Briefing Paper December 2012

17th December 2012 4:39 pm

I would say that most of the people that were hit in Gaza deserved it as they were just armed terrorists.

Danny Ayalon (Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister)

By the Last Day of the Offensive

PCHR 22/11/12

– Palestinian Deaths Rise to 156, Including 103 Civilians, and 1,000 Others, Including 971 Civilians, Wounded

– 33 Children Killed and 274 Others Wounded

– 13 Women Killed and 162 Others Wounded

– 3 Journalists Killed

Read or listen to the 2012 Edward Said Memorial Lecture on Gaza, by Dr Sara Roy

Killing of Gaza water vendor

Ma’an News Agency 22/11/2012

A coalition of humanitarian agencies on Wednesday condemned Israel’s killing of a water vendor as he delivered water in the northern Gaza Strip. Suhail Hammad and his 10-year-old son were hit by an Israeli airstrike while driving a water distribution truck in northern Gaza on Sunday. Both were killed instantly. After the incident, other water vendors stopped operating fearing they would be targeted, causing shortages in drinking water.

The Emergency Water and Sanitation/Hygiene group condemned the attack and called on Israel to take all precautions to protect civilians and their infrastructure. During Israel’s 8-day war on Gaza, which ended with a ceasefire Wednesday, the water networks in Khan Younis and Rafah were damaged and maintenance staff were unable to access the area for repairs. Israeli airstrikes also destroyed a water reservoir under construction which was intended to serve 150,000 people.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza gas prevented the rehabilitation of Gaza’s sole source of fresh water, the coastal aquifer, which the UN says may become unusable by 2016.

The Al-Dalou family

In one shelling of a building (which Israel says was a”technical glitch”), nine members of Al-Dalou family were killed with two neighbours. Here are the names of the known martyrs of this one shelling alone:

Mohammed Jamal Al-Dalou, the father with his four children:

Yousef Mohammed Jamal Al-Dalou, 10 years old

Jamal Mohammed Jamal Al-Dalou, 7 year old

Ranin Mohammed Jamal Al-Dalou, 5 years old

Ibrahim Mohammed Jamal Al-Dalou, 1 year old

Jamal Al-Dalou, the grandfather

Sulafa Al Dalou, 46 years old

Samah Al-Dalou, 25 years old

Tahani Al-Dalou, 50 years old

Ameina Matar Al-Mzanner, 83 years old.

Abdallah Mohammed Al-Mzanner, 23 years old

In the West Bank, an Israeli gas bomb shot into a Palestinian home near Qalandia checkpoint burned to death a 20-month-old baby by the name of Najib Ahmed Najib. Israeli occupation forces critically injured many Palestinians including in Bethlehem. And in Nebi Saleh they used live ammunition against stone throwing Palestinian. In the volley of live bullets, they murdered our friend Rushdi Tamimi (brother of Nariman Tamimi who is featured in many videos I sent earlier).

“By way of deception, thou shall do war.” Mossad’s motto

Introducing Mark Regev

That’s one of the many big, fat Zionist propaganda lies. The truth is that Hamas is firmly on the record with the statement that while it will never recognize Israel’s right to exist, it is prepared to live in peace with an Israel inside its 1967 borders.

I imagine I am not the only one who feels the need to vomit (dictionary definition – “to throw up the contents of the stomach through the mouth”) when Israel’s Goebbels justifies the Zionist state’s ferocious and monstrously disproportionate attacks by air and sea on the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, the prison camp which is home to 1.5 million besieged and mainly impoverished Palestinians. The Israeli to whom I am referring is, of course, Australian-born Mark Regev, the prime minister’s spokesman, for which read spin doctor. The more I see and hear him in action, the more it seems to me that he makes Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief look like an amateur.

