In the Nazi period, A German was a German, just like before and after that period. And it didn't matter whether he or she was pro or anti nazi.

There are a handful or two of Jewish sites opposed to what Israel and Aipac are up to.

www.tikkun.org

Rootless cosmopolitans

Uri Avnery

The Other Israel

And these sites have links so one could go farther.

And yes there are the 10,000's of Iranian Jews.

And some religious anti-zionists here in the west.

And some refuseniks in Israel.

---

The Israeli constitution enshrines the religion in the state.

The religion is about family values and ancestry, and more.

I am certain genocide is not part of the religion.

Yet I don't hear any Israelis speaking out about the genocide that is going on.

For sure 'disgust' is a poor man's wine.

For the diaspora a Jew does not have to be religious, but has to be a Jew. Presumably Jeff Rense isn't religious, although his web site gets millions of visitors a day.

Tie in the Israeli/Zionist factor and the issue really is religion, Vanunu and Dylan converted to Christianity. This seems to be acceptable, to a lesser extent Buddhism is acceptable. That there is an organised religion is essential. There cannot be any spiritual quest/identity outside of that. It is not possible to be a 'human'.

The responsibility of being a Jew is too much for me. Even though my punishment is only being allowed to talk to criminals and undesirables. Well this is the age of zealots.

You can be a refusenik, you can be critical of Israel. So long as you say you are a Jew, so   long as you talk about the meaning of a jew. But never criticize the religion, never.

One for all and all for one, if this post sounds confused, it is because the situation is very confused. If you have never experienced a fervent nationalism before, then you too would be confused.

Many people would like to be Jewish,

there is often material reward.

Where is the Jewish Renaissance?

The re enlightening of the Jews

Another Golden Age

The  Baath in Baathist means Renaissance.

The Jews care about everything I do, they own me, they decide when I make money and when I don't, who I can talk to, and who I cannot talk to. They dictate the agenda.

Oh yes Jewishness is about collective punishment.

I wonder if Hamas will now be subjected to similar criticism by the concerned of the world for endangering the supply of fuel to the civilian population of Gaza. And I wonder what arguments one might reasonably offer to Israelis workers to persuade them to to take up the vacancies left by the men murdered today.

I just found out that Yulia, my good friend in Ukraine, is sick. I hasten to deliver some get-well-soon flowers to her.
She must recover soon to fight the burdensome demands of Gazprom and its parent, Kremlina.

Speaking of Gazprom, my good friend has just been elected President of Russia. I had so expected this result. From our days growing up in St Petersburg, I always knew 'Dimi' would rise to the highest office in the country.

Meanwhile, my former BFF and current competitor, Marion, is facing some backlash over her remarks she made about a year back. As you all know, I lost out the role of Edith Piaf to her -- and she won some prize recently.. -- and now, her past has caught up with her.

But I write today on some very sombre news indeed. Mahmoud Abbas (or as we insiders call him, Abu Mazen) severed talks with Israel after the Zionist regime continued her relentless and disproportionate attacks on Gaza which have left some 80 dead in just a few days. The attacks are the bloodiest since the Intifada eight years ago. The UN has condemned the violence on both sides, and call for an immediate ceasefire.

It is quite hard to take sides when dealing with the Israel-Palestine (IP) conflict. The IP conflict is this recent tit-for-tat attacks on each other.
By suggesting that Israel react too harshly is a little hard on Israel too. We cannot deny that Israelis in Sderot and now Ashkelon has been barraged by rockets frequently - with the former -- on an almost daily basis.
But then Israel's collective punishment of Gaza because of Hamas is also counter-productive, for Hamas declare that the West takes a double standard as Hamas won the 2006 (looking back, that was so long ago....) parliamentary elections, and got punished for it.
And throw in Abbas, and you have three sides not moving at all. Not that it was any easier when it was just Abbas and Israel. With the Palestinians divided, and the Israelis continuing their onslaught in retaliation, is 2008 really the year of hope and change?

sdl2

See it below.... straight from the horse' monster's mouth...

 MFA Newsletter

PM Olmert to Cabinet: "Striking at Hamas increases chance for peace."

"Israel will continue to defend its citizens and will continue to make efforts to hold negotiations in order to reach a dialogue and understanding with the Palestinian leadership that wants this."

