House.

Israel's PM has defied US demands, saying some settlements can expand.

'Very clear'

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with her Egyptian counterpart, Mrs Clinton said that the president was "very clear" with Benjamin Netanyahu at their recent meeting that there should be a stop to all settlements.

"Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions. We think it is in the best interest of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease," Mrs Clinton said.

The Israelis describe construction inside existing settlements as natural growth. Mr Netanyahu has said that this will continue .


Illegal outpost next to Kokhav Ha Shahar settlement

Outposts are small settlements, sometimes with only a few people, often built without government authorisation.

The Obama administration's statements on settlements will be welcomed by the Palestinians, but it is expected to cause growing friction with Israel, the BBC's Kim Ghattas reports from Washington.

The Palestinian Authority says it has ruled out restarting peace talks with Israel unless it removes all roadblocks and freezes settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

President Abbas is expected to reiterate the conditions during talks at the White House with Mr Obama.

Some 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.

Under the US-backed 2003 roadmap peace plan, Israel is obliged to end all settlement activity, specifically including natural growth.

The plan also required the Palestinian Authority to crack down on militants who seek to attack Israelis.

Click HERE for original article.

Civilians Pay the Price of War From Above

by: Robert Fisk
The Independent (UK), 5/10/09

Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as “human shields” by the Taliban and we shall say that we “deeply regret” innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it’s all the fault of the terrorists, not our heroic pilots and the US Marine special forces who were target spotting around Bala Baluk and Ganjabad.

When the Americans destroy Iraqi homes, there is an inquiry. And oh how the Israelis love inquiries (though they rarely reveal anything). It’s the history of the modern Middle East. We are always right and when we are not, we (sometimes) apologise and then we blame it all on the “terrorists”. Yes, we know the throat-cutters and beheaders and suicide bombers are quite prepared to slaughter the innocent.

But it was a sign of just how terrible the Afghan slaughter was that the powerless President Hamid Karzai sounded like a beacon of goodness yesterday appealing for “a higher platform of morality” in waging war, that we should conduct war as “better human beings”.

And of course, the reason is quite simple. We live, they die. We don’t risk our brave lads on the ground—not for civilians. Not for anything. Fire phosphorus shells into Fallujah. Fire tank shells into Najaf. We know we kill the innocent. Israel does exactly the same. It said the same after its allies massacred 1,700 at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 and in the deaths of more than a thousand civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and after the death of more than a thousand Palestinians in Gaza this year.

And if we kill some gunmen at the same time—“terrorists”, of course—then it is the same old “human shield” tactic and ultimately the “terrorists” are to blame. Our military tactics are now fully aligned with Israel.

The reality is that international law forbids armies from shooting wildly in crowded tenements and bombing wildly into villages—even when enemy forces are present—but that went by the board in our 1991 bombing of Iraq and in Bosnia and in Nato’s Serbia war and in our 2001 Afghan adventure and in 2003 in Iraq. Let’s have that inquiry. And “human shields”. And terror, terror, terror. Something else I notice. Innocent or “terrorists”, civilians or Taliban, always it is the Muslims who are to blame.

Click HERE for original article.

Amira Hass / Israel knows that peace just doesn't pay

by: Amira Hass
Haaretz (Israel), 5/11/09

Successive Israeli governments since 1993 certainly must have known what they were doing, being in no hurry to make peace with the Palestinians. As representatives of Israeli society, these governments understood that peace would involve serious damage to national interests.

Economic damage:

The security industry is an important export branch - weapons, ammunition and refinements that are tested daily in Gaza and the West Bank. The Oslo process - negotiations that were never meant to end - allowed Israel to shake off its status as occupying power (obligated to the welfare of the occupied people) and treat the Palestinian territories as independent entities. That is, to use weapons and ammunition at a magnitude Israel could not have otherwise used on the Palestinians after 1967. Protecting the settlements requires constant development of security, surveillance and deterrence equipment such as fences, roadblocks, electronic surveillance, cameras and robots. These are security's cutting edge in the developed world, and serve banks, companies and luxury neighborhoods next to shantytowns and ethnic enclaves where rebellions must be suppressed.
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The collective Israeli creativity in security is fertilized by a state of constant friction between most Israelis and a population defined as hostile. A state of combat over a low flame, and sometimes over a high one, brings together a variety of Israeli temperaments: rambos, computer wizards, people with gifted hands, inventors. Under peace, their chances of meeting would be greatly reduced.

Damage to careers:

Maintaining the occupation and a state of non-peace employs hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 70,000 people work in the security industry. Each year, tens of thousands finish their army service with special skills or a desirable sideline. For thousands it becomes their main career: professional soldiers, Shin Bet operatives, foreign consultants, mercenaries, weapons dealers. Therefore peace endangers the careers and professional futures of an important and prestigious stratum of Israelis, a stratum that has a major influence on the government.

Damage to quality of life:

A peace agreement would require equal distribution of water resources throughout the country (from the river to the sea) between Jews and Palestinians, regardless of the desalination of seawater and water-saving techniques. Even now it's hard for Israelis to get used to saving water because of the drought. It's not difficult to guess how traumatic a slash in water consumption to equalize distribution would be.

Damage to welfare:

As the past 30 years have shown, settlements flourish as the welfare state contracts. They offer ordinary people what their salaries would not allow them in sovereign Israel, within the borders of June 4, 1967: cheap land, large homes, benefits, subsidies, wide-open spaces, a view, a superior road network and quality education. Even for those Israeli Jews who have not moved there, the settlements illuminate their horizon as an option for a social and economic upgrade. That option is more real than the vague promises of peacetime improvements, an unknown situation.

Peace will also reduce, if not erase entirely, the security pretext for discriminating against Palestinian Israelis - in land distribution, development resources, education, health employment and civil rights (such as marriage and citizenship). People who have gotten used to privilege under a system based on ethnic discrimination see its abrogation as a threat to their welfare.

Click HERE for original article.

Madness at the AIPAC Conference: Can We Stop These People from Destroying Israel?

by: Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK Women for Peace
Alternet, 5/7/09

My mouth was muzzled by the sweaty hands of hate-filled staffers at the AIPAC conference, demanding that I "shut the f--- up."

While I was being tackled by security guards at Washington's Convention Center during the AIPAC conference for unfurling a banner that asked "What about Gaza?," my heart was aching. I wasn't bothered so much by the burly guards who were yanking my arms behind by back and dragging me -- along with 5 other CODEPINK members -- out of the hall. They were doing their job.

What made my heart ache was the hatred I felt from the AIPAC staff who tore up the banner and slammed their hands across my mouth as I tried to yell out: "What about Gaza? What about the children?"

"Shut the f--- up. Shut the f--- up." one staffer yelled, red-faced and sweating as he ran beside me. "This is not the place to be saying that shit. Get the f--- out of here."

What makes my heart ache is thinking about the traumatized children I met on my recent trip to Gaza, and how their suffering is denied by the 6,000 AIPAC conventioneers who are living in a bubble -- a bubble where Israel is the victim and all critics are anti-Semitic, terrorist lovers or, as in my case, self-hating Jews.

I found it fascinating that AIPAC's executive director Howard Kohr opened the conference admitting that there was now a huge, international campaign against the policies of Israel. He painted a picture of 30,000 people marching in Spain, Italian trade unionists calling for a boycott of Israeli products, the UN Human Rights Council passing 26 resolutions condemning Israel, an Israeli Apartheid Week that is building a global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

This global movement, he warned, emanates from the Middle East, echoes in the halls of the United Nations and the capitals of Europe, is voiced in meetings of international peace organizations, and is spreading throughout the United States -- from the media to town hall meetings, from campuses to city squares. "No longer is this campaign confined to the ravings of the political far left or far right," he lamented, "but increasingly it is entering the American mainstream."

Click HERE for rest of entire article.

UN report accuses Israel of recklessness in Gaza

by: Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS, May 5 (Reuters) - A U.N. inquiry accused Israel on Tuesday of gross negligence and recklessness in attacks on U.N. property in the Gaza strip during fighting between the Jewish state and Palestinian militants in January.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed the four-person inquiry board in February, said he would seek compensation for damage put at more than $11 million but would not follow the panel's call for further investigations.

Israeli officials rejected the report as one-sided, saying it ignored the fact that Israel was fighting a war against a "terrorist" organization -- the militant group Hamas.

