Clipmarks | jklugman's 'palestine' clips

Settlers Clash With Rabbis Guarding Palestinian Olive Harvest

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:41:24 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Jewish settlers clashed with activists of the Rabbis for Human Rights movement near the West Bank city of Hebron on Friday as they protected Palestinians beginning the annual olive harvest.

Israeli police and soldiers grappled with settlers who tried to drive off local Palestinians and international supporters of Palestinian rights in the West Bank.

"This is just the beginning of the olive harvest which will be going on for the next two months," said the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, Arik Ascherman.

He said activists were going to 40 Palestinian villages to protect olive growers and uphold their right to work the land, and harvest. They would act "as human shields" if necessary.

A settler woman screamed "Murderer, murderer" at the rabbi, and settlers angrily shouted down any activists trying to explain their aims to TV reporters.

Palestinians say settler harassment often turns to encroachment and eventually seizure of more land in the name of settler "security".

Tags: israel, palestine, settlements

Palestinian youth killed, settlers accused

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:21:21 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, which includes eye-witness statements, during the afternoon of 27 September, Yahia Ateya Fahmi Bani Maneya, age 18, from Aqraba village southeast of Nablus city, went to graze his sheep on land east of his village. When the teenager had not returned home by 18:00, dozens of locals gathered and went in search of him. They searched the area between Aqraba village and the Israeli settlement of Jetit, which lies approximately 10 kilometers east of Aqraba village. At about midnight, locals found Yahia Maneya's dead body covered in blood in al-Fajen area, one kilometer west of Jetit settlement.

...

According to eyewitnesses, his body had been hit by about 20 bullets to the neck, chest and legs.

Clip Source: electronicintifada.net

On Saturday, 27 September 2008, a Palestinian teenager from Aqra village southeast of Nablus City was shot dead by Israeli settlers. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) utterly condemns this heinous crime, and reiterates that the neglect of complaints submitted by Palestinian civilians against Israeli settlers, plus the protection provided by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to the settlers, have encouraged the settlers to continue launching attacks against unarmed Palestinian civilians.

Tags: israel, palestine, civilian-killings, settlements, west bank

Next US pres will have to implement 2-state solution

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:55:17 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Via Philip Weiss

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

More likely, Rice will need to hand over a work that is not only in progress but also in need of major repair. A new administration of either political stripe will likely express commitment to continuing negotiations and pursuing peace, but they should be warned that if achieving a two-state solution is still the goal, then an 'A' for effort will not be enough this time. It is not an alarmist or exaggerated claim to suggest that on the watch of the next US president the two-state solution will either finally be realised or have definitively passed its sell-by date.

Tags: daniel levy, israel, palestine, diplomacy

Israel's Front-Line Thugs

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:10:52 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

The security forces are, of course, by no means scared to act when it suits them. Palestinian demonstrations are routinely put down with excessive force: rocks flung by pre-teens are countered with rubber bullets, tear gas, and – often – live and indiscriminate fire. But when it comes to clamping down on violence emanating from the settler community, a different set of rules apply, and the authorities' reeking hypocrisy is exposed as endemic to the way in which they view the different strands of Israeli society.

Via Philip Weiss

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Of late, there has been a steady stream of brutal assaults carried out by settlers against their Palestinian neighbours in the West Bank, right under the noses of the lackadaisical army. The phenomenon is, sadly, nothing new; what has brought the story back into the spotlight are the efforts of human rights groups, such as B'Tselem to film the violence and document the shocking reality on the ground – which is why, it seems, the authorities are so keen to clamp down on their activity in the region.

However, the settlers don't confine their vindictive and vicious attacks to Palestinians; they are not averse to attacking their Jewish peers either.

Then another Breaking the Silence group came under attack from settler vigilantes, who doused the participants with boiling water after confronting them in the streets of Hebron and heckling them with cries of "traitor", and other such hostile invective.

Tags: israel, settlements, west bank, palestine, hypocrisy

Bush Admin may snuff General's report on Israel misconduct

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:08:22 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Top US official there issues report critical of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Will Bush "listen to the General on the ground" or quietly gag the best report they've got?