(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Following are Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting today (Sunday), 2 March 2008:

Israel will continue to defend its citizens and will continue to make efforts to hold negotiations in order to reach a dialogue and understanding with the Palestinian leadership that wants this."

MFA Website

My sleep was largely interrupted , last night so was my my daughter's. The shooting was so heavy against different areas of the city , as well as different parts of the Gaza strip , the jet fighters sound was too loud as well as the helicopters sound.

This morning 28th of February it is disproportional open war , civilians pay the price , 15 people were killed , as an outcome of last night attack , including 3 months old baby !!!!!!!!!(1000 children were killed in the last 5 years alone )

On my way walking to the Red Crescent Society , (I do not have fuel in my car ), it is only 25 minutes , while walking , I can clearly hear successive explosions, from different parts of the city , and the drune on the sky , and also can clearly see the security forces soldiers, outside their headquarters , as it is under threat of bombing by the Israeli military forces , I had to walk very fast , expecting the worse.

Arriving my work to find out that we do not have enough fuel for the ambulance and the other work vehicles. No fuel entered Gaza since 17 days , our storage has been exhausted , oh my god this situation will have its disastrous impact on different health facilities .

Medical workers as always work under great pressure , and while I am trying to arrange for medical shipment entry to Gaza , donated by MECA , I endure living in such dangerous situation , and lack of electricity , we have scarce power 6- 8 hours daily at the moment ,fresh and clean pumped water is big problem for most residents of Gaza.

I feel fed up , exhausted and drained of talking about the same topics again and again , and things get worse and worse , so please understand me when i do not write .

Safety is my big concern at the moment as well as meeting medical facilities medications and medical supplies needs.

Justice and peace is my great goal , please spread the word.

One old man says - Punishment must be more severe from the act of violence and collective punishment fits the bill.

The second, equally old man - But it's immoral to punish entire peoples, Arabs, Muslims, Germans… All Germans were blamed for the concentration camps, when only a handful had conceived them. You want to talk collective punishment? What about those who actually raised the barracks of Auschwitz, those who mixed the cement that was used to raise the gas chambers, those who carried bricks that were used to build crematoria – the Polish, Russian or Jewish prisoners… They were no less guilty than the entire German population. They built them, shouldn't those Nations accept part of the blame?

But we are! Says the youngest of the three, points to an open local Polish newspaper and says – In England they write about Polish concentration camps again…

They all shake their heads.

Collective punishment, eh?

Joseph Goebbels (Nazi minister of propaganda) writes under April / May 1942:

My proposal to seize, let us say, 10,000 bicycles in occupied France as a reprisal for every attempt at assassination has been given a very favorable reception ... On the one hand we thereby inflict heavy punishment on the French ... the bicycle is now an indispensable means of communication in France. Punishment of this sort would strike the population with extraordinary severity.

and

The most recent act of sabotage [in France] against a German military train which resulted in several deaths will be punished with severe reprisals. The number of people to be shot will be doubled, and over a thousand communists and Jews will be put into freight cars and shipped East. There they will soon cease to see any fun in disturbing Germany’s policies for order in Europe.

If we can learn anything from history it's that collective punishment is nothing short of an immoral act, even criminal (not to mention that it simply does not work, as the Nazi’s found out), an obvious sign of a desperate oppressor loosing ground. This brings me to a question that’s been on my mind for some time now: the origin of evil. Is it the individual or the entire society that is responsible for the acts of evil that are happening around us? In other words: is it the society that commands the individual, say a President, to wage wars? Or is it the evil individual who corrupts entire societies to accepting his evil ways as just and only?

I would like to say: The individual, but in the end it always comes back to the people as a whole. One must remember that the most powerful weapon on the planet, the most feared by dictators, Messiahs, sole deciders and other usurpers, is not the nukes, the chemical or biological weapons, it's not the liberation theology, marxism-leninism or neo-conservatism, it is the People.

When a man goes on a rampage on a street, killing innocent people, we call him evil, or sick. But what happens when a designated leader wages a war or calls on a collective punishment?

We have only ourselves to blame because despite commanding all this power (by virtue of being the most powerful weapon) we allow such immoral and criminal acts to be committed in our name. We sit idly by as the sick individuals commit evil acts.

They say that the devil is one's own shadow.

The Israelis somehow believe Palestinian education really is threatening to their security.