Israel's armed forces conducted their own investigation into the conduct of the December-January Gaza campaign and said last month it had found no serious misconduct by troops, who had acted within international law.

Israel launched the campaign to try to halt Palestinian rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled strip. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed but the sides differ over how many were combatants. Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians.

The U.N. inquiry led by Briton Ian Martin, a former head of rights group Amnesty International who later joined the United Nations, investigated nine incidents of damage to U.N. property and faulted Israel in seven of them. It blamed Hamas in one case and could not establish responsibility in another.

In several cases, the report found Israel had "breached the inviolability of United Nations premises," had not respected U.N. immunity and was responsible for deaths and injuries.

In a Jan. 15 incident, the shelling of the Gaza compound of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) with high explosive and white phosphorus, an incendiary substance, "was grossly negligent, amounting to recklessness," it said. Three people were injured.

PURSUE REPARATIONS

The panel also found that Israeli forces had failed to meet their responsibilities to protect U.N. personnel and civilians when they fired mortar shells on Jan. 6 that landed near an UNRWA school in Jabalia where Palestinians were sheltering.

Seven people were wounded inside the school, but an estimated 30-40 people were killed nearby.

In these and other incidents, Israel said its forces were responding to Palestinian fire.

But the U.N. report said allegations that militants had fired from within U.N. premises "were untrue, continued to be made after it ought to have been known that they were untrue, and were not adequately withdrawn and publicly regretted."

In 11 recommendations, the panel said the U.N. should seek that acknowledgment and should pursue reparations for damage caused. It also called for an impartial inquiry of alleged violations of international law by Israel in Gaza and by Palestinian militants who rocketed southern Israel.

The panel's report emerged from a 27-page summary sent by Ban to members of the U.N. Security Council and to Israel. Ban said the full 184-page report was being kept secret because information in it could prejudice U.N. security.

In a letter accompanying the summary, Ban said he was "carefully reviewing these recommendations with a view to determining what course of action, if any, I should take." But he said he did not plan any further inquiry.

Ban told a news conference, however: "I intend to seek reparation of loss or damage incurred by the U.N." Apart from losses of some $29,000 caused by Palestinian rocket fire at a U.N. warehouse, the report ascribed all the damage to Israel.

Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador, Daniel Carmon, called the report one-sided and unfair. "We were really shocked to see a report where the board is limiting itself to the facts of the damages only, ignoring the context, ignoring that there is war against terrorism," he told Reuters.

Carmon called the panel's recommendations "unacceptable," but welcomed Ban's letter which he said showed the U.N. chief was "somehow distancing himself from the board's report." (Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Click HERE for full original article.

Boycott Begins to Bite at Companies Supporting Israel's Military Occupation of Palestine

by: Nadia Hijab
CounterPunch, 5/4/09

"When companies begin to lose money, they start to listen."

On May 4, protesters will greet Motorola shareholders, already disgruntled by the company's losses, as they arrive for their annual meeting at the Rosemont Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

The protest, organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, is part of a drive to "Hang Up On Motorola" until it ends sales of communications and other products that support Israel's military occupation of Palestinian land.

Inside the meeting, the Presbyterian, United Methodist and other churches will urge shareholders to support their resolution, which calls for corporate standards grounded in international law. Doing the right thing could also reduce the risk of "consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns and lawsuits."

Although Motorola executives deny it, such risks must have played a part in their decision to sell the department making bomb fuses shortly after Human Rights Watch teams found shrapnel with Motorola serial numbers at some of the civilian sites bombed by Israel in its December-January assault on Gaza.

The US protests are part of a growing global movement that has taken international law into its own hands because governments have not. And, especially since the attacks on Gaza, the boycotts have been biting. There are three reasons why.

First, boycotts enable ordinary citizens to take direct action. For instance, the New York group Adalah decided to target diamond merchant Lev Leviev, whose profits are plowed into colonizing the West Bank. During the Christmas season, they sing carols with the words creatively altered to urge shoppers to boycott his Madison Avenue store.

Click HERE for the rest of the original article.

Gaza crimes inquiry criticised

by: Vita Bekker
The National, 4/23/09

TEL AVIV // Human rights lawyers and activists yesterday blasted the Israeli army’s investigation into its conduct during the recent onslaught in the Gaza Strip as faulty and claimed it exposed soldiers and officers to possible prosecution for war crimes abroad.

Despite widespread international criticism over its handling of the three-week assault in December and January, the military said on Wednesday that the findings of five internal investigations showed it operated in accordance with international law and that it only made “isolated” mistakes during the fighting.

Sari Bashi, a lawyer and head of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, said: “The military has a record of whitewashing its violations of international law. It has never proven itself to be able to credibly investigate its own wrongdoings.”

The army’s findings drew a barrage of criticism from activists for failing to take into account testimonies of Palestinian victims, for not disclosing the sources used in the investigation and for only addressing several isolated incidents while ignoring questions on the military’s overall policies on its use of firepower in Gaza.

Yael Stein, research director at B’Tselem, an Israeli rights organisation, said: “They used much more force than in previous cases when they entered Gaza or the West Bank, and it seemed that they had a change in policy which should be checked. The amount of people who got killed was unprecedented in the occupied territories.”

Click HERE for the rest of this story.

U.S. Shames Itself in Skipping Anti-Racism Conference

by: Stephen Zunes
Alternet, 4/22/09

To the dismay of human rights groups across the world, Obama decided to pander to right-wing hawks and boycott the historic gathering.

The United States shamed itself in boycotting the United Nations conference on racism. Rejecting calls by liberal Democratic members of Congress, leading human rights groups, Pope Benedict XVI, and most of the international community to participate, the Obama administration instead gave into pressure by Congressional hawks and other anti-UN forces by joining a handful of other nations refusing to participate in the historic gathering.

The five-day conference, which is taking place this week in Geneva, assessed international progress in fighting racism and xenophobia since the UN's first conference in Durban, South Africa eight years ago. The Bush administration withdrew from that gathering, but there had been hope the Obama administration wouldn't continue its predecessor's ideology-driven opposition to the UN and its human rights agenda.

With pressure from the United States and some other countries, the draft declaration prepared for this year's conference dropped a call to ban "defamation of religion," which raised concerns regarding restricting free speech, as well as any references to Israel and Palestine. State Department spokesperson Robert Wood acknowledged that the draft was "significantly improved," and that the United States was "deeply grateful" that requested changes had been made. Yet he announced the United States would boycott the conference anyway because the document reaffirmed the final declaration of the 2001 meeting in Durban right-wing critics had labeled "anti-Israel."

Click HERE for the rest of the entire article.

Gideon Levy / The Holocaust and Israeli occupation cannot be compared

by: Gideon Levy
Haaretz (Israel), 4/19/09

The Israeli soldiers played backgammon in their tent as a Palestinian ambulance stood waiting, its red lights flashing.

The sight of the ambulance, holding an agonized woman, was not enough to cause any of the soldiers to take a break from their game.

This went on for half an hour, until my patience finally ran out. It was the height of the second Intifada, and we were lined up at checkpoint 250, which at that point besieged the West Bank town of Jenin. I exited the vehicle and approached the soldiers, raising my distraught voice at them.

"They always keep us hanging like this," the ambulance driver had just told me, in contemporary Hebrew slang.

I asked the soldiers how they would have felt had it been their father or mother laying there in the ambulance. That query flurried through their minds, brainwashed against seeing Palestinians as a fellow human.

In my rage, I then told the soldiers that only monsters could play backgammon as an ailing woman suffers nearby. One of the soldiers cocked a gun at my head and unfastened the safety.

In the "investigation" held following the incident, the soldier claimed I told them they were Nazis. As far as they were concerned, the words "monster" and "Nazi" were synonymous.

I have never called Israel Defense Forces soldiers Nazis and I never will. The Holocaust and the Nazis could not and should not be compared to any other inhumane behaviors.

In Europe, this designation is becoming more and more common. The IDF are Nazis and Israel is a Nazi, Jews afflicting unto others all that was done to them.

A large part of the world's leftists - many of whom consider themselves to be friends of Israel, some of them even Jewish - see the Israeli occupation as a manifestation of renewed Nazism.

I reject that comparison with anger and contempt. It is incorrect, horrifically infuriating and harmful to the just Palestinian cause. The occupation is cruel enough, and while comparison to the Holocaust not only cheapens that historical memory, it also undervalues the crimes of the Israeli occupation.