In a piece for The Observer on 6 June 2010, Ruth Sutherland wrote the following. “If the men from Mars ever wanted to manufacture a PR man, they would model their robot on Regev. No matter how formidable the interviewer, or how aggressive the questioning, he never buckles under pressure. His disarming Aussie accent and unfailing politeness – he calls interviewers ‘Sir’ and uses phrases like ‘I beg to disagree’ – almost lulls listeners into overlooking his aggression. He is always regretful about death and horror – he regrets that the non-Israeli victims brought their fate on themselves. Viewers are reduced to a trance of slack-jawed amazement at what he is prepared to say with a straight face. He is unlikely to win sceptics to Israel’s cause, but as a PR performer he is horribly compelling.”

Compelling he certainly is but, as Sutherland indicated (I will be more explicit), only to Westerners and Americans in particular who have been conditioned for decades by Zionist propaganda and, as a consequence, know nothing or little worth knowing about the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel.

In the immediate aftermath of Israel’s targeted assassination of Hamas’s militarycommander, Ahmed al-Jabari, Regev was at his best. Via the BBC and many other networks his main message to the Western nations was that Israel is just like them – democratic and civilized. “I would ask them all,” he said, “how would you act?” (respond to rocket fire from “terrorists”). By obvious implication he was saying something very like, “You would take all necessary action against the terrorists to defend and protect your people, and that’s why I am sure you will understand and support what we are doing.”

The flaw in that presentation is that Israel is NOT like the Western nations. It is a brutal occupying power, and the cause of the incoming rockets is its occupation and on-going colonization and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and its blockade of the Gaza Strip. That plus the fact that Israel’s leaders have no interest in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.

Regev also appealed for Western understanding and support on the grounds that “they” (Hamas) say my country should be wiped off the map.” That’s one of the many big, fat Zionist propaganda lies. The truth is that Hamas is firmly on the record with the statement that while it will never recognize Israel’s right to exist, it is prepared to live in peace with an Israel inside its 1967 borders.

Regev’s master, Netanyahu, was also up to his old tricks – diverting attention. He played the Iranian nuclear threat card to get Palestine off the international community’s agenda. With Israel’s next election less than 70 days away, one of his reasons for authorizing Operation Pillar of Defense was, as a report in The Times of Israel put it, “to divert public discourse from social justice to security issues and silence the government’s critics.”

The Mossad’s motto is “By way of deception, thou shall do war.”

Netanyahu obviously believes that by way of deception he can not only retain power but emerge from Israel’s next election with more power than ever. (Enough to tell Obama to go to hell if that ever becomes necessary).The support (by default if not design) of Western governments for Israel’s latest ferocious and monstrously disproportionate attacks also makes me want to vomit.

Occupied Lives: No child should have to go through this

10/10/12

The people of Gaza are being deliberately targeted and a crime against them is being committed. More than anything, this crime is found in the daily and unrelenting assault on their economy and society for which the United States, the European Union and various Arab states bear enormous responsibility together with Israel. Whether you deliberately shoot a human being through the heart with a bullet or deprive him of a home, livelihood, and the means to care for his children, you are saying to that human being that he has no right to exist.

On Sunday, 07 October 2012, at approximately 5.30pm, Israel’s forces launched 2 missiles targeting 2 men on a motorbike as they were passing by Taha Hussain Elementary School in the Al-Brazil neighborhood of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Subsequently, 1 of the targeted men died of shrapnel wounds, while the other had one of his legs amputated, according to medical sources. 8 civilian bystanders, including 4 children and 1 woman, were also wounded in the attack. Israel’s forces often use airstrikes for extra judicial execution of suspected members of armed groups in densely-populated areas of the Gaza Strip. Israel refers to these as ‘targeted killings’. However, on many occasions such attacks also injure and kill civilians who are in the vicinity of the target. Sabrin Al-Maqousi (23), and her 2 children, Bisan (1 month) and Nassim (2), were wounded in the attack. Her cousin, Jehad Al-Qatrous (27), was also wounded in the same attack.