By Joharah Baker

Since last June, stories of ill patients unable to leave the Gaza Strip, Israeli military invasions and fuel cuts have been streaming out of the coastal strip at a steady pace. The blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza ever since Hamas took over in June 2006 has resulted in hundreds of deaths, skyrocketing unemployment and lack of proper food and water supplies. On May 29, the collective punishment imposed on Gaza’s 1.4 million residents took yet another turn. Seven outstanding students granted the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship for university study in the United States were informed by the US State Department that their scholarships would regrettably be cancelled.

The reason for this sudden decision was completely unrelated to the merits of the seven students – obviously all intelligent and hard working given that they were able to snag the coveted scholarship. Rather, the culprit was, once again, the Israeli occupation, which denied the young adults exit permits from the beleaguered Gaza Strip. Since the blockade, Gaza residents have been virtually caged in the 360 square meter area, not allowed to leave, either into Israel or the West Bank from the Erez Crossing or from the Rafah Crossing into Egypt. This latter crossing has been a serious bone of contention between Palestinians, Israelis and Egyptians, who have occasionally opened the crossing for a few days at a time to let in the hundreds of stranded people on either side.

Given that the Fulbright Scholarship is so prestigious, a relatively “big stink” was made when the letters of apology arrived. One letter received by a Gaza student read, “We are extremely sorry that we are unable to finalize your scholarship at this time, and hope you will reapply next year and be able to complete your studies in the U.S.” Even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was notified and made to comment. On her way to Iceland on May 30, Rice coolly noted that “Perhaps there are reasons [for the scholarship withdrawal], but I want to look into why this happened.”

“Why it happened” is pretty clear. Israel has had one major goal since its imposed blockade on the Strip, which is to squeeze out Hamas, undermine its political and military power and install a much more malleable Palestinian government in its stead, one which would be more acquiescing to Israel’s constant demands. Hence, its blockade is airtight, only allowing “urgent humanitarian cases” to leave the Strip with permission.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner said Israel’s current policy is to issue permits only in humanitarian cases and "students are not included under the definition of humanitarian aid.”

It is not clear what exactly constitutes humanitarian aid according to the Israelis. Since the blockade was imposed under a year ago, 121 recorded Gazans died after being refused permits to leave the Strip to seek urgent medical attention.

Furthermore, with the constant fuel shortage due to Israel’s blockade on fuel supplies into Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Gazans go days on end without electricity and fresh fruits and vegetables are growing exceedingly scarcer and pricier due to the tight closure on crossings.

Still, even if we only address the issue at hand – the denial of these students to travel to the US for study – this is a gross violation of the intrinsic right to education. How could seven bright, young, ambitious Palestinians seeking only to better themselves and hence their country be a threat to Israel’s security? Even Secretary Rice sounded disturbed at the decision. ”If you cannot engage young people and give complete horizons to their expectations and their dreams, I don't know that there would be any future for Palestine," she said.

Furthermore, Israel is hardly playing by its own rules. If students do not constitute a “humanitarian case” it seems even more unlikely that businessmen would. That was not the case last week when 122 businessmen from Gaza were able to reach Bethlehem to attend the Palestine Investment Conference, of course with Israeli facilitation. Hence, it is not really about Israel’s security measures but more about what would serve its interests. Boosting non-Hamas businessmen in Gaza could certainly assist in pumping up parts of the economy there not connected with the Islamic movement.

No doubt, this was no comfort to the seven students who had their hopes pinned on traveling to the US to attend some of the country’s best universities. The State Department said it would defer the scholarships to West Bank students rather than squander the grants altogether, adding that the Gazans would be eligible for Fulbrights next year if Israel insists on refusing them a ticket out.

The Israelis somehow believe Palestinian education really is threatening to their security, judging from past behavior. Since the inception of their illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, every Palestinian university has been closed down by Israeli military order at one time or another. Palestinian universities were shut down from January 1988 to April 1992 after the outbreak of the first Intifada. For Birzeit University, this had been the 15th military closure of the university since 1979.

Since then, all 10 Palestinian universities in the West Bank and Gaza have been intermittently shut down by Israeli authorities, always with the excuse of the campuses being “beds of terrorism”. Of course, universities are representatives of the overall political, social and economic situation of any society, Palestine notwithstanding. So, while political activity is present and factions vie for student council seats in clear representation of the larger political scene, this is no excuse for depriving these students of the education they have a right to receive.