There is no one absolute evil. Comparison between the Israeli occupation and Nazism is like comparing an elephant to a fly. What do they have in common? Practically nothing.

Worrying Racism

It's not clear who started it. Maybe it was us. Abba Eban, the legendary Labor foreign minister, once called the borders established following the 1967 Six-Day War "Auschwitz borders" - no less. Decades later, Benjamin Netanyahu said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a "modern-day Hitler" - no less.

Portuguese author Jose Saramago was also tempted to make the comparison. After visiting the occupied territories in 2002, he said they resembled Auschwitz.

MK Issam Makhoul once gave a raised arm salute over the Knesset podium, calling out "Heil Sharon."

From both the right and the left, in Israel and abroad, comparisons rise.

All of these comparisons should be rejected. Anyone who likens the 1967 borders to Auschwitz and the president of Iran to Hitler is just as infuriating as those who compare the IDF to Nazis.

The Israeli occupation is both brutal and cruel. Israel in 2009 is beginning to resemble 1930s Germany more and more. The dehumanization process Palestinians experience, encouraged by the media and executed by the IDF, brings to mind horrific images.

Anyone facing the barbed-wire fences surrounding Qalqilya, for example, cannot help but think of a concentration camp. A concentration camp - not an extermination camp. The person who smeared graffiti on the separation wall calling Abu Dis a ghetto, as it severed by an 8-meter high concrete wall, did so with good reason.

The racism exhibited toward Israeli Arab, wherever they may go, should also stir profound concern. Arab students are unable to rent apartments in Jewish cities and a Ramat Aviv grocery shop owner has said that quite a few of the upscale neighborhood's residents refuse to have Arab employees deliver their groceries. That too should ring some bells.

Arabs were fired from Israel Railways, essentially because of their ethnic affiliation, and others struggle to be accepted into government positions, for the same reason. So-called selections - yes, that's the name for it - prevents young Arabs from entering city night clubs. Security checkups in Ben-Gurion Airport, which separates people according to their ethnicity, and the checkups based on someone's accent, are sickening.

There are more than a few IDF orders and Knesset laws that if translated to German, would certainly cause alarm. The demand to require Arab citizens to pass a loyalty test would have sounded horrible in German. Also, the prevalent claims that Israel's problems could have been solved had we only barricaded the Palestinians behind fences or borders are just as horrifying.

The term "demographic threat" should sound familiar to the Holocaust generation, to subsequent generations, as should the discussion - shameful in its accepted legitimacy, - of how to deal with this apparent "threat." The citizenship law should have, as they say in English, "rang a few bells."

Click HERE for full original article.

Letter for educational rights in Palestine

A letter concerned with educational rights in Palestine. -José

By Marcy Newman

March 31, 2009

To: Michael Cowan, Acting Executive Director
University of California Education Abroad Program
Universitywide Office of EAP
6950 Hollister Avenue, Suite 200

Goleta, CA 93117-5823

RE: Plan to Reopen UC EAP in Israel

Dear Dr. Cowan:

We, the undersigned, are faculty of the University of California and supporters of the Education Abroad Program (EAP). We write to express serious concerns about the plan to restart the UC EAP in Israel at a time when Palestinian education in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem has been disrupted or made impossible as a result of Israeli policies. If the reopening goes forward, the likelihood that some UC students will face discriminatory treatment if they seek to partake in this program raises additional and separate concerns.

To restart EAP in Israel at this time would not reflect well on the UC’s commitment to the universal right to education. Israel has persistently violated its obligation under Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires the Occupying Power to facilitate the proper functioning of educational institutions in occupied territories. Israel remains the Occupying Power because it retains effective control in all these areas, and exercises this control by making education difficult or impossible for Palestinians in a variety of ways: blockading, besieging and bombing schools and universities; suspending delivery of books and educational supplies; restricting or barring the movement of students, teachers and researchers to their institutions of learning, as well as to travel abroad for educational purposes. Because of these actions, Israel has deprived hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of their right to education.

We are also deeply concerned that Arab-American (and especially Palestinian-American) and Muslim-American UC students who might want to participate in a UC EAP in Israel would encounter disabling forms of discrimination and a generally hostile anti-Arab and anti-Muslim environment in Israel. This concern is supported by the US government, as reflected in the State Department website warning that “American citizens whom Israeli authorities suspect of being of Arab or Muslim origin are likely to face additional, often time-consuming, and probing questioning by immigration and border authorities, or may even be denied entry into Israel. If they are determined by Israeli authorities to have a claim to residency status in the West Bank or Gaza, or to have a claim to a Palestinian identification number, such American citizens may be required by the Government of Israel to use a Palestinian Authority travel document to transit Israel to enter the West Bank or Gaza. Such a determination could be made for American citizens if they or their immediate family members or grandparents were born in the West Bank or Gaza, currently reside there, or have lived there for any appreciable amount of time.”

If such a determination were made in the case of Palestinian-American UC students, they would be subject to the travel restrictions that Israel imposes on Palestinians from the occupied territories; at a minimum, they would be subject to harassment and humiliation at Israeli army checkpoints and would, in all likelihood, be denied entry to Jerusalem which is off limits to Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

The designated site of UC’s EAP, Hebrew University (HU), has a longstanding and documented record of discriminating against Palestinian students, even those who are citizens of Israel. Palestinian students have been barred from using athletic facilities, for example, and the university has on at least one occasion removed Palestinian students from campus housing to make room for Jewish American students, partly in order to prevent the mixture of Jews and Arabs. This record, coupled with the US government’s warning, presents a constitutive likelihood that restarting EAP in Israel will involve discrimination against some UC students, potentially in contravention of UC regulations and California law. This places the onus on the University either not to pursue such a program or to put in place from the outset guarantees that such discrimination would not occur.

We request that you release existing documentation of EAP’s review of Israel and HU. If such documentation is not available, given the high probability of discrimination, we request a formal re-review of the HU proposal by the University Committee on International Education, a process that would include experts on HU’s record on discrimination. Following such a review, we request that a report be made public with information about (1) the formal criteria UC EAP has created to determine whether HU meets UC and US criteria for nondiscrimination under the various statutes that govern public higher education; (2) formal measures that UC EAP will take to guarantee non-discrimination at the new center; and (3) the formal procedures for redressing and possibly closing EAP in Israel if the program is restarted but fails to meet non-discrimination criteria.

The University’s failure to address all of the concerns raised in this letter, we think, would constitute an unacceptable disregard for liability risk and abrogation of its commitment to provide a non-discriminatory educational environment for all of its students.