Clip Source: www.democracynow.org

US Considers Quashing Report Critical of Israel

In other news, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports the Bush administration is debating whether to silence a forthcoming high-level report critical of Israel’s conduct in the Occupied Territories. The report is written by the top US official there, retired general James Jones. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Jones has written a “scathing” report criticizing both the Israeli government and the White House. Israeli officials who met with Jones said they expect the report to be “very harsh, and make Israel look very bad.” Jones is said to be particularly critical of Israel’s claim to have security interests to justify its large settlement blocs on Palestinian land. Top administration officials are said to be so upset by the report they are debating blocking its release.

Tags: israel, palestine

Haaretz editor: Israel facing existential crisis

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:07:22 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: The outgoing editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz spoke at the London Jewish Book Week.

On the 2005 Chris McGreal series that appeared in the Guardian, comparing Israel to South Africa:

Landau was "outraged" by the articles at the time, but went on: "I don't feel like that any more. I don't feel that my outrage did sufficient justice to that piece of journalism because I feel that we in Israel have got ourselves into a situation in which we will indeed be facing a South African dilemma.

"We will have a country in which we will become the minority and the majority will be denied their political and civil rights. When I re-read the Chris McGreal reports I no longer feel necessarily that that was totally tendentious. It might have been a prophetic piece of journalism. But the point is that the outrage which I gave voice to was an inadequate reaction. The reaction should have been: 'has he got a point?'"

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

"It is high time that the Anglo-Jewish community and intelligentsia stopped devoting an inordinate amount of its pro-Israel energies to a minute parsing of what the BBC or the Guardian wrote about Sderot [the Israeli town regularly hit by rocket fire from the Gaza Strip] today or yesterday," he told the London Jewish Book Week audience.

"The problem of Sderot and Gaza is not how many times the BBC refers to it. The problem is that Israel is mortally, existentially threatened. It has no long-term future if it can't resolve its conflict with the Palestinians," Landau added.

"I submit to you that these words I am using merely scratch the depths of our disaster, our tragedy," Landau said. "We have a huge, vast army. Every flick of its tail leads to wholesale death across the border, including children and babies and old people because we are so strong and they are so weak. And yet they are threatening our sovereign state."

Tags: israel, guardian, occupation, palestine, alan rusbridger, david landau, haaretz, chris mcgreal, south africa

'They've Stolen our Water, now our SEA'

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:46:13 GMT

clipped by: righthand
clipper's remarks: "The illegality of the actions and orders of the army cries out to the heavens. This is a clear case of misusing security considerations as camouflage for achieving other goals which are unrelated to security matters and unacceptable."
The Association of Civil Rights (Acri) petition said.

Clip Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Palestinians barred from Dead Sea beaches to 'appease Israeli settlers'

Palestinians are being regularly and illegally barred from reaching Dead Sea beaches in the occupied West Bank, according to a Supreme Court petition filed by Israel's leading civil rights organisation.

The Association of Civil Rights (Acri) in Israel is challenging what it says is the frequently imposed ban by the military on Palestinians seeking to swim or relax at beaches in the northern Dead Sea. The salt-saturated sea is the only open water accessible to Palestinians from the otherwise landlocked West Bank.

Clip Source: jamaicabeach.spaces.live.com

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

The petition says that the Israeli military is using the Beit Ha'arava checkpoint on Route 90 – the only open access route in the occupied West Bank for travel to the Dead Sea – to turn back Palestinians, mainly but not exclusively on weekends and Jewish holidays.

1 Exclusive: New batch of terror files left on train

6 Bush 'may convert to Catholicism'

7 What now for Europe? The EU's Irish problem

Tags: israel, water, acri, human.rights, palestine, westbank

'Jewish settler attack' on film

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 03:57:37 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Via JewSchool

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Footage from a video camera handed out by an Israeli human rights group appears to show Jewish settlers beating up Palestinians in the West Bank.

An elderly shepherd, his wife and a nephew said they were attacked by four masked men for allowing their animals to graze near the settlement of Susia.

The rights group, B'Tselem, said the cameras were provided to enable Palestinians to get proof of attacks.

A spokesman for the Israeli police said that an investigation was under way.

So far, no-one has been arrested.