Unfortunately, like all the other dimensions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the international community turns a blind eye to the injustices Israel metes out against the Palestinians. The closing of educational institutions by a military power is an atrocity under any circumstance, much less when it is done repeatedly, disrupting the educational process for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Luckily for the seven Fulbright recipients in Gaza,Israel had a change of heart. The Israeli human rights organization Gisha reported late on Sunday that “The U.S. Consulate tonight told Fulbright candidates from Gaza that it is restoring funding for the prestigious scholarship program and is ‘working closely’ with the government of Israel to secure permits for the students to leave Gaza in order to attend visa interviews at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem and thereafter to leave Gaza for travel to the United States”. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. reversal came on orders from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who first heard about the scholarship fiasco on Friday. This goes to show that when the Palestinians play their cards right and embarassment is caused to the United States, all of a sudden Israel finds itself with no choice but to concede.

-Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH – www.miftah.org), where this article was originally published. She can be contacted at mip@miftah.org.

You may also read : Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools

Appended below are four (in a series of five) links to poignant videos from the excellent Guardian series A Week in Gaza, detailing the impact of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Ghetto on ordinary people. On this 60th anniversary of the Nakba, these heart-rending portraits of Gazans is particularly timely and offers a window into life in Gaza.

As Ali Abunimah, currently in Sydney, has said, Nakba Denial not only exists, but unlike Holocaust Denial still has some mainstream intellectual acceptance. The ongoing plight of the indigenous Palestinians after 60 years deserves our attention and support now more than ever. For our part in Australia, there is a strong campaign to have the Australian Parliament acknowledge the Nakba — please consider lending your support if you are in Australia.

1. The blockade and the smugglers (4.55)
Israel’s fuel blockade has ground Gaza’s infrastructure to a halt. In response, smuggling gangs bring fuel in from Egypt through underground tunnels.

2. ‘Who’ll look after my little ones when I’m gone?‘ (4.06)
In the second of five films, multimedia reporter Clancy Chassay hears from Karima, a 34-year-old mother of five, critically ill with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an aggressive but treatable form of cancer. Like all but immediate emergency patients, she has been refused permission to cross into Israel to receive vital treatment. Her doctors in Gaza say that without this treatment she will die.

3. Meet the Bakrs … a middle-class family from Gaza (4.11)
Multimedia reporter Clancy Chassay talks to the Bakrs about life under the Israeli blockade, juggling jobs, school runs and clinical depression.

4. ‘They say they have the right to shoot at us and kill us‘ (3.12)
In the fourth of five films from Gaza, multimedia reporter Clancy Chassay meets Samir who lost his brother and two footballing friends during Israeli rocket and shell attacks on their playing fields.

See also:

• Siege Hits Palestinians Before They Are Born By Mohammed Omer
• Nakba at 60 by George Bisharat
• There is no alternative to the right of return - Statement, National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba at 60, 15 May 2008

"It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It's a crime... I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on...I think politically speaking this has worked even to strengthen the popularity of Hamas and to the detriment of the popularity of Fatah."

Former President Jimmy Carter, speaking yesterday.

Where has all the rage gone? by Tariq Ali (via marxsite.com): Ali begins with a good overview of the events of 1968, specifically bringing up their potential (only partially realized) to spread from one country to another. However, while the exchange between Ali and some American soldiers recently back from Iraq is interesting, it does not tie in well with the theme of 1968. That is not to say that there is no connection between the two; certainly, the rejection of many Vietnam veterans (specifically Black veterans, as Ali points out) of the dominant social ideology has a lot to bring to the discussion of the current Iraq War, but Ali almost seems to switch gears without taking care to make the connection.

He does make some good points about the difference between the antiwar movements in 1968 (Vietnam) and 2003 (Iraq), specifically that the '68 version had considerable longevity, whereas the '03 movement lasted not much longer than the big protests in February 2003. However, this is hardly a fair comparison. The '68 antiwar movement existed in the context of growing radicalization and politicization, something '03 never had - in fact, in the security-state crackdown post 9/11, it is surprising it was as large as it was.

However, the main problem with Ali's article is that it largely consists of saying things were so much better back in his day, which (and this may be somewhat glib) doesn't exactly advance the project of socialism. There is, of course, merit in remembering past victories, if only for the benefit of our morale, but this article seems to be a bit inwardly focused, without much immediate benefit (although, as I said earlier, the description of events of 1968 is actually quite good). I give it 2 1/2 out of 5 bearded communist guerillas.

