This evening in Israel

[panopticon]

PM Netanyahu Meets with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bMQgvuXK8bY

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Here's the press release announcing Obama's conversation with Netanyahu.

Good to know that there are no problems in the US-Israel relationship. Especially given the revelations in the Wall Street Journal article I linked earlier.

Stunningly informative bit of prose this...

-- Pan

###

Readout of the President’s Call with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel

President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed today by phone the ongoing negotiations in Cairo to achieve a sustainable ceasefire agreement. The President reaffirmed the United States’ support for Egypt’s mediation efforts and underscored the importance of achieving a sustainable outcome that ensures Israel’s security and addresses Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.

Source

[Bob]

Posted by panopticon (here)
How Israel Outflanks the White House on Gaza
By Adam Entous, August 13th, 2014

[..]

White House Now Scrutinizing Israeli Requests for Ammunition

JERUSALEM—White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval.

Since then the Obama administration has tightened its control on arms transfers to Israel. But Israeli and U.S. officials say that the adroit bureaucratic maneuvering made it plain how little influence the White House and State Department have with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —and that both sides know it.

[..]

I wonder if the White-Phosphorus bombs are on that "obtained without approval". The US has had such devices in its arsenal for years.. As pointed out above "Shake and Bake" is the slang for the white phosphorus weapons..

Both sides claim it is for "identification purposes" and not used against "civilians", but civilians are being hit...

To target civilians with a horrendous weapon is inhumane. (AND AN ABUSE of the definition of "legal use" of smoke and illumination chemical devices).
What is being violated is "Protocol III of The Convention on Prohibition or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (CCW) "

Knowing that such weapons WILL create damage to life (bodily harm) is the issue.. The weapons deployers know and are fully culpable what the effects are. Such was documented when the US used such weapons on Afghanistans.

They (both the US and Israel) claim, the incindiaries are not worrisome cause they illuminate targets, or cause obscuring smoke.. the issue is the particles are toxic, and there is NO WAY to prevent populations from being harmed by their use, the particles BURN FLESH, targeting humans with an "excuse" (smoke and illumination) is abhorrent.

Any rational person would say such, and that is the argument about such uses of weapons "wrongly and deliberately against a population" absolutely unequivocally being a war crime.

To request US assistance to help clear up "war crime" claims is logical in the Israeli military mind (and political keepers minds), because the US has NOT SIGNED the documents and treaties agreeing that it is WRONG to flagrantly use such weapons in areas where innocents are living or seeking shelter.. Nor has Israel agreed to the Chemical/Biological/Nuclear arms treaties to prohibit said use in the World. (they reserve the right to commit obscene terror against ANY AND ALL in the guise of "defending itself". (War crimes in other words are perfectly OK for Israel in the excuse of self-defence)..

Has Israel used such weapons illegally obtained from the US arsenal?



In this image below, it is neither NIGHT requiring "illumination for targeting", nor "SMOKE" requiring obscuring a tank or brigade.. It is a targeted USE of a banned weapon against a civilian population, a war crime.. Multiple instances of said uses and situations have been recorded by the observers in Gaza.





Important Note: The image above has been cropped in other articles circulating on the internet saying ISRAEL has beam weapons (disinformation), the image above shows the full picture of a white-phosphorus bomb attack.

White Phosphorus mortar round (US made)



(larger image of exploded mortar round)



For instance, according to Jane's Missiles and Rockets the M825A1 rounds are US-made white phosphorus munitions.



What other arms has Israel obtained illegally from the US arsenal?

[panopticon]

Posted by Bob (here)

Posted by panopticon (here)
How Israel Outflanks the White House on Gaza
By Adam Entous, August 13th, 2014

[..]

White House Now Scrutinizing Israeli Requests for Ammunition

JERUSALEM—White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval.

Since then the Obama administration has tightened its control on arms transfers to Israel. But Israeli and U.S. officials say that the adroit bureaucratic maneuvering made it plain how little influence the White House and State Department have with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —and that both sides know it.

[..]

I wonder if the White-Phosphorus bombs are on that "obtained without approval". The US has had such devices in its arsenal for years.. As pointed out above "Shake and Bake" is the slang for the white phosphorus weapons..

Both sides claim it is for "identification purposes" and not used against "civilians", but civilians are being hit...

To target civilians with a horrendous weapon is inhumane. (AND AN ABUSE of the definition of "legal use" of smoke and illumination chemical devices).
What is being violated is "Protocol III of The Convention on Prohibition or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (CCW) "

Knowing that such weapons WILL create damage to life (bodily harm) is the issue.. The weapons deployers know and are fully culpable what the effects are. Such was documented when the US used such weapons on Afghanistans.

They (both the US and Israel) claim, the incindiaries are not worrisome cause they illuminate targets, or cause obscuring smoke.. the issue is the particles are toxic, and there is NO WAY to prevent populations from being harmed by their use, the particles BURN FLESH, targeting humans with an "excuse" (smoke and illumination) is abhorrent.

Any rational person would say such, and that is the argument about such uses of weapons "wrongly and deliberately against a population" absolutely unequivocally being a war crime.

To request US assistance to help clear up "war crime" claims is logical in the Israeli military mind (and political keepers minds), because the US has NOT SIGNED the documents and treaties agreeing that it is WRONG to flagrantly use such weapons in areas where innocents are living or seeking shelter.. Nor has Israel agreed to the Chemical/Biological/Nuclear arms treaties to prohibit said use in the World. (they reserve the right to commit obscene terror against ANY AND ALL in the guise of "defending itself". (War crimes in other words are perfectly OK for Israel in the excuse of self-defence)..