Sincerely,

Edward A. Alpers, UCLA
Nazar AlSayyad, UCB
Anjali Arondekar, UCSC
Paola Bacchetta, UCB
Etienne Balibar, UCI
Ali Behdad, UCLA
George Bisharat, UC Hastings School of Law
Jody Blanco, UCSD
Daniel Boyarin, UCB
Karl Britto, UCSC
Karen Brodkin, UCLA
Wendy Brown, UCB
Carole Browner, UCLA
Edmund Burke III, UCSC
Judith Butler, UCB
Magda Campo, UCSB
Richard Candidas, UCB
Michael Cassidy, UCB
Ignacio Chapela, UCB
Piya Chatterjee, UCR
Joshua Clover, UCD
Michael Cooperson, UCLA
Lara Deeb, UCI
Elizabeth DeLoughrey, UCLA
Gina Dent, UCSC
Gregory Dobbins, UCD
Beshara Doumani, UCB
Lan Duong, UCR
Omnia el Shakry, UCD
Fatima El-Tayeb, UCSD
Julia Elyachar, UCI
Samera Esmeir, UCB
Yen Le Espiritu, UCSD
Richard Falk, UCSB
Margaret W. Ferguson, UCD
Aisha Finch, UCLA
Claudio Fogu, UCSB
John Foran, UCSB
Carla Freccero, UCSC
Takashi Fujitani, UCSD
Nancy Gallagher, UCSB
Rosemary George, UCSD
Jess Ghannam, UCSF
Evelyn Glenn, UCB
David Theo Goldberg, UCI
Bluma Goldstein, UCB
Bishnupriya Ghosh , UCSB
Avery Gordon, UCSB
Emily Gottreich, UCB
Inderpal Grewal, UCI
Ramon Grosfoguel, UCB
Nandini Gunewardena, UCLA
Elizabeth M. Guthrie, UCI
Christian Haesemeyer, UCLA
Lisa Hajjar, UCSB
Gerry Hale, UCLA
Sondra Hale, UCLA
Jonathan Hall, UCI
Gillian Hart, UCB
Charles Henry, UCB
Charles Hirschkind, UCB
Gil Hochberg, UCLA
Jerome Hoffman, UCLA
Grace Hong, UCLA
Donna Jones, UCB
Suad Joseph, UCD
Caren Kaplan, UCD
Marie Kennedy, UCLA
Elaine Kim, UCB
Katherine King, UCLA
Jake Kosek, UCB
Mariam B. Lam, UCR
Jin-Kyung Lee, UCSD
Leon Letwin, UCLA
Mark LeVine, UCI
Esther Lezra, UCSB
Margaret Loose, UCSD
Lisa Lowe, UCSD
Paul Lubeck, UCSC
Samer Madanat, UCB
Saba Mahmood, UCB
Sunaina Maira, UCD
Saree Makdisi, UCLA
Nelson Maldonado-Torres, UCB
Waldo Martin, UCB
Bill Maurer, UCI
Toby Miller, UCR
Minoo Moallem, UCB
Kathleen Moore, UCSB
Michael Morony, UCLA
Ramona Naddaf, UCB
Mary King Norseng, UCLA
Alice O’Connor, UCSB
Michael Omi, UCB
Mary Lovelace O’Neal, UCB
Stefania Pandolfo, UCB
Constance Penley, UCSB
Gabriel Piterberg, UCLA
Ismail Poonawala, UCLA
Michael Provence, UCSD
Leigh Raiford, UCB
Kaushik Sunder Rajan, UCI
Richard Randolph, UCSC
Raka Ray, UCB
Lisa Rofel, UCSC
Frank Ross, UCSD
Ananya Roy, UCB
Parama Roy, UCD
Rosaura Sanchez, UCSD
Alex Saragosa, UCB
Bhasker Sarkar, UCSB
Sue Schweik, UCB
Kathryn Shevelow, UCSD
Sonia Shiri, UCB
David Simpson, UCD
Susan Slyomovics, UCLA
Eric Smoodin, UCD
Ula Taylor, UCB
Charis Thompson, UCB
Barrie Thorne, UCB
Anne Wagner, UCB
Richard Walker, UCB
L. Ling-chi Wang, UCB
Evan Watkins, UCD
Michael Watts, UCB
Devra Weber, UCR
Hayden White, UCSC
Leon Wofsy, UCB
Victor Wolfenstein, UCLA
Salim Yaqub, UCSB
Lisa Yoneyama, UCSD

Contact Information: Prof. Sondra Hale sonhale[at]ucla.edu and Prof. Kathleen Moore kmoore[at]lawso.ucsb.edu

"American Radical," a New Documentary About Norman Finkelstein

Here's a new trailer of an upcoming documentary film about Norman Finkelstein. -José



For more, visit the film's website HERE.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE: One-State Supporters Make a Comeback

Analysis by Helena Cobban
Interpress Service (IPS), 4/10/09

President Barack Obama has spoken out forcefully - including this week, in Ankara, Turkey - in favour of building an independent Palestinian state alongside a still robust Israel. However, many Palestinians have noted that President George W. Bush also, in recent years, expressed a commitment to Palestinian statehood. But, they note, Bush never took the actions necessary to achieve such a state - and neither, until now, has Obama.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to give very generous support to Israel - where successive governments have built Jewish-only colonies in the occupied West Bank and taken other actions that make a viable Palestinian state increasingly hard to achieve.

Many Palestinians and some important voices in what remains of Israel’s now-battered peace camp have concluded that it is now impossible to win the ‘two-state solution’ envisaged by Bush and Obama. This has led to the re-emergence in both communities of an old idea: that of a single bi-national state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, in which both Hebrew-speaking Jewish Israelis and Arabic-speaking Palestinians would have equal rights as citizens, and find themselves equally at home.

That goal was advocated most eloquently in the 1930s and early 1940s by Judah Magnes, Martin Buber, and other intellectuals at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However, most Israelis moved away from it after Israel was established as a specifically Jewish state in 1948.

Later, in 1968, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) articulated a somewhat similar goal: that of building a ‘secular democratic state’, which comprises both pre-1967 Israel and the West Bank and Gaza - which Israel brought under military occupation in 1967.

However, the PLO leaders could never agree on which of the numerous Jewish immigrants brought into Israel before and after 1948 to include in their project. A few years later, in 1974, most PLO supporters - but not all - moved decisively away from the ‘one-state’ model. They started working instead for the two-state model: an independent Palestinian state in just the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, alongside the Israel state.

For 26 years after 1974, Israel’s governments remained deeply opposed to an independent Palestinian state. All those governments made lavish investments in the project - illegal under international law - of implanting their own citizens as settlers in the occupied West Bank. They annexed East Jerusalem. When pressed on the Palestinians’ future, they said they hoped Palestinians could exercise their rights in Egypt or Jordan - just not inside historic Palestine. This idea has been making a comeback recently - including among advisers to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 1993, Israel finally recognized the PLO, and concluded the Oslo Accord with it. Under Oslo, the two sides created a new body called the Palestinian Authority (PA), designed to administer some aspects of daily life in parts of the occupied territories - though not, crucially, in occupied East Jerusalem.

Even after Oslo, Israeli officials made clear that they had not promised the PLO a full Palestinian state. They also said, correctly, that their rights and responsibilities as a military occupying power would remain in place. The final disposition of the occupied areas would await conclusion of a final peace agreement.

Oslo specified that that agreement should be completed by 1999. Ten years later, that deadline has still not been met - a final peace treaty still seems fairly distant. Meanwhile, Israel has used the 16 years since Oslo to increase both the number of settlers it has in the West Bank and the degree of control it exercises over the economies of both Gaza and the West Bank.

Palestinian-American political scientist Leila Farsakh describes Israel’s policies toward the economies of both areas as "the engineering of pauperisation." She notes that despite the large amounts of international aid poured into the West Bank, poverty rates there have risen. Most West Bank areas outside the territory’s glitzy ‘capital’, Ramallah, are poor and increasingly aid-dependent. Lavish new settlements housing 480,000 settlers crowd much of the West Bank’s best land, and guzzle its water, Farsakh explains.

In an Israeli population of just 7.2 million, those settlers now form a formidable voting bloc. Attempts to move them out look almost impossible. In the latest round of peace negotiations that Israel and the PA/PLO pursued from 2000 until recently, participants discussed ways to reduce the number of settlers required to move by annexing the big settlement areas to Israel in return for a land exchange. But those boundary modifications look complex, and quite possibly unworkable.

Meanwhile, the negotiation over a small Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza has sidelined the concerns and rights of three important Palestinian constituencies. The 1.2 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel would remain as an embattled minority within an Israeli state still ideologically committed to the immigration of additional Jews. The 270,000 Palestinians of Jerusalem might also still be surrounded and vulnerable. And the five million Palestinians who still - 61 years after they and their forbearers fled homes in what became Israel in 1948 - would have their long-pursued right to return laid down forever.

From 1982 - the year the PLO’s leaders and guerrilla forces were expelled from Lebanon - until recently, the main dynamo of Palestinian nationalism has been located in the Palestinian communities of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. But in recent years, those communities have been severely weakened. They are administratively atomised, politically divided, and live under a palpable sense of physical threat.

Many ‘occupied’ Palestinians are returning to the key defensive ideas of steadfastness and "just hanging on" to their land. But new energy for leadership is now emerging between two other key groups of Palestinians: those in the diaspora, and those who are citizens of Israel. The contribution those groups can make to nationwide organising has been considerably strengthened by new technologies - and crucially, neither of them has much interest in a two-state outcome.

Not surprisingly, therefore, discussions about the nature of a one-state outcome - and how to achieve it - have become more frequent, and much richer in intellectual content, in recent years.

Palestinian-Israeli professor Nadim Rouhanna, now teaching at Tufts University in Massachusetts, is a leader in the new thinking. "The challenge is how to achieve the liberation of both societies from being oppressed and being oppressors," he told a recent conference in Washington, DC. "Palestinians have to… reassure the Israeli Jews that their culture and vitality will remain. We need to go further than seeing them only as ‘Jews-by- religion’ in a future Palestinian society."