Sabrin lives in Jabalia but she was with her children, visiting her family in Rafah, when the attack happened. She recalls: “My son Nassim was sitting at the entrance of the house when the missiles were launched. I rushed to bring him inside and found that he had already been injured by shrapnel. He just kept saying, “There is some blood on me, there is some blood on me.” Some people came and put him in a car to take him to hospital. I was trying to calm my other baby down when I noticed that she was also bleeding from her head. Both of the children were then rushed to the hospital. It was only after they left, that I felt a sharp pain in my leg. I had also been hit by shrapnel, and was bleeding. My cousin, who lives next door, was also injured, and we were both rushed to hospital in an ambulance.”

The casualties were first taken to Abu-Yousif Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah. The hospital was overcrowded, so they were all transferred to the European hospital, where they received treatment for their injuries: “They removed the shrapnel from our bodies, and the baby and I were discharged after about 5 hours. However, Nassim was admitted because his wounds were more serious. My cousin had shrapnel lodged in his legs. One piece of shrapnel was removed, but the doctor said that the other one requires surgery. He also temporarily lost his sense of hearing because one of his ears had been injured.”

Sabrin fears for the safety and security of her children and her entire family. She is both distressed and worried about future attacks and the consequences for her family and loved ones: “When I came back home, I kept crying. I woke up several times that night, fearing that something else was going to happen. I was both angry and sad about what had happened to my family. We had just come to visit my family and have some fun with them, but we ended up wounded. My children are not even old enough to understand what happened to them. Nassim is only aware that he was hurt by Israel’s forces and nothing else beyond that. He cannot walk around as he used to before, and he is scared. I am also really scared by what happened and how sudden it was. What if it had been worse? Our entire lives would have been changed by it.”

Since the attack, Sabrin says that her constant hope has been for peace and to feel safe once more: “When I saw my children wounded and being taken away, I became psychologically affected. It was almost as if I wasn’t there. You only expect such things to happen on TV, but not to you and your family. I witnessed Operation Cast Lead and I have seen attacks on the tunnels in Rafah, but none of those things scared me as much as seeing my own children hurt. It is completely unacceptable for children to be wounded in this manner. I really hope for a change to the situation in Gaza. Nobody should have to go through this and especially no child should have to go through this.”

The direct targeting of a civilian object constitutes a war crime, as codified in Article 8(2) (b) (ii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Similarly, under Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the destruction of private property is prohibited unless rendered absolutely necessary by military operations. Intentionally launching an indiscriminate attack constitutes a war crime as defined in Article 8 (2) (b) of the Rome Statute of the ICC. Furthermore, according to the principle of proportionality, which is codified in Article 51 (5) (b) of Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions, an attack that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects or a combination thereof is considered excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

A personal and concluding reflection

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are entrapped in what Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of Hebrew University terms “a zone of non-existence.” In this zone, she argues, one finds “new spaces of obscenity in the politics of day-to-day lives” where engaging in normal, everyday acts of living and working – going to school, visiting neighbors, traveling abroad, planting a tree, growing vegetables and selling products in a nearby market – are treated as criminal activities, punishable, in some instances, by death. In these obscene spaces, innocent human beings – most of them, children – are slowly being poisoned by the water they drink, all with the knowledge and acquiescence of the world community.

This disfigurement of everyday life is, for me, as a Jew, painfully symbolized in the Star of David that was gouged into Gaza’s soil during Israel’s 2008 war on the territory. Yet the desecration of the land in this way not only points to the destruction of a way of life and means of survival for Palestinians, it embodies the limitations of Israeli power and the failings of Jewish life as well. No doubt those who wrested the Star of David from Gaza’s land meant to convey the presence and the power of the Jewish state over the destiny of others. Yet this power is one of deprivation and ruin, and it speaks profoundly to our own inability to live a life without the walls we are constantly asked to build.

As I have hopefully shown, the people of Gaza are being deliberately targeted and a crime against them is being committed. More than anything, this crime is found in the daily and unrelenting assault on their economy and society for which the United States, the European Union and various Arab states bear enormous responsibility together with Israel. Whether you deliberately shoot a human being through the heart with a bullet or deprive him of a home, livelihood, and the means to care for his children, you are saying to that human being that he has no right to exist. In this way, among others, Gaza speaks to the unnaturalness of our own condition as Jews. For in Gaza, we seek remedy and consolation in the ruin of another people, “[o]bserving the windows of [their] houses through the sites of rifles,” to borrow from the Israeli poet, Almog Behar. It is ironic then that our own salvation now lies in Gaza’s. And no degree of distance or separation can ever change that.