Tags: israel, palestine, settlements, violence, occupation

The Hypocrisy of Denying Palestinians the Right of Return

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:23:19 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: www.thecrimson.com

How else could we justify the massive and ongoing theft of the Palestinians’ native land since the mid-20th century—subsidized annually with upwards of three billion dollars from the U.S. government—while we correctly enforce the right of Jewish refugees to recover European properties from which they were displaced in the mid-20th century? If we do not recognize the equality of Palestinian and Jewish rights, how can we avow the equality of the rights belonging to Tibetans and Han Chinese, Sahrawis and Moroccans, Africans and Americo-Liberians, women and men, blacks and whites, gays and straights?

Tags: hypocrisy, israel, palestine, land-confiscation, confiscation

Israel Withholds Tax Revenue From Palestinian Authority

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:04:54 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: This sounds very much like Israel is collectively punishing Palestinians just because a Palestinian official criticized Israel.

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

Israel is expected to transfer some tax funds to the Palestinian Authority Tuesday, after holding up the money for a week. The transfer was stopped after Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad called on the European Union and OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) not to upgrade their relations with Israel.

Israel will deduct some NIS 70 million from the PA's money to cover debts and transfer some NIS 180 million of the NIS 250 million in taxes that it collects for the PA.

Holding up the money has caused several days' delay in paying wages to some 150,000 Palestinians employed by the PA.

Tags: israel, palestine, collective-punishment, free-expression, occupation, palestinian-authority, pa

Bradley Burston, Haaretz.com: I want the Palestinians to win

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:57:20 GMT

clipped by: Johanna_G
clipper's remarks:

"I and the majority of the Palestinian people are ready for a historic agreement based on international decisions that will allow a Palestinian and Israeli state to coexist, side by side, in peace and stability."

Jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti

Source: Ha'aretz, 08 April 2008

Bradley Burston is Senior Editor of Haaretz.com, the Israeli newspaper's online English language edition.
__________________________________

See also Kore7's clip Bradley Burston: Ten Ways to Make Sure That Peace Stays Dead.

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

I'm a fairly patriotic sort, as these things go. A California native, I truly love the nation, and especially the state, of my birth. I love this, my adopted homeland, no less. I deeply want Israel to be a success. And that is why I wanted the Palestinians to win.

Not win as in "throw the Jews in the sea." Not win as in "set the ground ablaze under the Jews' feet."

Win as in "gain what the Jews have gained - independence, statehood, responsibility over their own fate, and a sense of proportion over what is attainable in a world and a region of limited resources and manifold hopes."

It is in the direct interest of hardliners to do everything in their power to convince their side that this is a zero-sum game, that only one side can emerge triumphant.

In fact, though, there are two additional options, the first, of course, being that both sides can lose. The second, the one of which we've largely lost sight, is that with an element of compassion, both sides can win.

Tags: israel, palestine

Water Policy in Israel and Palestine - There's Enough Water for Both

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:02:36 GMT

clipped by: Johanna_G
clipper's remarks:

The increasing difficulties with water availability, concludes the hydrogeologist, result from Israel using the majority of water resources for agricultural purposes, although this sector today represents a very small portion of the Israeli economy.
Despite this, the Israeli state remains unswervingly committed to the Zionist foundation myth, which regards the promotion of agriculture as a central tenet in the Jewish settlement of Palestine.

Messerschmid, in turn, sees the priorities of Israeli water policies as fundamentally flawed, leading to a wasteful use of the precious resource. Large areas of land, for instance, are still intensively watered even during conditions of very high temperatures, although most of the water immediately evaporates.
The Palestinians, by contrast, do not even have the amount of water at their disposal that was promised in the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty.

Deutsche Fassung

Clip Source: www.qantara.de

Water, a resource essential for life, is becoming increasingly scarce in many areas of the world. In terms of the Middle East conflict, it is well known that the diversion of a river or even the additional pumping out of water can quickly turn into grounds for war.

The distribution of existing water reserves between Israel and its Arab neighbors is not only a result of the Middle East wars, but also due to various points of view on how water can be obtained in the region. The German hydro-geologist Clemens Messerschmid, who has lived and worked in Ramallah for a number of years, regards these viewpoints as out-dated and biased.