Friedrich Engels - Ten Previously Overlooked Aspects of his Life (An Unrepetent Communist): The material for this blog post comes from an upcoming book by John Green on Engels; the author lists 10 'interesting tidbits' regarding Engels that were, honestly, actually pretty interesting. I have to say I found #1 the best (specifically the part in bold):

1) His early life bore an uncanny resemblance to that of Che Guevara, they both rejected comfortable privileged backgrounds espousing the cause of the poor and oppressed. He even physically resembled Guevara physically in his early years.

Click through to the article to see a picture of Engels that actually does look pretty well much like El Che. Some of the other points: Engels (El Engels?) apparently knew something like 26 languages, lived as a guerilla in Prussia for some time, and rode around on horseback in his 20s fighting duels. Sounds like someone is in need of a 19th-century version of "Motorcycle Diaries".

Kurt Cobain Converse custom Chucks coming.... (via CBC Radio 3): Sweet, merciful crap. I mean, come on. There isn't much I can add to this, other than to link to some other TDS articles on much the same topic, and to quote one comment:

kurt howard says:
this could be one of the most offensive things ive ever seen.
and ive seen eel porn.

No need to kill them (via benwhite.org.uk): Well, if that last story didn't disgust you in a personal fashion, this one should do it. Here we have a fellow who has several peachy-keen ideas about how to violate the human rights of Gazans - he actually seems upset they can't just kill everyone in the Gaza Strip. You really need to read the article, the whole thing is full of some incredibly messed up garbage. However, here are a few choice tidbits:

Tear gas cannons will fire it all across the Strip, with growing frequency. Giant speakers will make terrible sounds – sirens, screeches, and loud explosions – first it would last 10 minutes, then 15 minutes, and eventually hours. This could also include Israeli music, or chants of “Hamas is doing this to you,” just like a brainwashing campaign, time and again, and everything at very high volume that does not allow for normal functioning.... In my estimate, after 10 days like that, with Gaza citizens sleepless, their eyes burning from tear gas, their ears ringing, and covered in red paint, they would stop anyone firing rockets at Israel with their own hands.

Of course, he finishes off with this:

Nobody would be able to blame Israel, because the one pushing the button every time and in fact turning on this series of bothersome measures would be Hamas itself, the moment it fires a rocket.

It's a bit like the old "I'm going to keep swinging my fists, and if you get hit, it's your own fault!". It's nice to know there are such sterling examples of humanity out there...

Immediately after the bloody attack, Minister of Defense Ehud Barak promised to check to see whether the army could legally demolish the terrorist’s house. The implication was that, if the lawyers okayed it, that’s what Barak would do.

During the decades of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, this was standard procedure. The claim was that demolishing a terrorist’s house had a deterrent effect on potential terrorists. If they knew that their whole family would suffer, they’d think twice about killing Jews.

The same logic was used to justify a whole host of lesser collective punishments meted out to the Palestinians. When I served in the West Bank as a reservist during the first Intifada, we forced Palestinians to black out nationalist graffiti, to climb up electric poles to take down Palestinian flags, and to dismantle jerrybuilt roadblocks made of boulders. No one claimed that the Palestinians we force to do these things were the ones who had painted the graffiti, put up the flags, or built the roadblocks. We knew for a fact that they hadn’t. But the argument was that if they had to do these things, they would make sure that such things didn’t happen in their neighborhood any more.

I saw no evidence at that time that this policy worked. As far as I could tell, such policies were based not on evidence. Rather, they satisfied two non-rational, emotional urges: to get back at the Palestinians for daring to oppose us, and to give the high army command something to report to the political leadership. We’re not sitting on our hands, we’re actually doing something about the uprising!

In fact, almost unnoticed, the army stopped demolishing terrorists’ houses about three years ago. No official reasons was given, but an article that appeared in Ha’aretz’s Hebrew edition on February 17, 2005 tells us why. The chief of staff, Moshe Ya’alon, received a report from a special committee that he had been set up to study the procedure. After examining the procedure empirically, it reached the conclusion (according to the news article—the report was never made public) that destroying the homes of terrorists causes more damage than benefit. In other words, it produces more terrorist attacks than it prevents.