Gaza Patients, including Child, Denied Exit Permit

WAFA 23/10/12

Israel denied in September 16 Gaza patients, including one child, the right to travel to the West Bank to receive medical treatment, according to the World Health Organization’s monthly report on referral of patients from the Gaza Strip published Monday. It said that 705 patients applied to the Israeli District Liaison Office (DCL) to cross Erez to access hospitals in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in Israel or Jordan. The Israeli authorities gave permits to cross Erez checkpoint to 647 patients but denied them to 16 patients – seven females and nine males, including one child, said the WHO report.

It said six of the patients denied permit were seeking orthopaedics treatment, four ophthalmology, two neurosurgery and one each for gynaecology, nuclear medicine, nephrology and neurology. Of the 16 denied patients, nine had appointments at Makassed hospital in East Jerusalem, four in Ramallah and three in other areas of the West Bank. In addition, 42 patients, including 12 children, received no answer to their applications and missed their hospital appointment date. Of the delayed patients, six waited more than two weeks for their application to be studied, three waited more than one month.

While the Palestinian Ministry of Health did not refer any patient to hospitals in Jordan in September due to the financial crisis, most of the referrals were made to hospitals in East Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank. The report said 12 patients, including two females and 10 males, were requested to appear for Israeli security interviews. A patient’s companion, who had a valid permit, was detained while crossing through Erez.

Khalil Najjar, 44, was arrested at Erez checkpoint as he was traveling to accompany his 69-year-old brother, Awni, who had undergone knee replacement surgery at Makassed hospital.

According to District Liaison Office in Gaza, Najjar applied to the DLO on September 23 in order to travel to Jerusalem on September 27. The Israeli DLO responded on September 26 that his application was being ‘under study.’ Later Najjar was informed that he obtained a permit to travel on October 3. He traveled to Erez crossing and was detained while undergoing the regular security procedures for pedestrians. As of the publication of this report, Najjar remained imprisoned.

For some Israelis, Gazans receive 2,279 calories too many

Gideon Levy Ha’aretz 21/10/12

Who came up with the idea of calculating the caloric intake for 1.5 million people under siege in Gaza?

The reason the Israel Defence Forces was reluctant to publicize this document was because it would make Israel look even worse in world opinion than it already does. It’s a matter of image, you know; the goyim shouldn’t find out. It’s not nice for the goyim to know how low Israeli racism could sink.

The closet is about to burst from the number of skeletons stuffed inside it. Occasionally one falls out, threatening to wake up complacent Israelis, until it’s quickly pushed back inside, out of sight. But the skeletons are still there, deep in the closet, and they will continue to haunt Israelis for many years. One skeleton forced its way out last week: The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories was forced to hand over its “Red Lines Report,” of 2008, in which it calculated the minimum number of calories Gaza residents would need so as not to starve. This followed a successful three-and-a-half year legal battle by the Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement association. Amira Hass reported on the document, and Haaretz gave it the proper play as its lead story last Wednesday. Some parts of the document had already appeared in Haaretz in 2009, in a report by Uri Blau and Yotam Feldman.

In neither case, however, did the reports raise a storm. The country has plenty of ways (this newspaper being an exception) of burying skeletons deep in the closet so that Israelis shouldn’t be overly disturbed. But the skeleton sticking out now belongs to a monster. The COGAT office insists that this was an “internal staff document” and a “working paper” that was never implemented. That’s doubtful, but in any case the very fact that work was done and such a working paper was produced is disgusting.

Who came up with the idea of calculating the caloric intake for 1.5 million people under siege? What train of thought even gives Israel the right to enter the mouths and invade the stomachs of the people living under its jackboots? So now it’s not just their bedrooms that are brutally broken into every night; now it’s also their digestive system.