It's not true that there's a shortage

Messerschmid's critique, which has recently caused quite a stir in Israel, is directed primarily against the Israelis. They remain in control of most of the water resources in a region that the German hydro-geologist regards – contrary to prevailing opinions – as not being all that arid.

Clip Source: www.qantara.de

Tags: palestine, israel, water policy

Thank You, Jimmy Carter

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 02:00:32 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Don't let the right-wing propaganda machines convince you that Carter is anti-Semitic when he is not!

More from Rabbi Lerner:
"In an interview...in the January issue of Tikkun magazine, Carter points out that he is “not referring to racism as a basis for Israeli policy in the West Bank, but rather the desire of a minority of Israelis to occupy, confiscate and colonize Palestinian land.” To enforce that occupation of Palestinian land, Israel has built in the West Bank separate roads for Jewish settlers and Palestinians, built separate school systems, has totally different allocations of money, water, food and security for each population, wildly privileging the Jewish settlers and discriminating against the Palestinians whose families have lived there for centuries."

"What Carter is arguing is that the best interests of Israel and the United States are not served by the current policies."

Clip Source: www.tompaine.com

Thank You, Jimmy Carter

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue, which meets in San Francisco and Berkeley, and national chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. He is the author of Healing Israel/Palestine (North Atlantic Books, 2003) and of the national best-seller The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (Harper San Francisco, 2006).

When the U.S. government is following a self-destructive policy, even a policy backed by people in both major political parties, its best friends are those who try to change its direction and are not afraid to offer intense critique. That’s why a majority of Americans, and 86 percent of American Jews, voted in the 2006 midterm elections to reject Bush’s war in Iraq and his policies suspending habeas corpus and legitimating wire-tapping and torture. Not because we were disloyal, but precisely because we love America enough to challenge its policies even when Vice President Cheney questions our loyalty. We know that critique is often an essential part of love and caring.

That is precisely what Jimmy Carter is trying to do for Israel and the Jewish people in his new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

So it’s astounding to see the assault on Carter that has been launched by the ADL chair Abe Foxman, law professor Alan Dershowitz and a bevy of other representatives of the Jewish community. I recently received a mailing from our local Jewish Community Relations Council containing four such attacks on Carter, with zero representation of American Jews who support the Israeli peace movement.

Jimmy Carter is speaking the truth as he knows it, and doing a great service to the Jews.

It’s time to create a new openness to criticism and a new debate. Jimmy Carter has shown courage in trying to open that kind of space with his new book, and he deserves our warm thanks and support.

Tags: palestine, israel, middle east, usa, jimmy carter, peace, politics, religion, news media

Obama's church and Hamas

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:09:06 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: mypetjawa.mu.nu

Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago church reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America's Declaration of Independence.

The Hamas piece was published on the "Pastor's Page" of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water

In his July 22, 2007, church bulletin, Wright reprinted an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the newsletter as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas."

Marzook's original piece was titled, "Hamas' stand" but was re-titled "A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle" by Obama's church newsletter.[emphasis mine] The newsletter also referred to Hamas as the "Islamic Resistance Movement," and added in its introduction that Marzook was addressing Hamas' goals for "all of Palestine."

Clip Source: www.bizzyblog.com

Tags: obama, wright, race, racism, religion, politics, hamas, terrorism, israel

Young Israelis Resist Challenges to Settlements

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:31:35 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Via Phillip Weiss

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

SHVUT AMI OUTPOST, West Bank — For two months, Jewish youths have been renovating an old stone house on this muddy hilltop in the northern West Bank. The house is not theirs, however. It belongs to a Palestinian family. And their seizure of it, along with the land around it, for a new settlement outpost is a violation of Israeli law. The police have evicted the group five times, but they keep coming back.

Israel has pledged that it will permit no new settlements in the territory it has occupied since the 1967 war, no more expropriation of Palestinian land and dismantle unauthorized outposts — like this one — erected since March 2001, but it has never applied the muscle needed to do so.

So the settlers continue building a patchwork of communities to try to preclude the drawing of a border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. At the vanguard are the hilltop youth, teenagers like Yedidya, who work to complicate the demographic map ever more.

Tags: israel, palestine, occupation, settlements