Like many advocates of the one-state outcome, Rouhanna referred enthusiastically to the exuberant multiculturalism and full political equality that have been embraced by post-apartheid South Africa.

Progressive Jewish Israelis like Ben Gurion University geographer Oren Yiftachel are also part of the new movement. Yiftachel’s most recent work has examined at the Israeli authorities’ decades-long campaign to expropriate the lands of the ethnically Palestinian Bedouin who live in southern Israel - and are citizens of Israel. "The expropriation continues - there and inside the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem," Yiftachel said, explaining that he did not see the existence of "the Green Line" that supposedly separates Israel from the occupied territory as an analytically or politically relevant concept.

Click HERE for full original article.

Democracy Now! | Land of Ruins: A Special Report on Gaza’s Economy

This is an excellent report on the state of Gaza right now. One of the best I've seen. I higly recommend it. -José

Democracy Now! producer Anjali Kamat files a report on the state of the Gazan economy, where unemployment and poverty rates are among the highest in the world. Despite international pledges of over $5.2 billion to rebuild Gaza, in the four months since Israel’s assault the siege has not been lifted and only one truck carrying cement and other construction materials has been allowed entry into the Gaza Strip.

Click HERE to watch (video), listen to, or download the podcast of the program [includes rush transcript].

Missive from a perplexed diplomat

by: Akiva Eldar
Haaretz (Israel), 4/6/09

Confidential telegram. From: Israel Loyal, Israeli embassy, Utopia

My dear friend,

Since Avigdor Lieberman's taking office I am beside myself. I am two years shy of retirement and I thought this might be the time to tell our so-called leaders what I think of them, to slam the door in their face and go home.

I have always been an old-school Mapainik - not radical left, heaven forbid. When we graduated our cadet course, Abba Eban was foreign minister. When Yitzhak Shamir from the underground became foreign minister, we thought it was the end of the world, but we stayed put. David Levy and Silvan Shalom were no Kissingers, but we got used to them, too.

When Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Ariel Sharon foreign minister, my kids asked whether I was not ashamed of working for the one from Sabra and Chatila. I told them I was a civil servant, and served no one but the state.

The day after the elections I reprimanded the media for making a big deal out of Lieberman. I said that, with all due respect, he received a total of a little more than 10 percent of the vote. I calmed down the reporters (and myself), saying there was no way Lieberman would fill a central foreign policy role in any future cabinet. Yesterday my eldest grandson called and asked what I would do when the man who wants to get rid of our Arab citizens comes for a visit.

What do I tell him? That I'm just doing my job? When I think that my deputy, a young Arab diplomat, will have to host Lieberman, I get the chills. I asked him, jokingly of course, if he has signed the loyalty-to-the-State-of-Israel form already. I don't envy our guys in Cairo, who have to explain how their peace-loving state appointed to a top diplomatic post a man who threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam and cursed the Egyptian president to hell.

Journalists ask me how the new Israeli government proposes to solve the conflict and I really don't know what to say. As you know, we got good mileage out of Ehud Olmert's interview with Haaretz, when he said that if we don't separate from the Palestinians, Israel would soon cease to be a Jewish democracy. When they asked me about dismantling the illegal outposts and freezing settlement construction, I said that we were already close to an agreement that would return most of the West Bank to the Palestinians. It would be a pity, I explained, to waste troops on evacuating a few miserable outposts and cause a coalition crisis for a few hundred additional houses.

What do we sell the goyim now? Can we replace the mantra "Ehud Barak gave them everything and Yasser Arafat repaid him with terror" with "Olmert gave Abu Mazen the best offer and the coward ran away"? We both know this nonsense will liquidate whatever's left of the peace camp.

The Middle East staffers in Utopia's foreign ministry are not suckers. They are fed up with sending millions of dollars to the Middle East every year. The economic crisis is palpable here, too, and already some politicians and commentators are asking why their taxpayers should foot the bill of Israeli occupation. One official reminded me that the entire "donor states" matter is not philanthropy but an instrument to advance the peace process. He suggested that I make it clear to my superiors that if Netanyahu intends to gamble on the Iranian card and endlessly extend the negotiations with the Palestinians, we will have to pay the teachers' and doctors' salaries in the West Bank.

So what do you suggest? Should I return home and tell the media what awaits us in states like Utopia? On the other hand, between you and me, what has the previous government done - aside from speeches and wars, promises and settlements? And most annoying of all - Tzipi Livni said that after hearing Lieberman, she is even happier that Kadima hasn't joined the government. What does she think, that we're all idiots? I haven't forgotten how she chased him, begging him to leave Netanyahu and join her [to form a coalition]. Not to mention our Labor Party friends - like Avishay Braverman, who, a day after blasting Moshe Ya'alon for flip-flopping, was strutting about like a peacock with his bodyguard.

And what about Shelly Yachimovich? She's lashing out at Barak and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, but remains in the Knesset faction and at the end of the month takes home a paycheck and probably a handsome holiday gift as well. Actually, come to think of it, they're all leading us to the same nowhere.

Click HERE for full original article.

Israel on Trial

by: George Bisharat
AlterNet, 4/6/09

Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law.

Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions. While Israel disputes some of the soldiers’ accounts, the evidence suggests that Israel committed the following six offenses:

• Violating its duty to protect the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Despite Israel’s 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza, the territory remains occupied. Israel unleashed military firepower against a people it is legally bound to protect.

• Imposing collective punishment in the form of a blockade, in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In June 2007, after Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed suffocating restrictions on trade and movement. The blockade — an act of war in customary international law — has helped plunge families into poverty, children into malnutrition, and patients denied access to medical treatment into their graves. People in Gaza thus faced Israel’s winter onslaught in particularly weakened conditions.

• Deliberately attacking civilian targets. The laws of war permit attacking a civilian object only when it is making an effective contribution to military action and a definite military advantage is gained by its destruction. Yet an Israeli general, Dan Harel, said, “We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas government and all its wings.” An Israeli military spokeswoman, Maj. Avital Leibovich, avowed that “anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.”

Israeli fire destroyed or damaged mosques, hospitals, factories, schools, a key sewage plant, institutions like the parliament, the main ministries, the central prison and police stations, and thousands of houses.

• Willfully killing civilians without military justification. When civilian institutions are struck, civilians — persons who are not members of the armed forces of a warring party, and are not taking direct part in hostilities — are killed.

Click HERE for the rest of the original article.

It's the same violence

by: Yagil Levy
Haaretz (Israel)

The disclosure of testimony by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military academy at Oranim Academic College about the conduct of the army during Operation Cast Lead drew three responses.

The first regarded the testimony as something anomalous that required investigation. The investigation, as usual, was sent to the Military Police Investigation Unit, which found the suspicions baseless.

The second was an attempt to link the improper behavior patterns with the prominent presence of rabbis with the soldiers, and the materials they disseminate to them.

The third reaction, which sums up the previous two, involved pondering the question of why the Israel Defense Forces have relinquished their traditional values. The implication was that if the scum was cleaned away, the ranks would no longer be defiled.

That is not necessarily so. An army by definition is a violent organization. The question is, what restrains the use of violence?

The rules of engagement give the officers and soldiers broad autonomy, and thus great deal responsibility. The soldiers' tendency toward violence does not merely stem from the values they bring with them from home or from ideological persuasion. An important role is played by the competition the soldiers feel for their status in the unit, the importance that their status in the army plays in determining their status in the civilian environment from which they came, and the degree of competition among the army's various units.

An army is a competitive environment no less than a violent one. The competitiveness is especially strong when the number of conscripts drops and when the fighting units are manned by a large percentage of soldiers from the social periphery and religious groups that move from the fringes to the mainstream.

An achievement in the military field is especially significant for someone who enlists in the army in order to gain social status or to leave an ideological mark and not merely to fill a basic civic duty, which is what motivates (now diminishing) parts of the established middle classes. An accomplishment is measured through the test of militancy.

The army itself intensifies this competitiveness; in its attempts to market itself among the public of potential conscripts, it increases the exposure given to the units and turns them into brand names. What is important in the testimonies that were disclosed is not the preciseness of detail about the use of fire but rather the enthusiasm to employ violence. As someone said: "Everyone went upstairs and fired together, they were really excited as if it were fun - we're shooting." In a competitive environment, it is more difficult to restrain violence. The key question is whether the units have a critical mass of soldiers who have heightened sensitivity and who can restrain their colleagues and if necessary report about irregularities in the chain of command. The change in the composition of the army makes this less likely in relation to the army of the first Lebanon war and the first intifada.