Has Israel used such weapons illegally obtained from the US arsenal?



In this image below, it is neither NIGHT requiring "illumination for targeting", nor "SMOKE" requiring obscuring a tank or brigade.. It is a targeted USE of a banned weapon against a civilian population, a war crime.. Multiple instances of said uses and situations have been recorded by the observers in Gaza.





Important Note: The image above has been cropped in other articles circulating on the internet saying ISRAEL has beam weapons (disinformation), the image above shows the full picture of a white-phosphorus bomb attack.

What other arms has Israel obtained illegally from the US arsenal?

G'day Bob,

I know. Imagine it. Military to military arms trading...
What's that, M2M?
Are Obama & Bibi going to start up some weird rap group?

What's the first single "Oversight is for chumps Homez" & a flip of "Sisi ain't no mufthas beyatch"...

It's all very scary.

I've not come across much evidence that White Phosphorous (WP) has been used in Operation Protective Edge (OPE) outside of a few comments from doctors about amputations and extensive burns coming out of the North. I've not seen conclusive photographic evidence of its use (unlike in 2009 when it was pretty obvious).

The first image in your post is from Operation Cast Lead (OCL) 2009.

The second image is also from 2009 and clearly shows the float/illuminate pattern that is characteristic of WP.

The third image I think comes from here and I'm not really convinced that it is WP (though it could be).

There are so many old images from '09 that are getting rehashed as new.

It just makes it difficult to sort out what is from OPE & what's from OCL.

Have you come across any WP photos that are definitely from OPE?

Mads Gilbert was saying that he's seen lots of evidence of DIME weapon injuries at al-Shifa (source). The damage those weapons cause is, well, they cause alot.

There are lots of horrific photos of people with burnt/melted skin and amputations from bombing etc. But, fragmentation could easily produce the amputations (as I posted earlier about the MPR-500 trials) and the burns are not really outside of what would be expected from DIME weapons.

Without conclusive photographic or empirical evidence of the use of WP it's really all hearsay and that's not enough.

I personally believe that the IDF has acted outside of the conventions of war and not abided by their responsibility as an occupying force. They have deliberately targeted areas where they knew that there would be a high civilian casualty rate as part of a "shock & awe" campaign. For some IDF spokespersons to then turn around and say "well the US had a higher civilian casualty rate in Iraq" beggars belief. As if killing less civilians than the US is supposed to make everything alright...



-- Pan

[Bob]

Without conclusive photographic or empirical evidence of the use of WP it's really all hearsay and that's not enough.

It will take a simple FTIR analysis (Fast Fourier Transform Infra-red Analyser) on small sized samples of bomb fragments. (couple quid to do a test in labor)..

Putting a call out for folks in Gaza to gather up small bomb fragments, for forensic analysis can be done with minimal effort to document. IF Bibi is worried about "war crimes", obviously somebody has chemical evidence that such weapons are still being used. A Human rights group could get involved to do said testing.

What is pointed out is what a white phosphorus detonation looks like from the air and ground. I'll additionally check for more images and suggest others look.

And what is pointed out (in your post) that Israel has been obtaining US arms without Pentagon permission, how we can only ask.. Vendors supplying under the table? (in that M2M club) Possibly..

Update - I put in a request to Human Rights Watch to ask them about supporting analysis of bomb fragments. The apparatus to analyse such (a portable version) is shown here, and accepted as a documentation device, so no witness reports, "anecdotal" hearsay observations need be considered. It is used by first responders, forensic analysis labs world wide.



(Note: the above is also called a "scanner", and is manufactured in Minnesota by ThermoScientific (known also as Nicolet), I have used the Nicolet advanced FTIR's back in 2000 to look at UXO (unexploded ordinance samples) and the technology works admirably for even microgram sized samples..)

[panopticon]

Posted by Bob (here)
Update - I put in a request to Human Rights Watch to ask them about supporting analysis of bomb fragments. The apparatus to analyse such (a portable version) is shown here, and accepted as a documentation device, so no witness reports, "anecdotal" hearsay observations need be considered. It is used by first responders, forensic analysis labs world wide.



(Note: the above is also called a "scanner", and is manufactured in Minnesota by ThermoScientific (known also as Nicolet), I have used the Nicolet advanced FTIR's back in 2000 to look at UXO (unexploded ordinance samples) and the technology works admirably for even microgram sized samples..)

Now that Bob was good thinking.

It really warms the heart to think that a simple conversation here might have broader consequences and real world implications.

-- Pan

[Bob]

Has this policy and behaviour ever changed?

Source (various data are pieced together on that page)

On October 3, 2001, I.A.P. News reported that according to Israel Radio (in Hebrew) Kol Yisrael an acrimonious argument erupted during the Israeli cabinet weekly session last week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

Peres warned Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and "turn the US against us. "Sharon reportedly yelled at Peres, saying "don't worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America."

"The Israelis control the policy in the Congress and the Senate."

-- Senator Fullbright, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee: 10/07/1973 on CBS' "Face the Nation".

"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews..... terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen ....

I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country"

-----Sec. of State John Foster Dulles quoted on p.99 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff

The long history of bipartisan Congressional support for Israel led former Secretary of State James Baker to call the Congress "The Little Knesset" after Israel's Knesset (parliament) in Jerusalem. Congress's embarrassing and unpatriotic display of allegiance to a foreign country that is dependent on American largesse and support is the unknown scandal to the American people.

It started wayyyyyy back when:

U.S. CONGRESS ENDORSES BALFOUR DECLARATION: SEPTEMBER 21, 1922

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled.