Efrat Silber, a researcher whose PhD dissertation is an empirical study of home demolition and other procedures used by Israel to prevent terrorism, reached a similar conclusion. While she told me on the phone today that, as one might expect with such a complex subject, there is evidence that points both ways, the bottom line is that home demolitions don’t work. (I asked her for a copy of her dissertation and will write more about it in a future post.)

Now, if you read my previous post, “Getting the Treatment Right,” this will sound very familiar. Demolishing terrorists’ houses is the homeopathy of anti-terror strategy. Lots of people think it sounds great, and a lot of people believe it. But for years and years no one bothered to test it empirically to see if it really worked. And when someone did—first an army study commission and then an independent researcher—it turns out that, as intuitive as it might be, it’s quackery.

And that’s a shame. Quack medicine is a waste of money, and it can be dangerous if it keeps people from seeking and receiving effective conventional treatments. Quack anti-terror tactics waste resources and prevent the military and political leadership from seeking effective and evidence-based ways of fighting terrorism.

None of this will convince the fanatics who tried to march into Jabel Mukaber yesterday. They don’t want to fight terror effectively. They want revenge. I understand their anger, but they are deluded. They should get their heads checked by a qualified, and conventional, physician.

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

Israel has been pointing fingers since last night…. ‘Hamas did it…. No, Hezbollah did it…. No… it was someone else’…. every 5 minutes a different party is blamed…. most of which do not even exist! Israel has been issuing statements declaring ‘this group or that group claims responsibility’… pointing fingers everywhere except at the culprit itself…

OCCUPATION IS TO BLAME! The following will explain that claim…

THE OCCUPATION CAUSES TERRORISM

UN report: Israel practices apartheid, colonialism, occupation and is to blame for Palestinian terrorist acts.

A report commissioned by the United Nations suggests that Palestinian terrorism is the inevitable consequence of Israeli occupation. It also concludes that Israeli laws resemble South African apartheid.

The report by John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the UN Human Rights Council, will be presented next month, but it has been posted on the body’s Web site.

Dugard is a South African lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s. In his report he says “common sense … dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al-Qaida, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation.”

“While Palestinian terrorist acts are to be deplored, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of occupation,” writes Dugard, whose 25-page report accuses the Israel of acts and policies consistent with all three.

He cited house demolitions, checkpoints and roadblocks restricting Palestinian movement and what he terms the Judaization of Jerusalem.

“As long as there is occupation, there will be terrorism,” he argues.

“Acts of terror against military occupation must be seen in historical context,” Dugard says. “This is why every effort should be made to bring the occupation to a speedy end. Until this is done, peace cannot be expected, and violence will continue.”

Dugard was appointed in 2001 as an unpaid expert by the now-defunct UN Human Rights Commission. His relations with Israel have long been difficult. Israel refused to allow him to conduct a UN-mandated fact-finding mission on its Gaza offensive in 2006.

The report will be presented next month at the 47-nation rights council’s
first regular session of the year.

Adapted from “UN expert: Palestinian terror ‘inevitable’ result of occupation” by the Associated Press and printed in Israel’s leading newspaper, Ha’aretz, on Feb 26, 2008. For full text, see: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/958358.html

Distributed by PAJU (Palestinian and Jewish Unity).

WWW.PAJUMONTREAL.ORG

Download full report: The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion 

Ali Abunimah on the double standards evident in the reactions to Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, and the Palestinian attack in Jerusalem (Stolen from The Fanonite).

Compared with the international silence that surrounded Israel’s recent massacres of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Gaza Strip, condemnation and condolences for the victims of the shooting attack that killed eight students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem has been swift.

“I have just spoken with [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert to extend my deepest condolences to the victims, their families, and to the people of Israel,” US President George W. Bush said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his “condemnation” and “condolences,” as did EU High Representative Javier Solana.

The day before the Jerusalem attack, Amira Abu ‘Aser was buried in Gaza. She had lived just 20 days on this earth before being shot in the head by Israeli occupation forces who attacked the house of friends she and her family were visiting. Needless to say, she had not been firing rockets at Sderot when she was killed. One of the house’s inhabitants was found the next day, shot dead and his head crushed by an army jeep, an apparent victim of an extrajudicial murder by Israeli forces.

But confirming their status in the eyes of the “international community” as less than complete human beings, neither Amira’s killing, nor any of the dozens of Palestinian civilian victims of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza have merited condemnation or condolences.