The late appearance of "breaking the silence," after four years of fighting in the territories, bore witness to that. The meeting of graduates of the Rabin academy and their attempt to influence (retroactively) the army's conduct outside the formal army channels also testifies to this.

When a critical mass of soldiers of this type is lacking in the ranks, the action takes place outside the army and not within it. In both cases graduates of relatively established groups, who do not feel that the test of how they fight is definitive for their status in their own eyes or in the eyes of others, act toward restraining the army and do not flinch from dealing with criticism that raises eyebrows about their patriotism. Even inside the army one can discern different patterns of behavior between units that differ from the point of view of their social profile.

This is not a new phenomenon. The IDF of the present decade is in certain aspects more controlled and restrained than the army of the 1950s which carried out the retaliation raids, and than the IDF of the War of Independence or the organizations that preceded it.

The youths in the Palmach also operated in an environment that was competitive compared with other organizations. The way in which the Palmach generation competed for its place as compared with other groups led to a nurturing of excessive aggressiveness.

It was only when this generation and its successors became established that it became possible, after the Six Day War in 1967, to hold "siah lohamim," a frank discussion among soldiers about the fighting, which was critical at that time. According to recent reports, today's fighters brand their actions through T-shirts with nationalistic and sexist slogans.

The Palmach fighters did not put slogans on their shirts, but they could enjoy a song by Haim Hefer which spoke of the castration by the Palmach of an Arab who was suspected of raping a Jewess. The style has changed but not the substance.

Prof. Levy is a member of the faculty at the Open University

Click HERE for full original article.

UN to Israel: Ease 'devastating' Gaza blockade

by: Reuters, 4/3/09

The top United Nations aid official in the Gaza Strip urged Israel on Friday to ease restrictions on the flow of goods into the conflict-torn territory, saying they were "devastating" for the people.

"It's wholly and totally inadequate," John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said about the amount of goods Israel permits into the territory, where some 1.5 million Palestinians live.

"It's having a very devastating impact on the physical circumstances and also the mindset of people on the ground," he said.

Israel says it has opened Gaza's border to larger amounts of food and medicine since its December-January offensive against Hamas militants who control the Palestinian enclave and were firing rockets against Israeli towns.

The war destroyed some 5,000 homes and, according to figures from a Palestinian rights group, killed over 1,400 people.

Israel has disputed Palestinian claims that most of the people killed in the recent offensive in Gaza were civilians, stating that the vast majority of the dead were in fact Hamas militants. Thirteen Israelis were also killed in the hostilities. Around 80 percent of Palestinians are reliant on aid.

Ging said access to goods was still a severe problem.

"We need access," he said. "It's the number one issue. It's the number two issue. It's the number three issue, and so on. Until we get it, there's nothing as important as solving the access issue."

Israel fears opening the borders would allow Hamas to smuggle more weapons and ammunition into the territory.

Ging said that all the crossing points from Israel into the Gaza Strip should be opened, and those that were currently opened in a limited way to only elected people or goods should be fully opened.

In addition to restrictions on what it deems luxury goods, such as cigarettes and chocolates, Israel has blocked entry of materials such as cement and steel for rebuilding because it says they could be used for bunkers and rearming.

Since Hamas ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' secular Fatah from the Gaza Strip in a bloody 2007 coup, Israel has tightened its blockade, with Egypt's assistance, of the 45 kilometer strip in an effort to weaken Hamas' hold on power.

Ging said he understood the "real security challenges" to the operation of crossing points, such as when militants were firing rockets that could endanger people at the crossings. But he said it was not clear why they were closed at other times.

Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said last month that an expansion of activity at Gaza's border crossings could be discussed once Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was captured by Gaza militants in 2006, is released.

Click HERE for full article.

Disposable justice

by: Gideon Levy
Haaretz (Israel), 4/2/09

Anyone who cares about the rule of law and Israel's moral image, and is worried that its soldiers may have carried out war crimes in the Gaza Strip, can now sigh with relief. The military advocate general, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, ordered that the investigation into soldiers' testimonies on their experiences in Operation Cast Lead be closed. A flash operation of instant justice buried a story that had rocked worlds. There are judges in Jerusalem, and a military advocate general in Tel Aviv. All he needed was a day or two - no Palestinian testimonies were deemed necessary. There was no real investigation whatsoever - the case was instantly disposed of.

Mendelblit's effective and scandalously quick conduct proved beyond doubt what everyone already knew: His office is a propaganda machine, part of the Israel Defense Forces' information activities. It has the same relation to justice as military marches do to music, to borrow a phrase from French statesman Georges Clemenceau.

It is inconceivable that the IDF would investigate itself. It doesn't have the slightest intention to do so. Just as the police don't investigate suspicions against policemen, neither would the IDF investigate charges against its soldiers. Let the IDF have a body similar to the Justice Ministry's Police Investigation Department. Only an independent judicial system can consider the hard questions arising from the death and havoc in Gaza.

While half the world is still inquiring about suspicions of war crimes, the use of white phosphorous on civilians, disporportionate destruction, and attacks on medical teams and UNRWA installations, the military advocate general has cast his verdict: The soldiers' testimonies were "rumors." In other words, they lied, our army is pristine and our weapons pure. Mendelblit pleased his superiors. The prosecutor became an advocate, the investigator covered for his suspects.

Not that anything different could have been expected. From the day the military advocate general announced that unlike in the first intifada, not every killing in the territories would be investigated, battle ethics were condemned. When the killing of 4,747 Palestinians in the second intifada, 942 of them women and children, according to B'Tselem, is followed by 30 indictments, five convictions and only one prison sentence of any considerable length, the IDF is sending a clear message: The killing of Palestinian civilians is of no concern to the military justice system.

The message to soldiers is just as clear: Kill as much as you please, no wrong will come to you, the army won't even bother to look into it. Now, after 1,300 deaths in Gaza, the military advocate general confirmed this policy. Any adherent of the rule of law in Israel should have been shocked by this rash decision, but our army of lawyers is concerned with other things.

If the IDF had a truly independent justice system, it would have been the first to investigate what happened in Gaza. If the army cared about the morality of its soldiers, the story would not have waited for Haaretz. But the IDF doesn't want an inquiry, and the military advocate general does as he's told. Mendelblit's decision threw the doors open for the rest of the world. For want of a real inquiry in Israel, international institutions will have to investigate what happened in Gaza and who's to blame. With Israeli supporters of the rule of law receiving no legal aid, they have the right and duty to call for an international inquiry. Yes, Israel too has people concerned by what had been going on in Gaza, but the military advocate general's decision goes well beyond the killing fields. Anyone who thinks Israel's image as a country of the rule of law is based solely on the Supreme Court in Jerusalem is profoundly wrong. Mendelblit shapes our image no less than the court's president, Dorit Beinisch. Moreover, some of the graduates of the flawed and twisted military justice system go on to lead the civil justice system, contaminating it with the same flawed values of the IDF.

Israel cannot be considered a country of the rule of law if its backyard is occupied by this grotesque show called the military justice system. Only when it is segregated from the IDF and a civil justice system investigates the army will we know we have a legal army and a legal state. Until then, all we can do is look to The Hague.

Click HERE for full original article.

Changing the rules of war

by: George Bisharat
The San Francisco Chronicle, 4/1/09

The extent of Israel's brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing. Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill. One soldier commented: "That's what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him."

What is less appreciated is how Israel is also brutalizing international law, in ways that may long outlast the demolition of Gaza.

Since 2001, Israeli military lawyers have pushed to re-classify military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the law enforcement model mandated by the law of occupation to one of armed conflict. Under the former, soldiers of an occupying army must arrest, rather than kill, opponents, and generally must use the minimum force necessary to quell disturbances.

While in armed conflict, a military is still constrained by the laws of war - including the duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the duty to avoid attacks causing disproportionate harm to civilian persons or objects - the standard permits far greater uses of force.

Israel pressed the shift to justify its assassinations of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, which clearly violated settled international law. Israel had practiced "targeted killings" since the 1970s - always denying that it did so - but had recently stepped up their frequency, by spectacular means (such as air strikes) that rendered denial futile.