That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of "A" national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which will prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected.

(Public Resolution No. 73, 67th Congress, Second Session).

When did it change that the original premise was to be VIOLATED, that PALESTINE should/will be destroyed, and Israel, given free reign?

How is Israel then able to gain so much influence over Congress and Senators?

Little known data - (Source)

"Prior to 9/11, the FBI had discovered the presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. "

Purpose? Gain data that can be used to ensure a "desired level" of status quo and continue dialog with key parties, so that "interests" are maintained.

"Israel has done in return was to set up government subsidized telecommunications companies which operate here in the United States. One of these companies is Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for 90% of the phone companies in the USA. Amdocs' main computer center for billing is actually in Israel and allows those with access to do what intelligence agencies call "traffic analysis"; a picture of someone's activities based on a pattern of who they are calling and when.

"Another Israeli telecom company is Comverse Infosys, which subcontracts the installation of the automatic tapping equipment now built into every phone system in America. Comverse maintains its own connections to all this phone tapping equipment, insisting that it is for maintenance purposes only. However, Converse has been named as the most likely source for leaked information regarding telephone calls by law enforcement that derailed several investigations into not only espionage, but drug running as well. (subsequently restructured, assets transferred/acquired to its subsidiaries (one being Verint Systems) who currently "run things". For many years, Comverse, also known as Comverse Network Systems, was part of Comverse Technology, which had several wholly or partly owned subsidiaries; Comverse became a fully independent company in 2013.)

Verint Systems (NASDAQ: VRNT) is a company providing analytic software and hardware for the security, surveillance, and business intelligence markets. Their products are aimed to support government and enterprises in making sense of the vast information they collect to meet performance and security goals. Verint solutions are used by more than 10,000 organizations in 150 countries. Verint is headquartered in Melville, New York, with offices worldwide and some 2,800 employees around the globe. Verint was for many years a majority-owned subsidiary of Comverse Technology and it was formerly known as Comverse Infosys. As with Comverse, approximately half of Verint's employees have been located in Israel. (what a web!)

"Yet another Israeli telecom company is Odigo, which provides the core message passing system for all the "Instant Message" services. Two hours before the attacks on the World Trade Towers, Odigo employees received a warning. Odigo has an office 2 blocks from the former location of the World Trade Towers.

(Was purchased by Comverse Technology in 2002. Comverse leveraged Odigo server software for instant messaging solutions in cell phones. However, since Comverse had no real interest in maintaining a generic IM service, it eventually shut down the free service in 2004, abandoning millions of loyal users.)

"This actually happened. The Ken Starr report on Whitewater describes how Bill Clinton informed Monica Lewinsky that their phone sex conversations had been recorded. At the same time, Clinton ordered the FBI to cease the hunt for an Israeli mole known to be operating inside the White House itself!

"So here we have a foreign nation able to listen in on most phones at will, using taps that cannot be found because they are built into the phone system itself, and willing to use the information gleaned from those calls to blackmail Americans into any desired course of action. This may well be what Ariel Sharon meant when he stated that the Jewish people control America.

"That the information gleaned from these phone taps is being used to coerce the behavior of key individuals in the US Government and media is illustrated by the manner in which the government and the media have handled this scandal of the largest spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, and of phone taps on all of our phones. They are downplaying it. Actually, burying it is a better word."

additional ref: Verint Systems - http://www.israeldefense.com/?Catego...&CounterType=0

33 Maskit St., Herzliya 46733, Israel
Phone:972-9-9624119
Fax:972-9-9624747

"Verint Systems Ltd Verint Systems is a key developer of communications solutions intended to help clients deal with threats from both criminals and terrorists capable of exploiting today's exceedingly accessible electronic networks. Verint offers solutions such as interception solutions [..]"

Meanwhile over in Israel,
Israel Today (web) reports that Obama is WEAK and Naive..
Obama holds up arms shipments to Israel
Thursday, August 14, 2014

(Source)

(wonder if that includes white phosphorus "shake and bakes..")



"Israeli officials responding to the latest pressure from US President Barack Obama said the American leader is weak and naive, suggesting that Washington, which today has little leverage anywhere else in the Middle East, is trying to strong-arm the Jewish state.

"The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that the Obama Administration had held up a delivery of missiles to Israel during its war against Gaza’s Hamas terrorist infrastructure."

"But the Israeli press was unimpressed by the denials, and news of the “deepening rift” between America and the Jewish state was the leading headline on nearly every Israeli media outlet Thursday morning.

"Many speculated that Netanyahu knows well the workings of the American government, and is content to wait out a hostile Obama White House knowing that Congress will shield Israel from any truly severe measures."

Anything change? reiterating..

[panopticon]

Islamic Jihad: Truce to be signed after 5-day ceasefire
August 15th 2014



GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- A truce agreement will be signed with Israel once the five-day ceasefire ends, an Islamic Jihad spokesman said Friday.

Yousef al-Hasayneh told Ma'an that the Palestinian side agreed to a five-day truce to give Egypt more time to remove some "technical issues" hindering a final agreement.

"We expect a complete truce agreement to be signed right as the five-day ceasefire ends," al-Hasayneh said. "The delegation has made much progress in ending the siege and the offensive on Palestinians."

The agreement will end Israel's military offensive, ease the siege, expand the fishing zone and increase imports into Gaza, especially construction materials, the Jihad official said.

Construction of an airport and seaport will be discussed a month after signing the agreement.

"Egypt is the sponsor for the agreement, but there is a more important sponsor, which is the resistance," al-Hasayneh said.