Even after the writing of this document, Israel continued to brazenly claim that the occupation of Gaza had ended. The very fact that such a document was composed, whether it was used or not, points to a satanic way of thinking. But the reason that army didn’t want this document made public had nothing to do with its diabolical content. Nor did it fear a public storm, which it knew wasn’t likely to happen in a country afflicted with blindness. The reason the Israel Defence Forces was reluctant to publicize this document was because it would make Israel look even worse in world opinion than it already does. It’s a matter of image, you know; the goyim shouldn’t find out. It’s not nice for the goyim to know how low Israeli racism could sink. The document details the “model formulated by the Health Ministry – according to average Israeli consumption,” and the IDF plan for the Palestinians, whose figures were “adjusted to culture and experience” in Gaza. The IDF, the new “Israel food association,” knows how to distinguish between what types of foods enlightened types need, and what the savages and natives need. More fruits and vegetables for the enlightened, more sugar and oil for the savages. Since they are so humane, they took into account “‘sampling’ by toddlers under the age of 2,” by adding another 34 tons of food a day as charity that would save them from death. Though the people at the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories made mathematical calculations, from time to time their resolve weakened: At the end of 2008 they approved the entry of shampoo into Gaza, but not conditioner; hummus, but not pine nuts. Imagine that.

Now that the document has been released, it’s time to attach names to it. The government headed by Ehud Olmert was the one that in 2007 decided to restrict the entry of goods into Gaza even further. It tightened its grip in an effort to achieve the release of captured soldier Gilad Shalit and to bring down the Hamas regime, but this collective punishment, which is illegal under international law, achieved nothing. Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i, a man of the Labor Party, Atzmaut and the Israel “left,” approved the composition of the document. Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad was the Coordinator of Government Activities who ordered the policy to be translated into tables and statistics. Vilna’i and Gilad still serve in senior positions and enjoy public prestige; Olmert was tried on totally unrelated issues. War criminals? Are you kidding? That’s a term reserved for Serbs and Congolese.

Of course, there are a lot of Israelis who believe that even the 2,279 daily calories that Israel in its great mercy approved for every Gazan is 2,279 calories too many. If you don’t believe me, just ask them.

Israel’s impossible plan for refugees is just a stalling tactic

Jonathan Cook The National 1/10/12

The NSC has proposed impossible demands: contrition from all Arab states before a peace deal with the Palestinians can be reached; a decoupling of refugee status and the right of return; and the right of Arab Jews to greater compensation than Palestinian refugees, based on their superior wealth.

In the shadow of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s theatrics at the United Nations last week, armed with his cartoon Iranian bomb, Israeli officials launched a quieter, but equally combative, initiative to extinguish whatever hopes have survived of reviving the peace process. For the first time in its history, Israel is seeking to equate millions of Palestinians in refugee camps across the Middle East with millions of Israeli citizens descended from Jews who, before Israel’s establishment in 1948, lived in Arab countries.

According to Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, whose parents were originally from Iraq and who has been leading the government campaign, nearly a million Jews fled countries such as Iraq, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen. That figure exceeds the generally accepted number of 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. Israel’s goal is transparent: it hopes the international community can be persuaded that the suffering of Palestinian refugees is effectively cancelled out by the experiences of “Jewish refugees”. If nothing can be done for Arab Jews all these years later, then Palestinians should expect no restitution either.

Over the past few weeks that has been the message implicit in a social media campaign called “I am a refugee”, which includes YouTube videos in which Jews tell of being terrorised while living in Arab states after 1948. Mr Ayalon has even announced plans for a new day of national commemoration, Jewish Refugee Day.

This month, the Israeli foreign ministry and US Jewish organisations formally launched the initiative, staging a conference in New York a few days before the opening sessions of the General Assembly.

Israel’s choice of arena – the UN – is not accidental. The campaign is chiefly designed to stifle the move announced by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his General Assembly speech last week to begin seeking UN status for Palestine as a non-member state. After opposition from the US forced the Palestinians to abort their bid for statehood at the UN Security Council last year, Mr Abbas is expected to delay making his new request until November, after the US presidential election campaign to avoid embarrassing President Barack Obama.