The fallacy that lies behind the differential concern for the lives of innocent Israelis and Palestinians is that the massacre in Jerusalem and the massacres in Gaza can be separated. Israeli deaths are “terrorism,” while Palestinian deaths are merely an unfortunate consequence of the fight against “terrorism.” But the two are intricately linked, and what happened in Jerusalem is a direct consequence of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades.

Let me be clear that the killing of civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, is wrong, repugnant, and cannot bring this one-hundred-year war caused by the Zionist colonization of Palestine to an end. There will be an Israeli propaganda effort — as always — to present Palestinian violence as being simply motivated by hatred, and divorced from the context of brutal occupation that Palestinians live under. What greater proof could you need than an attack on religious students, devoting their life to the study of the Torah?

We cannot expect much analysis in the media of why the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva might have been chosen as a target. Was it mere coincidence that the school, named for Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and led after his death by his son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, is the ideological cradle of the militant, Jewish supremacist settler movement Gush Emunim?

Unlike other sects in Israel which sought exemption of their students from military service, Gush Emunim encouraged its followers to join the army and become the armed wing of religious nationalist Zionism. Gush Emunim settlers, many of them, like Moshe Levinger, graduates of Mercaz HaRav, founded the most extreme and racist settlements in the Occupied West Bank, including the notorious colonies in and near Hebron whose inhabitants have made life miserable for Palestinians in the city and forced many of them out of their homes. It is the militant settlers of Gush Emunim who still honor Baruch Goldstein who murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron in February 1994. It is in Hebron that the Gush Emunim settlers spray “Arabs to the gas chambers” on Palestinian houses.

It is possible that the Mercaz HaRav gunman did not know or care about any of this, that any target he could identify as Israeli would have satisfied his desire to exact revenge.

In 2002, Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon declared that “the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” This would be achieved by the massive and constant application of force until they got the message. The same philosophy was elaborated in 2004 by Professor Arnon Soffer, one of the architects, with former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, of the 2005 Gaza “disengagement.”

Soffer, an avid supporter of turning Gaza into a hermetically-sealed pen for unwanted Palestinians, explained that if Palestinians fire a single rocket over the fence into Israel, “we will fire 10 in response. And women and children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident, Palestinian mothers won’t allow their husbands to shoot Qassams [rockets], because they will know what’s waiting for them.”

Soffer predicted that in a few years’ time, “when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam.” With Palestinians closed in, “The pressure at the border will be awful,” Soffer predicted. “It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”

To be fair, Soffer did display a human side: “The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings” (”It’s the demography, stupid,” The Jerusalem Post, 21 May 2004).

For decades Israel has been exercizing with ever-escalating brutality this deliberate strategy to crush through force and starvation a civilian population in rebellion against colonial rule. To Israel’s vexation, the Palestinians are not playing their part. After sixty years of expulsions, massacres, assassinations of their leaders, colonization, torture, and mass imprisonment, the Palestinians have utterly failed to understand that they are a “defeated people.”

The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank endure unprecedented oppression by the Israeli army and settlers without resorting to violence in response, but they maintain an inextinguishable determination to endure until they regain their rights. If the methods the Palestinian resistance has sometimes used are reprehensible, they have also been typical for anti-colonial resistance movements throughout time, as William Polk shows in his book Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerilla War from the American Revolution to Iraq, and Robert Pape demonstrated through his study of suicide bombing in Dying to Win.

Is it not time for the rest of the world to step in and force Israel at last to understand the same thing, so that the senseless bloodshed can finally stop and all the people of the country — Israelis and Palestinians — can begin to imagine a future other than an endless parade of funerals?

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

By Carlo Basilone ∙ The Real News Network ∙ March 6, 2008

Video & Transcript

"Eighty percent of the people here are depending on handouts of food from the United Nations. They've no other way to survive unless they get these handouts of food, because the economy has completely collapsed. And they've been stripped of their dignity, so they're left in a most miserable and desperate situation. And this report gives clear evidence of just how bad the situation is."
–John Jing, UNRWA

Life is grim in Gaza. According to a report (.pdf) published today by eight human rights NGOs based in the UK, including Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Save The Children UK, "[t]he situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967." It concludes that,

"[i]n terms of poverty, food aid dependency, humanitarian access, unemployment, access to basic services and medical supplies, we are witnessing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Though the situation was already dire, it has become "exponentially" worse as a result of the "extreme" sanctions imposed by Israel and the international community. As UNRWA chief Karen Koning Abu Zayd put it,

“Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and – some would say – encouragement of the international community.”