"We, as the Islamic Jihad, are not interested in American sponsorship because we do not trust the United States, the partner of Israel, who supplies them with arms and money."

He stressed that any Islamic Jihad would respond to any Israeli attack.

A day earlier, deputy secretary-general of Islamic Jihad, Ziad al-Nakhaala, said "great progress" had been made in the talks and an agreement would be announced soon.

More than 1,950 Palestinians -- the vast majority civilians -- have been killed in the five-week Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which the UN said destroyed or severely damaged the homes of more than 100,000 Gazans.

Source

[panopticon]

This is a powerful yet sad story from a man whose family first paid for saving Jews from the Nazis and then, over 70 years later, was bombed by the IDF killing 6 more.

Respect.

###

Dutch nonagenarian returns Righteous Among the Nations medal after six relatives killed in Gaza
By Amira Hass, August 15th 2014


Henk Zanoli. / Photo by courtesy

Henk Zanoli, who helped save a Jewish child from deportation to concentration camps, said holding on to the medal would be an 'insult to the family.'

A 91-year-old Dutch man who was declared a Righteous Among the Nations for saving a Jew during the German occupation on Thursday returned his medal and certificate because six of his relatives were killed by an Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip last month.

In 2011, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum declared Henk Zanoli and his late mother, Johana Zanoli-Smit, Righteous Among the Nations for having saved a Jewish child, Elhanan Pinto, during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Pinto, born in 1932, was hidden by the Zanoli family from the spring of 1943 until the Allies liberated Holland in 1945. His parents perished in Nazi death camps.


Muftiya Ziada, the family matriarch. / Photo by courtesy

In hiding a Jewish child, the Zanoli family took a double risk, because it was already under Nazi scrutiny for having opposed the German occupation. Zanoli’s father was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1941 due to his opposition to the occupation, and he subsequently died at the Mauthausen concentration camp in February 1945. Henk Zanoli’s brother-in-law was executed because of his involvement in the Dutch resistance, and one of his brothers had a Jewish fiancée, who was also killed by the Nazis.

Zanoli’s great-niece, Angelique Eijpe, is a Dutch diplomat who currently serves as deputy head of her country’s diplomatic mission in Oman. Her husband, economist Isma’il Ziadah, was born in the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. The couple has three children. Ziadah’s parents were born in Fallujah, on whose lands the town of Kiryat Gat now sits. His father died in 1987.

On Sunday, July 20, an Israeli fighter jet dropped a bomb on the Ziadah family’s home in al-Bureij. The bomb killed the family matriarch, Muftiyah, 70; three of her sons, Jamil, Omar and Youssef; Jamil’s wife, Bayan; and their 12-year-old son, Shaaban. The bombing thus orphaned Jamal and Bayan’s other five children, four daughters and a son, while bereaving Omar’s two sons and Youssef’s three sons and a daughter of their fathers. The bombing also killed Mohammed Maqadmeh, who happened to be visiting the family that day.

Zanoli, an attorney by profession, heard about the killing of the Ziadah family from his niece. As a way of expressing his shock and pain, he decided to return the medal and certificate that were awarded to him and his mother (posthumously) as Righteous Among the Nations. Because of his age and poor health, he did not do so in person, but sent them by messenger to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague – the same place where he received them in an official ceremony three years ago.

In the accompanying letter, addressed to Ambassador Haim Davon, Zanoli began by describing the price his family paid for resisting the Nazis and their successful effort to save a Jewish child.

“Against this background it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel,” he wrote.

“The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their [Palestinian] grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army ... For me to hold on to the honour granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on, who lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel.”

Noting that Israel’s actions in Gaza “have already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he continued, “as a retired lawyer it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course. What happened to our kin in Gaza will no doubt be brought to the table at such a time as well.”

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit did not answer Haaretz’s questions as to whether the Ziadah home was bombed by mistake, or if not, who in the house was a target and whether the IDF’s legal department considers the death of six civilians to be legitimate collateral damage. Its response said merely that the IDF invests great efforts in trying to avoid civilian casualties, is currently working to investigate all allegations of irregular incidents and will publish its conclusions after this investigation is completed.

Source

[panopticon]

Signs of fascism in Israel reached new peak during Gaza op, says renowned scholar
By Gidi Weitz, August 13th, 2014


Prof. Zeev Sternhell / Photo by Yanai Yechiel

Israel Prize laureate and renowned scholar Zeev Sternhell fears the collapse of Israeli democracy, and compares the current atmosphere with that of 1940s’ France. The time we have left to reverse this frightening trend is running out, he warns

At 1 A.M. on a day in September 2008, Prof. Zeev Sternhell opened the door of his home on Agnon Street in Jerusalem, intending to enter an inner courtyard. As he turned the handle, a thunderous explosion rocked the building. Sternhell, who a few months earlier had received the Israel Prize in political science, was lightly wounded by a bomb hidden in a potted plant.

A year later, the police apprehended the perpetrator of the attack: Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, a resident of a West Bank settlement. At one time, Teitel was an informer for the Jewish Department of the Shin Bet security service. In his interrogation, it turned out that his crimes included the murder of two Palestinians.

“I chose Sternhell as a target because he is held in high regard, he’s a left-wing professor,” Teitel told the interrogators. “I didn’t want to kill him, because that would turn him into a martyr. I wanted to make a statement.” Teitel was sentenced to two life terms. After the assault, Sternhell said in the hospital that “the act in itself reveals the fragility of Israeli democracy.”