Mr Abbas’s move has spurred Israel to take the offensive.

Anyone who doubts that the Israeli government’s concern for Arab Jews is entirely cynical only has to trace the campaign’s provenance. It was considered for the first time in 2009, when Mr Netanyahu was forced – under pressure from Mr Obama – to deliver a speech backing Palestinian statehood. Immediately afterwards, Mr Netanyahu asked the National Security Council, whose role includes assessing strategic threats posed by Palestinians, to weigh the merits of championing Arab Jews’ case in international forums. The NSC’s advice is that Arab Jews, known in Israel as Mizrahim and comprising a small majority of the total Jewish population, should be made a core issue in the peace process. As Israel knows, that creates a permanent stumbling block to an agreement.

Israel is working on other fronts too to undermine the case for Palestinian refugees. Its US lobbyists are demanding that UNRWA, the UN agency for the refugees, be dismantled. And bipartisan pressure is mounting in the US Congress to count as refugees only Palestinians personally displaced from their homes in 1948, stripping millions of descendants of their status.

The Palestinians are deeply opposed to any linkage between Arab Jews and Palestinian refugees. Not least, they argue, they cannot be held responsible for what took place in other countries. Justice for Palestinian refugees is entirely separate from justice for Arab Jews. Moreover, many, if not most, Arab Jews left their homelands voluntarily, unlike Palestinians, to begin a new life in Israel. Even where tensions forced Jews to flee, such as in Iraq, it is hard to know who was always behind the ethnic strife. There is strong evidence that Israel’s Mossad spy agency waged false-flag operations in Arab states to fuel the fear and hostility needed to drive Arab Jews towards Israel.

Likewise, Israel’s claim that it has a right to represent Arab Jews collectively and lay claim to compensation on their behalf ignores the reality that Israel was compensated handsomely for absorbing Jews, both through massive post-war reparations from countries such as Germany and through billions of dollars in annual handouts from the United States.

But there is a more fundamental reason to be sceptical of this campaign. Classifying Arab Jews as “refugees” skewers the central justification used by Zionists for Israel’s creation: that it is the natural homeland for all Jews, and the only place where they can be safe. As a former Israeli MP, Ran Hacohen, once observed: “I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee.”Mr Netanyahu’s government is making a deeply anti-Zionist argument, one it has been forced to adopt because of its own intransigence in the peace process. Its refusal to countenance a small Palestinian state in the 1967 borders means the global community feels compelled to reassess the events of 1948. For most Arab Jews, that period is now a closed chapter. For most Palestinian refugees, it is still an open wound.

Apartheid without shame or guilt

Gideon Levy Ha’aretz 23 October 2012

We’re racists, the Israelis are saying, we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel.

As elections draw near, the season of public opinion surveys is upon us. But here is a survey that is more disturbing and significant in its revelations than those informing us whether Yair Lapid is taking off or Ehud Barak is crashing in the polls. This one lays bare an image of Israeli society, and the picture is a very, very sick one. Now it is not just critics at home and abroad, but Israelis themselves who are openly, shamelessly, and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists.

We’re racists, the Israelis are saying, we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel. Among its terrifying results, the survey discovers a certain innocent candor. The Israelis admit this is what they are and they’re not ashamed of it. Such surveys have been held before, but Israelis have never appeared so pleased with themselves, even when they admit their racism. Most of them think Israel is a good place to live in and most of them think this is a racist state.

It’s good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don’t apply. The “Jewish” part of “Jewish democracy” has won big time. The “Jewish” gave “democracy” a knockout, smashing it to the canvas. Israelis want more and more Jewish and less and less democracy. From now on don’t say Jewish democracy. There’s no such thing, of course. There cannot be. From now on say Jewish state, only Jewish, for Jews alone. Democracy – sure, why not. But for Jews only. Because that’s what the majority wants. Because that’s how the majority defines its state. The majority doesn’t want Arabs to vote for the Knesset, Arab neighbours at home or Arab students at school. Let our camp be pure – as clean of Arabs as possible and perhaps even more so.