The report describes nothing less than the "impoverishment of an entire population." 80% of Gazan families are reliant upon international food aid, compared to 63% in 2006. This figure is set to "sharply rise" if the current situation continues.

The Gazan economy "is no longer on the brink of collapse - it has collapsed." With the private sector (.pdf) devastated (3,500 out of 3,900 factories have closed in the last six months), unemployment is close to 40% and set to reach 50%. A typical household now spends 62% of its income on food, compared to 37% in 2004. In the four months after Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007, the mean household spending dropped by 22% and the number of households living below the "deep poverty line" of $2.30 a day jumped from 55% to 70%.

The report continues:

"Movement in and out of Gaza is all but impossible and supplies of food and water, sewage treatment, and basic healthcare can no longer be taken for granted. As a result of the blockade and collapse of the economy, there is little money to buy food and limited food to buy. Food prices are rising and wheat flour, baby milk, and rice, among other essential goods, are increasingly scarce. During the period of May-June 2007 alone, these commodity prices rose 34%, 30% and 20.5% respectively."

In short, Gazans are living in a "prison", and their jailers are systematically reducing their lives to utter misery.

The international blockade is "destroying public service infrastructure", with Israel's restrictions on fuel and electricity greatly exacerbating the crisis. Hospitals are barely functioning, while Israel's "attack on basic services" is "systematically destroying the water and sewage infrastructure of the Gaza Strip":

"Hospitals cannot generate electricity to keep lifesaving equipment working or to generate oxygen, while 40-50 million litres of sewage continues to pour into the sea daily."

Healthcare in Gaza has "dramatically deteriorated" over the past six months. As a result of Israel's restrictions on fuel and electricity, hospitals are "experiencing power cuts lasting for 8-12 hours a day", and there is a "60-70 percent shortage reported in the diesel required for hospital power generators."

Access to healthcare abroad is critical for the Gazan population, as treatments such as chemotherapy are not available in the Strip. The proportion of applicants given permits to exit Gaza for treatment decreased significantly after Hamas took control of Gaza. This, together with several reports that Israel has conditioned permits on patients giving information on suspects, suggests that Israel is in many cases refusing to allow critically ill Palestinians access to treatment in Egypt or Israel on purely political grounds. Between October-December 2007, the World Health Organisation confirmed the deaths of 20 patients, including 5 children, after Israel refused to issue them permits to receive medical treatment abroad. Other sources have put the figure much higher, and the true figure will likely never be known.

We know from previous experience that sanctions as extreme as these hit the young, the old and the frail particularly hard - in Iraq, for example, the sanctions regime killed up to a million people, half of them children. Here too the impact of the blockade on Gazan children, who comprise 56% of the population, has been "enormous". One indicator of their suffering is the "nearly 80% failure rate" among pupils in grades four to nine, with a 90% failure rate for Mathematics. This in a society well known for placing high value on education.

The NGOs conclude that Israel's blockade has "effectively dismantled the economy and impoverished the population of Gaza." It constitutes "collective punishment" and is "illegal under international law."

The report emphasises that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is "man-made, completely avoidable and, with the necessary political will, can also be reversed." Noting that the current strategy "is failing at all levels" (in fact I'd say it has largely succeeded, the above being the intended result of U.S./Israeli policy), it calls for an end to the blockade, a resumption of normal deliveries of fuel and electricity and a peace process involving "political dialogue with all Palestinian parties." As Henry Siegman writes,

"It's time to take advantage of Hamas's offer of a mutual cease-fire that would not only end the killing in Gaza and the West Bank and the rocket fire on Sderot and Ashkelon, but also prevent a potentially calamitous escalation threatened by Barak.

Such a cease-fire would also offer an opportunity to refashion - with the collaboration of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Arab countries - a Palestinian unity government that could resume peace talks on a more realistic foundation. To be sure, Olmert and Barak will rail against such a course, but a majority of Israel's public favors reaching out to Hamas.

What hope there is for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement before the two-state option evaporates depends on the United States finally screwing up the political and moral courage to use its considerable leverage with Israel and the Palestinians to return them to a path of sanity."

Unfortunately for everyone, particularly the terrorised population of Gaza, it looks as though Israel and the U.S. remain determined to destroy Hamas as a political organisation, no matter the cost.