I asked Sternhell now whether he thinks that very soon, we will no longer be able to claim that we are the only democracy in the Middle East.

“Indeed, we will no longer be able to say that,” he replied, adding, “There is no doubt that the main state authorities do not act with the same determination against the right and against the left, or on the eastern side of the Green Line and on the western side. All in all, these bodies view themselves as much closer to the settlement project’s aims than to the goal of Israel having a Jewish majority and a democracy that grants equality to everyone. The danger is that in good periods, when everything is ostensibly normal, the situation is glossed over. But in a crisis, like we have now, anyone critical of the ‘normal’ order is absolutely afraid to go out in the street.”

Zeev Sternhell was born in Poland in 1935. His father died during World War II; his mother and sister were murdered by the Nazis. Sternhell hid in the home of relatives in the ghetto who, to protect themselves, adopted a new identity as Catholics thanks to false identity papers. He maintained his assumed identity in the postwar period, and was baptized. In 1946, he reached France on a Red Cross train from Poland. He learned French quickly and steeped himself in the republic’s culture and history, but still felt like an outsider. In 1951, at age 16, he decided to immigrate to the fledgling Jewish state completely on his own.

Sternhell did his army service in the Golani infantry brigade and fought as an officer in the 1956 Sinai War. As an Armored Corps officer in the reserves, he also saw action in the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the first Lebanon war, in 1982. In the meantime, his international academic career took off. Sternhell studied the collapse of the 20th century’s modern liberal democratic order, and also reconceptualized fascism, viewing the phenomenon not as a random accident that occurred after World War I, but as an ideological approach originating in the 19th century.

In 1983, his book “Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France” (published originally in French) stirred a furor in France. Sternhell’s thesis was that the Vichy regime, which helped hunt down Jews, was not forced upon the French, but sprang from an ideological stream that reflected the hidden wishes of the masses. Fascism, he argued, was actually born in France, not Italy. His book, since revised and expanded, continues to be controversial in France and elsewhere.

In 1977, with the ascent of Menachem Begin and the Likud to power in Israel, Sternhell joined a circle of intellectuals who sought to persuade the rival Labor Party to adopt a dovish stance. For years he has been outspokenly critical of the settlement project and an advocate of the urgent need for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Those views, uttered by a public figure of his prominence, led Teitel to single him out in an act that would “make a statement.”

Eroded democracy

Have you seen signs of a budding fascism in Israel in the past month or two?

“First, let me say that there are worse things than fascism, and that not everything that is bad is fascist. In Italy under Mussolini, which is the prototype of fascism, probably no more than a few dozen people were murdered by the regime. There were no concentration camps. Art and culture flourished. Before the war, life was highly tolerable, including the life of the Jews, until the promulgation of the race laws in 1938. The percentage of Jews in the Fascist Party was higher than their percentage in the population. And the Italians were not actually responsible for the downturn that occurred afterward in the life of the Jews – not like in France, where the fate of the Jews is totally the historic responsibility of the French, even if they decline to acknowledge it.

“As I say, there are worse things than fascism. You don’t need that exact definition. For example, people say that if there isn’t a one-party regime, it’s not fascism. That’s nonsense. A party is a means for achieving power, not a means of rule in itself. What needs to be examined in this context is the resilience of the democracy – and Israeli democracy has become increasingly eroded, until it reached a new nadir in the current war. The indicators [of fascism] you asked about definitely exist here.”

Of all the phenomena you’ve encountered here, which do you find ugliest?

“What we’ve seen here in the past few weeks is absolute conformism on the part of most of Israel’s intellectuals. They’ve just followed the herd. By intellectuals I mean professors and journalists. The intellectual bankruptcy of the mass media in this war is total. It’s not easy to go against the herd, you can easily be trampled. But the role of the intellectual and the journalist is not to applaud the government. Democracy crumbles when the intellectuals, the educated classes, toe the line of the thugs or look at them with a smile. People here say, ‘It’s not so terrible, it’s nothing like fascism – we have free elections and parties and a parliament.’ Yet, we reached a crisis in this war, in which, without anyone asking them to do so, all kinds of university bodies are suddenly demanding that the entire academic community roll back its criticism.”

Do you think it’s due to fear?

“Fear of the authorities, fear of possible budgetary sanctions and fear of pressure from the street. The personification of shame and disgrace occurred when the dean of the law faculty of Bar-Ilan University threatened sanctions against one of his colleagues because the latter added a couple of sentences to an announcement about exam dates in which he expressed sorrow at the killing and loss of life on both sides. To grieve for the loss of life on both sides is already a subversive act, treason. We are arriving at a situation of purely formal democracy, which keeps sinking to ever lower levels.”

When will we cross the line in which democracy implodes?

“Democracy rarely falls in a revolution. Not in Italy, not in Germany and not in France with the Vichy regime – which is a crucial thing, because France was a democratic country that fell into the hands of the right wing with the support of the vast majority of the population. It was not the fall of France that generated this ideology. It was the result of a gradual process in which an extreme nationalist ideology took shape, a radical approach that perceives the nation as an organic body. Like a tree on which human individuals are the leaves and the branches – in other words, people exist only thanks to the tree. The nation is a living body.

“In Israel, the religious factor strengthens the national singularity. It’s not a matter of belief, but of identity; religion bolsters your distinctive identity. It’s essential to understand that without this radical nationalism there is no fascism. I also distinguish between fascism and Nazism, because fascism does not necessarily carry a race doctrine. Let me put it in no uncertain terms: Fascism is a war against enlightenment and against universal values; Nazism was a war against the human race.”

Do you see a negation of universal values in Israel and a war against enlightenment in recent years?