The majority wants segregated roads in the West Bank and does not flinch in the face of the implications. Even the historic connotation does not bother it in the slightest. It wants discrimination in the workplace and it wants transfer. Enough with the whitewashing and pretence. This is what we want. Because that’s the way we are.

The right will probably attack the New Israel Fund for commissioning the survey. Gevalt! It will screech. Leftists, Israel-haters. But the right’s hollering will not change the result. This was done by a reliable, well-known polling firm. Besides, what’s wrong with the survey? What didn’t we know before, apart from the loss of shame? Let the right prove that this is not the way we are, that most Israelis want to live with Arabs. That most of them see Arabs as people like themselves, their equals in rights and opportunities. Let’s see them prove it wrong. That would be a true cause for celebration.

The survey does not only confront Israelis with their present, but with their future as well. This appears to be the survey conductors’ main goal. It tells them: You wanted settlements, you wanted occupation, you want Netanyahu and you’ve done nothing for the two-state solution, and it’s died. Now let’s see what’s the alternative.

The alternative, as every infant knows, is one state. One state? Most Israelis say it will be an apartheid state, yet are doing nothing to prevent it. Some of them even want it. They don’t even ask, Where are we going? Where are we being led? What’s the vision for the next 10, 20 years? Well, if all goes well, if all continues they way it is now, the Israelis know the answer and it’s a bitter one indeed.

Until then, the image of Israel 2012 is this: We don’t want Arabs, don’t want Palestinians, don’t want equality, and the hell with all the rest. Values-shmalues, morals-shmorals. Democracy and international law – those are matters for anti-Semites, not us. We will vote for Netanyahu again, recite that we’re the only-democracy-in-the-Middle-East and wail that the whole world is against us.

Galilee Bedouin face house demolitions

Activestills 29/10/12

In the last two weeks the family has received daily visits by different police officers who have announced orally that the family has a week to leave the area and move to the recognized lands of the village of Khawaled. This, despite the fact the national park plans, presented by the Israel Land Administration itself, only pass by their land, and more importantly, the lands are privately owned by the Khawaled family.

The little piece of land that the Khawaled family lives in is located east to Yagor-Somech road on one side, and just down from the “Israel Trail” on the other. The Bedouin tribe of Khawaled, which Ali’s family belongs to, has lived there since 1945. Only in 1992, then-Minister of Interior Aryeh Deri recognized it as a permanent village and it was slowly connected to electricity and sewage infrastructure. Later the district of Zvulun granted it permission to expand up to 240 dunams–a very small amount of land for the growing village–that had already reached 400 people. This regional plan does not leave a single inch of land left for development in the next 20 years.

Ali’s house, as well as his sister’s and his son’s houses, were left out of the first district plan, despite the fact that they are located only a few hundred meters from the current village’s border. Although they pay property tax, they don’t have sewage infrastructure, and in 2007 they received demolition warrants. They told the court that their houses have been standing before 1945. The court ruled against the demolition, but put a restriction on any further development on the their land. However, that same verdict included a small paragraph which said that if the house were to be included in public territory, then there would be a renewed discussion. And not surprisingly, during 2009, the Israel Land Administration presented a plan to turn the area into a national park. After the family’s appeal, the court ruled in favor of demolition within two years, without any compensation to the family.

So what’s going on? It seems that the Israeli administration has decided to give the northern Bedouin community a hard time too, after abusing the Bedouins in the South for decades. In 2011, houses in the Bedouin village of Zbidat were demolished. During the winter, they were rebuilt. One May morning in 2012, all the young men of the village were called in to the police for investigation. When they came back, they found that their houses were demolished in their absence.