President Bill Clinton charged the 2001 Mitchell Committee with investigating the causes of the second Palestinian uprising and recommending how to restore calm in the region. Israeli lawyers pleaded their case to the committee for armed conflict. The committee responded by criticizing the blanket application of the model to the uprising, but did not repudiate it altogether.

Today, most observers - including Amnesty International - tacitly accept Israel's framing of the conflict in Gaza as an armed conflict, as their criticism of Israel's actions in terms of the duties of distinction and the principle of proportionality betrays. This shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel's lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations.

Israel's campaign to rewrite international law to its advantage is deliberate and knowing. As the former head of Israel's 20-lawyer International Law Division in the Military Advocate General's office, Daniel Reisner, recently stated: "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries ... International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."

In the Gaza fighting, Israel has again tried to transform international law through violations. For example, its military lawyers authorized the bombing of a police cadet graduation ceremony, killing at least 63 young Palestinian men. Under international law, such deliberate killings of civilian police are war crimes. Yet Israel treats all employees of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip as terrorists, and thus combatants. Secretaries, court clerks, housing officials, judges - all were, in Israeli eyes, legitimate targets for liquidation.

Israeli jurists also instructed military commanders that any Palestinian who failed to evacuate a building or area after warnings of an impending bombardment was a "voluntary human shield" and thus a participant in combat, subject to lawful attack. One method of warning employed by Israeli gunners, dubbed "knocking on the roof," was to fire first at a building's corner, then, a few minutes later, to strike more structurally vulnerable points. To imagine that Gazan civilians - penned into the tiny Gaza Strip by Israeli troops, and surrounded by the chaos of battle - understood this signal is fanciful at best.

Israel has a lengthy history of unpunished abuses of international law - among the most flagrant its decades-long colonization of the West Bank. To its credit, much of the world has refused to ratify Israel's violations. Unfortunately, our government is an exception, having frequently provided diplomatic cover for Israel's abuses. Our diplomats have vetoed 42 U.N. Security Council resolutions to shelter Israel from the consequences of its often illegal behavior.

We must break that habit now, or see international law perverted in ways that can harm us all. Our government has already been seduced to follow, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Israel's example of targeted killings. This policy alienates civilians, innocently killed and wounded in these crude strikes, and deepens the determination of enemies to harm us by any means possible.

We do not want civilian police in the United States to be bombed, nor to have anyone "knock on our roofs." For our own sakes and for the world's, Israel's impunity must end.

George Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.

Click HERE for full original article.

They did not wait for Lieberman

by: Avirama Golan
Haaretz (Israel), 4/1/09

The dismissal letters sent to 40 Arab employees of Israel Railways did not come as much of a surprise. For weeks now, the company had been seeking the legal phrasing that would allow the layoffs to proceed. First, it announced fresh demand for several roles, mostly having to do with security, such as watchmen for the train tracks. All candidates would have to have served in the Israel Defense Forces.

When it turned out this contravened the principle of equality in employment, the company tried to argue that the jobs in question had a specific security aspect. But a letter sent by Palestinian rights organization Adalah to the company's management and the Transportation Ministry reveals that this argument is just as flawed, contravening the Basic Law on Freedom of Occupation.

Now the company says it only wanted to encourage the employment of recently demobilized soldiers, and that it will do its best to relocate the laid-off Arab workers to other, non-security positions. The workers, who know plenty of Jewish and other colleagues who didn't serve in the army but got to keep their jobs, can find some solidarity in the experiences of their relatives and neighbors, who will have gone through similar experiences at other companies and even at some ministries.

A dreamed-up security demand is one of the oldest tricks to reject Arab candidates in job interviews. It happens to ordinary workers as well as to outstanding researchers and scientists who cannot find work in their field and are forced to retrain as nurses and physicians.

Since the electoral success of Avigdor Lieberman's campaign slogan "No loyalty, no citizenship," many people say the country has been hit by a dangerous wave of racism. But excluding Arab workers from Israeli society in general and the job market in particular did not begin last week, and Israel Railways, along with the interior and finance ministries, did not wait for Lieberman for them to be discriminatory.

In the past few years, organizations like Adalah, Kav Mashve, Mossawa and Sikkuy have confronted the system; they dedicate considerable resources to integrating Arabs into the job market and bringing about gradual change. In 2008, 8 percent of the employees at ministries and state-owned companies were Arabs, compared with 0.1 percent a decade earlier. True, many of the workers are in the middle and lower ranks, and the number of Arab directors in state-owned companies is close to zero, but the trend is positive.

This trend was contravened this week. The railway layoffs may not have been inspired by Lieberman, but the spirit he contributes makes them look particularly ominous. New entries into the job market will be more wary, and suspicion and insult will trump both hope and trust.

The integration of Arabs into Israeli society is no meager task; Arab haters denounce them as "separatists" while worrying they might integrate. These critics reach for separatism as an excuse for excluding them. Every withdrawal from the achievements of recent years will sow the seeds of radicalization and despair.

Click HERE for full original article.

IDF raps soldiers for images of dead Palestinian babies on t-shirts

by: Uri Blau
Haaretz (Israel), 4/1/09

The IDF's chief education officer Brig. Gen. Eli Shermeister issued a letter to a number of military units Tuesday, commenting on T-shirts printed by soldiers, as exposed by Haaretz two weeks ago. Haaretz found that dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's grave, a child in the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle and blown-up mosques are just a few of the images with which IDF soldiers decided to mark their graduation from a training course or tour of duty.

Shermeister's letter described some of the shirts depicted in the Haaretz story, and included pictures published in the feature. The chief education officer called on commanders to "increase vigilance and rule out any such phenomena, which stem from group culture and might affect it."

The Haaretz inquiry brought several examples of such prints: An infantry snipers' T-shirt with the writing "better use Durex" running alongside a dead Palestinian child, a weeping mother and a teddy bear; another sniper course shirt showing an aim taken at the belly of a pregnant woman, with the slogan "One shot, two kills;" a T-shirt depicting a Palestinian baby becoming an angry youth and then an armed man, with the slogan "no matter how it starts, we'll end it;" a shirt from the Haruv battalion with the picture of a Samurai and the caption "we won't chill before we verify the kill," and many more.

Some of the captions and images emphasize actions the army vigorously denies, such as coups de grace or deliberate attacks on women, children and religious sites.

Commenting on the inquiry at the time, the IDF spokesperson's office said that "military orders do not refer to civilian clothing, including shirts printed at the end of various training courses. The shirts are printed at the personal initiative of the soldiers, and are not army property," the statement read.

However, Shermeister's letter, titled "The boundaries of humor," appears to indicate that the chief education officer disagrees. "Some would say the printing of the shirts is a local matter, done at the personal initiative and often at the private expense of the soldiers with the aim of bonding through humor," he writes. "[However,] printing shirts for IDF soldiers, even if not initiated by the commander, is not a private action. It is an action carried out in the context of military service and should match the values of the IDF."

"We are not exempt from this duty even when dealing with writings on civilian shirts, organized independently by the soldiers. Even humor, which is an important instrument of coping with the stress and exhaustion of military service, has its boundaries. We do not teach hatred for our enemy, and we must not mock or belittle the lives of a pregnant woman or a small child," Shermeister said.

Click HERE for full original article.

Israel FM rejects Annapolis deal

by: BBC, 4/1/09

Israel's new ultra-nationalist foreign minister has said it is not bound by a US-sponsored 2007 agreement to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.

"The Annapolis conference, it has no validity," Avigdor Lieberman said.

He was speaking at a handover ceremony at the foreign ministry, prompting his predecessor Tzipi Livni to interrupt and diplomats to shift uncomfortably.

At Annapolis, each side agreed to further discussions aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state.

Palestinian officials described Mr Lieberman as an "obstacle to peace" whose policies would rebound negatively on Israel.

"Nothing obliges us to deal with a racist person hostile to peace such as Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Lieberman," Yasser Abed Rabbo said in comments to AFP news agency.

Correspondents say officials at the foreign ministry seemed taken aback at such a sudden and public repudiation of one of the main planks of Israeli diplomatic activity.

"There is one document that obligates us - and that's not the Annapolis conference, it has no validity," Mr Lieberman said.

The document he was referring to was the international peace plan known as the Road Map, signed in 2003, while "the Israeli government never ratified Annapolis, nor did parliament".

Click HERE for full original article.

Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture: "Apartheid and Occupation under International Law" with John Dugard

26 March 2009, The Palestine Center (Washington, D.C.)

Gaza probe / Either troops are liars, or the IDF is pure as snow

by: Amos Harel
Haaretz (Israel), 3/31/09

One would be hard-pressed not to express astonishment at the speed and efficiency demonstrated by the Military Advocate General, Brigadier-General Avichai Mendelblit, and the Military Police investigation unit in probing the "combat soldiers' testimonials affair" that took place at the Rabin pre-military training academy. The investigation into Moshe (Chico) Tamir's all-terrain vehicle accident made its way from desk-drawer to desk-drawer over the course of almost 18 months, yet the military advocate general needed just 11 days (including two Saturdays) to probe the accounts of combat soldiers in order to completely dispel the allegations.

There is something soothing in the exhaustive investigation by the military advocate general. The IDF emerges from it (and from the Gaza Strip) as pure as snow. Yet at the same time there is a disconcerting message emanating from the closure of the investigation, one which, at least according to Brig. Gen. Mendelblit, a group of combat soldiers and officers serving in some of the finest units in the IDF has proven to be nothing but a bunch of liars and exaggerating storytellers, men who have not uttered one truthful word.

The military advocate general picks apart the testimonials brick by brick. Not only does he present alternative versions to the two most damning claims - the alleged shooting of a Palestinian mother and her children as well as the killing of an elderly Palestinian woman - but he also expends great effort in concealing a series of other allegations of improper behavior, from spitting on home photographs of Palestinian families to uprooting orchards to the use of white phosphorus bombs. Apparently, soldiers informed military police investigators of two more incidents in which civilians were mistakenly shot to death. Mendelblit retroactively provides a rationale for the soldiers' predicament in these cases as well.

There is no reason to cast doubt on the sincerity of the military advocate general, or in the thoroughness of the military police investigators. Nonetheless, it is unclear how they can be so certain that the "combat soldiers' testimonials" were just a series of rumors and concoctions "while the soldiers were truthful during the investigations conducted by the military police and the Givati brigades commander."

Given the international firestorm ignited by the intial media stories of the accounts and the dilemma which the soldiers found themselves in vis-a-vis their commanders, it is as if the soldiers chose a reasonable exit strategy: they can claim that their accounts were based on rumors so as not to open themselves up to charges that they ratted out their comrades. This is pure conjecture, of course. The soldiers were not permitted to speak with journalists. In other units, commanders have warned their soldiers to speak with anyone outside of the army about what they witnessed in the Gaza Strip.

There is another factor that must be taken into consideration. The investigation is based solely on one side of the equation - the Israeli side. An Associated Press reporter who was in Gaza last week interviewed Palestinians about the incidents in question. Their recollections to some extent corroborate the descriptions of the alleged shootings as initially recalled by the soldiers.

The AP story was published last Thursday night, yet the IDF is ignoring its contents. Now it is clear that the IDF withdrawal from Gaza does not allow the army to conduct an on-site investigation. Yet the AP reporter who wrote the story is fluent in both Hebrew and English. How is it that the military police unit did not think to ask her of what she heard and saw in Gaza?

Click HERE for full original article.

Barak welcomes IDF decision to end Gaza misconduct probe

by: Amos Harel and Anshel Pfeffer
Haaretz (Israel), 3/31/09

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday welcomed the military advocate general's decision to discontinue the inquiry into soldiers' accounts of alleged misconduct and serious violations of the army's rules of engagement during Operation Cast Lead.

"I was very happy to learn about the military advocate general's report, in which he addresses the extensive rumors that have considerably damaged the IDF's image both at home and abroad," Barak said during a tour of the Northern Command.

In a press release issued Monday the army said that Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit instructed the Military Police Investigation unit to close the case after a preliminary investigation into the testimonies revealed that they "were based on hearsay and not first-hand experience."

"There is no other army in the world that is as introspective as the IDF, that scrutinizes its conduct in such a genuine and serious way after an operation," Barak continued. "I'm happy these as the results [of the investigation], and that once again our claim that the IDF is the most moral army in the world ? top commanders and low-ranking soldiers alike ? has proved truthful."

On Monday, Brig. Gen. Mendelblit said it was unfortunate that the soldiers, who discussed their Gaza experiences in private on Feb. 13 at a military academy session which was later leaked verbatim to the media, had been careless about accuracy.

"It will be difficult to evaluate the damage done to the image and morals [of the armed forces] in Israel and the world", his statement said

The probe was launched earlier this month after IDF soldiers were quoted as telling a military cadet academy that combat troops in Gaza fired at unarmed Palestinian civilians and vandalized property during Operation Cast Lead. The army has barred those soldiers from speaking to the press. The allegations first surfaced in the media on March 19.

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

IDF investigators said the soldier who alleged that a comrade was given orders to shoot an elderly woman had not witnessed such an event and "was only repeating a rumor he had heard". They noted, on the other hand, that a woman who approached troops and was suspected of being a suicide bomber had been fired upon repeatedly to try to stop her advancing at them.

The Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem, Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights and others issued a statement Monday saying "the speedy closing of the investigation immediately raises suspicions that [it] was merely the army's attempt to wipe its hands of all blame for illegal activity..."

The groups said the allegations should be investigated by a non-partisan body.

Click HERE for full original article.

PCHR Contests Distortion of Gaza Strip Death Toll

by: The Palestinian Center for Human Rights
3/26/09

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) contest figures presented by the Israeli Coordination and Liaison Authority for the Gaza Strip which claim that 1,370 Palestinians were killed in the course of Israel’s 23 day military offensive on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Coordination Authority claim that 600 of the dead were combatants, and that 309 civilians were killed in the attack. They have yet to classify 320 Palestinians.

PCHR regards this as a deliberately manipulative attempt to distort the reality of the offensive, and to disguise Israel’s illegal actions. Following extensive investigation and cross-checking, PCHR have determined that a total of 1,417 Palestinians died in the offensive. 926 were civilians, including 313 children and 116 women. 255 were non-combatant police officers. 236 combatants were killed, representing 16.7% of the total deaths.

PCHR’s findings are available in Arabic at www.pchrgaza.org. An English version is currently in translation.

PCHR consider the IOF’s classification of police officers as combatants illegal: this classification constitutes a wilful violation of the principle of distinction, a key component of customary international law. Hamas is a multi-faceted organisation, exercising de facto governmental control of the Gaza Strip. As an organisation, it cannot be considered an armed group. Rather, a distinction must be made between Hamas’ armed and political/civil components. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades are the military wing of the Hamas organisation, they are an armed group, and are considered as combatants according to IHL. However, Hamas’ political and civil wings are comprised of civilians, who are legally entitled to the protections associated with this status, provided they do not take an active part in hostilities. Civil police, and governmental officials cannot be considered combatants. Attacks intentionally directed against these individuals constitute wilful killing, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a violation of customary international law.

The excessively disproportionate civilian death toll, and Israel’s conduct of hostilities – including, inter alia, indiscriminate attacks, wilful killing, the extensive destruction of property, target selection, the lack of precautions taken in attack, the excessive use of force, and the use of weapons such as white phosphorous in civilian areas – demand effective judicial redress. Many of the cases documented by PCHR constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and war crimes. The widespread and apparently systematic violations of customary IHL witnessed in the Gaza Strip may also amount to a crime against humanity.

PCHR call on all States to fulfil their legal obligations, as codified in Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to prosecute any persons suspected of committing grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. All States must enact appropriate legislation to ensure that such persons may be tried in national courts, in accordance with the principle of universal jurisdiction.

While strongly condemning the actions of the IOF during their offensive on the Gaza Strip, PCHR:

1. Calls for establishing effective international investigation into crimes committed by IOF against Palestinian civilians, and Israel’s conduct of hostilities.

2. Calls for the prosecution of all political and military officials who are accused of committing war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

3. Calls for an end to all measures of collective punishment inflicted on the population of the Gaza Strip, including a lifting of the siege, and ensuring the free and safe movement of persons and goods.

4. Calls upon Israel to fulfil its obligations as the Occupying Power to facilitate unrestricted humanitarian access, and to provide those articles necessary to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the civilian population.

5. Calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to prevent impunity for such crimes, and calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfil their obligation under Article 1 of the Convention to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances, as well as their obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to search for and prosecute those who are responsible for perpetrating grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

Click HERE for full original press release.