“It cries out to heaven. Israel is an extraordinary laboratory in which one sees the gradual erosion of enlightenment values, namely the universal values I mentioned. You see the negation, which always existed on the fringes, slowly impinging, until one day it dominates the center.”

The case of France

“Consider the nationhood law submitted by [Likud MK] Zeev Elkin [which would define Israel as the state of the Jewish people only]; the campaign against the Supreme Court, a body based on the idea that there are norms that transcend governmental power; the [proposed] law against the left-wing NGOs, which is a brutal and violent erosion of freedom of speech; and the various manifestations of a witch hunt here, when a journalist like [Haaretz’s] Gideon Levy needs a bodyguard.

“Consider Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel as the Jewish state. That is to force the Palestinians to acknowledge that they are historically inferior, as though to say: ‘You lost the country in 1948-49, it’s not yours. You live here because we are not expelling you, but this is a Jewish state.’ The Arabs are citizens, but it’s not their country. In other words, a distinction is made between nationhood and citizenship. Anyone can be a citizen, but we are the masters.

“Why is the case of France so interesting? Because that’s what was done to the Jews there in 1940, even though some had lived there for hundreds of years. They were told: ‘You received an ID card and a passport; now I am revoking them. I cannot annul the Frenchness of a Frenchman, but you are not French, and the citizenship category is artificial.’ That was done to an uncle of mine who immigrated to France in 1929, together with my aunt, in order to study medicine. It was the same in Germany.

“This is exactly what we are saying to the Arabs today. The potential for the annulment of citizenship exists here, too. Why throw the Jewish state like mud in the face of these Israeli citizens? In fact, their behavior has been perfectly fine, considering the problems they face, with families in the West Bank and Gaza, and the pressures they are under. For my part, I don’t know of any Israeli-Arab spy ring. It’s true that they don’t sing the national anthem and don’t fly the flag and aren’t members of the World Zionist Organization, but as citizens they are fulfilling their obligations.”

What is your horror scenario for the end of Israeli democracy?

“Democracy is not defined by the right to vote every few years. It is tested every day in terms of human rights. All the rest is secondary, because you can easily, by casting a ballot, establish a dictatorial regime here, or vote to kick the Arabs out of the Knesset. You have to remember that democracy ceased to exist in the territories long ago. The Palestinians there have no human rights, you rule them by force, and after three [Jewish] boys are murdered you can make the life of the population hell, because you can do as you please. That has been the case for decades, and it corrupts.

“Those norms are already here, inside the Green Line, because our children and grandchildren spend most of their army service in the territories. There’s a colonial police force there, in the form of the Kfir Brigade and the Border Police, but that’s not enough. Kfir and the Border Police weren’t even sent into Gaza, because they no longer know how to engage in combat. They are no longer soldiers. The Paratroops were brought from training on the Golan Heights to search for the three kidnapped boys – not to search, actually, because it was already known that they weren’t alive, but to make the lives of the local population miserable and show them who’s boss. What goes on there constantly leaks into Israel. Democracies don’t collapse suddenly, they encounter a serious crisis. We could find ourselves in a serious crisis in which the whole shebang will go up in smoke.”

To be followed by the rise of a dictator?

“Not necessarily, not at all. The government will continue to rule, resting on the Knesset majority by force of edicts and creation of clear segregation between Jews and non-Jews, imposing censorship, intimidating dissidents, the media, the universities – all supposedly autonomous bodies.”

But you say it’s already happening now.

“Of course it’s happening now, but it could reach a boiling point. The water is already very hot. It hasn’t yet boiled, but it could do so tomorrow morning. It’s on the brink of boiling over.”

Do you agree that Operation Protective Edge was a war of no choice?

“It was a war of complete choice, chaotic and sloppy, and that too will be investigated. Something should have been done as soon as they [Hamas] started shooting. First of all, there was no need to humiliate the population and arrest the 500 people who were released in the Shalit deal ... Hamas also took advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate that it is the only fighting force and that Abbas is a ‘collaborator.’ The rockets had to be responded to. Could that have been done without the massive use of the air force? I don’t know, I don’t have enough information. But this war, entry of ground forces, was a war of choice.”

What about the threat of the attack tunnels?

“No one mentioned that beforehand, that was not the aim of the war. The aim was to achieve quiet in return for quiet. The government didn’t want the ground entry. It was already a rolling operation. There was right-wing pressure on the government. Maybe if Bibi hadn’t gone in, his status as prime minister would have been weakened immensely. Any reasonable person would now exploit the gap in ability between us and them to launch a process toward a comprehensive solution of the conflict.”

‘Carrot and stick’

But how can you reach a situation of negotiating with a fundamentalist, religiously extremist organization?

“In principle, I think we should talk with everyone, if it can lead to results. I think Israel should have taken advantage of the formation of the joint Fatah-Hamas government and given it an incentive, something it could work with. We gave them nothing, only the demand to recognize Israel as the Jewish state.

“Hamas is Gaza; Hamas is no longer only a terrorist organization. It established a province, a region under its rule. It invested all its efforts in the war against Israel, but one has to be fair about this whole story. I try to be as objective as possible. It’s true that Hamas is an extreme fundamentalist organization, a murderous organization of shahids [martyrs] – but we are going to have to live with those people. We need the carrot-and-stick method. We used the stick plentifully, but I didn’t see the carrot. Abbas is dying for us to give him something. Maybe we can reach a settlement now, as part of Gaza’s rehabilitation. There’s no need to demand that Hamas raise the white flag. We need a long-range perspective that will include an element of generosity toward the Palestinians. Could it be the policy of blockade and creating intolerable conditions that nourishes Hamas? We need to do something concrete in our relations with the Palestinians and with the Arabs as a whole.”