On September 4, 2012, the authorities came to demolish a house in the village of Bir El-Maksur. Almost all the young Bedouins of Bir El-Maksur serve the IDF. On the house about to be demolished was an Israeli flag–soon to be brought down in the riot that broke out. Today, there is a Palestinian flag on the top of the new house that was rebuilt. Was this the purpose of this operation? What’s the big plan of the Israeli goverment? Is there one? Today, October 28, there was another discussion in a Haifa court in the case of the Khawaled family. The family asked the court to delay the demolition warrants. The judge answered that there is no basis for holding back, and asked the district representative why the warrants were not carried out already.

After a long discussion–throughout which the family was supported by activists from Tarabut Movement–the judge decided to give a three-week delay. This might enable the family to achieve the warrant’s dismissal, to which the main key lies in the hands of the head of Zvulun Council. If he asks the Minister of Interior for an expansion of Khawaled village borders, he can stop the demolition. It is quite clear that in 20 years time the village will expand and reach the family’s land. Why destroy the life of a family who just asks to hold on to what is rightfully theirs?

Israeli army veterans admit role in massacres of Palestinians in 1948

Palestine Monitor 16/10/12

“I headed to the mosque, as per an order from the command, and I kept my ears and eyes open after I quietly opened the door,” said Khnovitc. “Then I fired a Fiat missile, following orders. Many corpses flew and got stuck to the walls due to the severity of the blast.”

Dozens of Israeli army veterans have admitted their involvement in massacres against Palestinian civilians in 1948, and acknowledged that Zionism misled them and is a catastrophe for both Jews and Arabs. The details have been revealed by the Yazkern organisation, which was founded in 2001 and seeks to unveil the truth and spread the Palestinian narrative of the country’s history among Israelis and convince them of Zionism’s false account. The organisation believes in a one-state solution and in Palestinians’ right to return to their land and homes.

Israeli army veteran Amnon Neumann is 82 and from Haifa. He said that he was a member of the Palmach, the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yeshuv Jewish community during the period of the British Mandate of Palestine. Neumann joined the Palmach in 1946 after he came to Palestine from Poland at the age of 16. He said that there were no real battles due to Palestinian poverty and lack of organisation, training and arms. The official Israeli account of that period claims that the displacement and killing of Palestinians was the normal result of a war.

Mr. Neumann admitted that he took part in displacing Palestinians from the villages of Simism, Najd, Kawkaba, Burayr and other places which were fully inhabited by their owners; this runs contrary to Zionist claims. Confessing to his participation in the massacre that was committed against the people of Burayr, Neumann noted that they had Czech-made guns which they used to expel the local inhabitants towards the Gaza Strip.

The Haganah forces were surrounding the village on three sides, he recalls, and firing in the air before entering and expelling its people forcefully. The houses were burnt down, as per the orders the armed forces had received. According to the veteran, he heard a confession by a Haganah officer after the occupation of Burayr that he had shot a Palestinian girl in the head after raping her. It was later revealed, said Neumann, that the girl had indeed been raped.

Another veteran, Arhamel Khnovitc, also 83 years old, now lives in the settlement of Daghania. He confessed that he took part in the massacre in the Dahmash Mosque in Al-Lydd in July 1948; he also took part in the ethnic cleansing of the villages of Jamzu and Dan’el. “I headed to the mosque, as per an order from the command, and I kept my ears and eyes open after I quietly opened the door,” said Khnovitc. “Then I fired a Fiat missile, following orders. Many corpses flew and got stuck to the walls due to the severity of the blast.”

Benyamin Eisht, 85, who lives in Bilhaym, said that he saw the Palestinian survivors of Al-Lydd and Ramla after the massacre, walking in lines toward Ramallah, with dead bodies scattered on the sides of the road. The testimony of 83-year-old Yitzhak Tishler, who lives in Mafsirt Tsyon, confirms the accounts provided by other veterans who spoke of looting houses and stores. He also said that he took part in the killing of dozens of villagers in the village of Al-Sheikh near Haifa in revenge for the Jewish workers who were killed in a quarrel near Rifyanry.

Hugh Humphries

Secretary

Scottish Friends of Palestine

0141 637 8046

info@scottish-friends-of-palestine.org

View all →