Such as what?

“The first thing is to stop deepening the Jewish presence in the territories. Then to show them that we genuinely aspire to two states. And as a means of demonstrating our seriousness, to lift the blockade of Gaza, with supervision, with Abbas’ people at the transit points, and to let the population breathe. And also to forge relations in which the people there are treated as human beings on an equal footing with us.”

Will a government that’s not capable of removing three mobile homes in the West Bank be able to remove whole settlements?

“The settlements are a cancer. If our society is unable to muster sufficient strength, political power and mental fortitude to remove some of the settlements, that will signal that the Israeli story is finished, that the story of Zionism as we understand it, as I understand it, is over.”

How long do we have until the end of the story?

“A few years. Israel is now the last colonial country in the West. How long will that continue? If not for the memory of the Holocaust and the fear of being accused of anti-Semitism, Europe would have long since boycotted the settlements. I would begin by evacuating Ariel University, because it’s easy to do. It’s easier to remove a university than it is to remove three trailers. It’s a symbolic act. That wretched college was made a university in order to demonstrate something.

“Why do I so much want a border between the two countries? To prevent the emergence of one state here, because with one state there will be an apartheid regime. After all, no one here is playing with the idea that there will be civic equality between Nablus and Tel Aviv. There will be a civil war here, in the best case, and in the worst case there will be an apartheid state in which we will rule the Arabs without the dimension of transience that is still attached to the territories – even though it’s obvious to anyone with eyes in his head that the transience has long since vanished and that there is an apartheid situation in the West Bank.”

‘Their tragedy and ours’

You’ve elaborated on our blame for the deterioration. What blame attaches to the Palestinians?

“The editors of an Arab journal recently asked me about the right of return. I told them it’s dead, a destructive illusion. ‘Why not leave the refugees some hope?’ they asked me. I replied, ‘That hope will block any agreement.’ A few years ago, in a meeting with Arab intellectuals in Haifa, we agreed on pretty well everything until we came to the right of return. One of them said, ‘Are you in effect asking me to tell my relative, who once lived on this street and is now a refugee in Sidon, that he can never return here?’ That’s exactly your role, I replied, to tell them that they will never return to Haifa or Ramle or Jaffa. As long as they cling to the notion of the right of return, they are preventing the majority of the Jews in Israel, who want to put an end to all this, from fighting for an agreement. That millstone, which they cannot cast off, is their tragedy and ours.”

But the Palestinians’ attitude sometimes looks like obsessive rejection.

“It’s true that the Palestinians don’t have the strength, the leadership, the necessary elite, the mental fortitude to recognize the fact that 1949 was the end of the process. They don’t have to see it as just, but they need to understand that it’s the end. They don’t have the strength to grasp that, and we are rubbing salt into their wounds by making more and more demands and creating an intolerable situation in the territories. We are cultivating their hostility.”

After the brief episode involving the Labor Party intellectuals, Sternhell and others tried to form a social-democratic party along the lines of Meretz. When their efforts failed, he ended his brief flirtation with Israeli politics for good.

Is there anyone in Israeli politics who scares you?

“The group led by [Naftali] Bennett and [Uri] Ariel scares me – I think they are extremely dangerous. I think that [Avigdor] Lieberman is a little less dangerous, because he lacks religious fervor. But they and the right-wing branch of Likud are truly dangerous people, because they really don’t understand what democracy is, what human rights are, and they truly and deeply hate the Arabs in a way that doesn’t allow for coexistence here. You ask whether there are similarities between Marine Le Pen in France and Bennett – of course there are. In some ways she is a dangerous left-winger compared to him. If Netanyahu really wants to enter the history books, he needs to dismantle the partnership with the right, split Likud and establish a centrist government with the support of the left, and not be ashamed to rely on the Arabs’ votes.”

Is Netanyahu capable of replicating de Gaulle and returning the territories?

“When de Gaulle returned Algeria, he was already out of the history books. Netanyahu hasn’t yet come out of the comic books. It’s a very problematic comparison. But if Netanyahu doesn’t do something on a grand scale, what will he leave behind?”

Do you define yourself as a Zionist?

“I have remained a Zionist, certainly. Maybe foolishly. The aim of Zionism was to create a safe home for the Jews, but for many years we have been living in the most unsafe place in the world for Jews. Zionism aimed to build a safe home for the Jews. But also a home worthy of the name, a decent home that one can be proud of, a home in which you don’t step on anyone’s back or suppress anyone. Already in the 1920s it was understood that the Arabs don’t want us and that the fulfillment of Zionism cannot be dependent on their good will. We arrived at a state of war, we won the war and that was the end of that chapter and the start of a new one.

“To go on with it for decades after the state’s establishment is the ruination of Zionism. What’s happening now in the territories is not Zionism, it’s a nightmare of Zionism. If the result is one state here, between the sea and the Jordan River, there will either be a devastating civil war or an apartheid state. In both cases, the Zionist state as I understand it and as I want it, will not exist. There will be something else here. My consolation is that I will not be around to see it.”

Given the current public atmosphere and your personal experience, aren’t you afraid to speak out like this?

“If I need to be afraid to say what I have said here, and to say it publicly to people’s faces, then our story here is over.”

Source

[panopticon]

Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells Israeli's to 'Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine'.

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My plea to the people of Israel: Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine
By Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, August 14th, 2014


A child next to a picture of Nelson Mandela at a pro-Palestinian rally in Cape Town. August 9, 2014 Photo by AP

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, in an exclusive article for Haaretz, calls for a global boycott of Israel and urges Israelis and Palestinians to look beyond their leaders for a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land.

The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israel’s disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine.

If you add together all the people who gathered over the past weekend to demand justice in Israel and Palestine – in Cape Town, Washington, D.C., New York, New Delhi, London, Dublin and Sydney, and all the other cities – this was arguably the largest active outcry by citizens around a single cause ever in the history of the world.

A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined we’d see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturday’s turnout in Cape Town was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens ... as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation.

I asked the crowd to chant with me: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”

Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa.

I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.

“I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region,” I said.

Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar.

Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements.

We have also recently witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar.

It is a movement that is gathering pace.

Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred.

We South Africans know about violence and hatred. We understand the pain of being the polecat of the world; when it seems nobody understands or is even willing to listen to our perspective. It is where we come from.

We also know the benefits that dialogue between our leaders eventually brought us; when organizations labeled “terrorist” were unbanned and their leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were released from imprisonment, banishment and exile.

We know that when our leaders began to speak to each other, the rationale for the violence that had wracked our society dissipated and disappeared. Acts of terrorism perpetrated after the talks began – such as attacks on a church and a pub – were almost universally condemned, and the party held responsible snubbed at the ballot box.

The exhilaration that followed our voting together for the first time was not the preserve of black South Africans alone. The real triumph of our peaceful settlement was that all felt included. And later, when we unveiled a constitution so tolerant, compassionate and inclusive that it would make God proud, we all felt liberated.

Of course, it helped that we had a cadre of extraordinary leaders.

But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically.

At a certain point – the tipping point – the then-government realized that the cost of attempting to preserve apartheid outweighed the benefits.

The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state – bloodlessly – to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africa’s economy, they were contributing to the retention of an unjust status quo.

Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of “normalcy” in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo.

Those who contribute to Israel’s temporary isolation are saying that Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace.

Ultimately, events in Gaza over the past month or so are going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.

It is becoming more and more clear that politicians and diplomats are failing to come up with answers, and that responsibility for brokering a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land rests with civil society and the people of Israel and Palestine themselves.

Besides the recent devastation of Gaza, decent human beings everywhere – including many in Israel – are profoundly disturbed by the daily violations of human dignity and freedom of movement Palestinians are subjected to at checkpoints and roadblocks. And Israel’s policies of illegal occupation and the construction of buffer-zone settlements on occupied land compound the difficulty of achieving an agreementsettlement in the future that is acceptable for all.

The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful and secure lives they crave – and are entitled to – as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict.

I have condemned those in Palestine responsible for firing missiles and rockets at Israel. They are fanning the flames of hatred. I am opposed to all manifestations of violence.

But we must be very clear that the people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world.

No human-made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with the earnest desire to overcome them. No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it.

Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognize the human being in themselves and each other; to understand their interdependence.

Missiles, bombs and crude invective are not part of the solution. There is no military solution.

The solution is more likely to come from that nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies.

The reason these tools – boycott, sanctions and divestment – ultimately proved effective was because they had a critical mass of support, both inside and outside the country. The kind of support we have witnessed across the world in recent weeks, in respect of Palestine.

My plea to the people of Israel is to see beyond the moment, to see beyond the anger at feeling perpetually under siege, to see a world in which Israel and Palestine can coexist – a world in which mutual dignity and respect reign.

It requires a mind-set shift. A mind-set shift that recognizes that attempting to perpetuate the current status quo is to damn future generations to violence and insecurity. A mind-set shift that stops regarding legitimate criticism of a state’s policies as an attack on Judaism. A mind-set shift that begins at home and ripples out across communities and nations and regions – to the Diaspora scattered across the world we share. The only world we share.

People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable. God does not interfere in the affairs of people, hoping we will grow and learn through resolving our difficulties and differences ourselves. But God is not asleep. The Jewish scriptures tell us that God is biased on the side of the weak, the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan, the alien who set slaves free on an exodus to a Promised Land. It was the prophet Amos who said we should let righteousness flow like a river.

Goodness prevails in the end. The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support.

Nelson Mandela famously said that South Africans would not feel free until Palestinians were free.

He might have added that the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too.

Source

[panopticon]

Shooting in West Bank of Palestinian Social Worker who protected children.

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A bullet through the heart of a Palestinian man - and an entire community
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, August 15th, 2014


Prof. Yusuf Abu Maria, Hashem’s brother, and Hashem’s daughters in Beit Ummar this week. Photo by Alex Levac

A social worker and father of three, Hashem Abu Maria was killed by an IDF sharpshooter during a protest against the Gaza war. Two others were also shot to death.

Ayham awoke and phoned his father, Hashem, who told his son that he would be home soon to finish building a new cage for the ducks in the garden. About 10 minutes later, an Israel Defense Forces sharpshooter fired a bullet into Hashem’s heart, killing him on the spot. The sharpshooter then took his rifle and left the balcony of the house from which he had shot Hashem, according to the family who own the apartment which the soldiers had taken over.

“The soldier completed his mission and got out,” says the family of the deceased.

Afterward, soldiers fired two more live rounds of ammunition, killing two more demonstrators who had assembled on the street below, in the center of Beit Ummar, a town between Bethlehem and Hebron. This happened three weeks ago, in the midst of the war in the Gaza Strip.

Hashem Abu Maria, 45 years old and the father of three, worked for the Geneva-based NGO Defense for Children International. He was a social worker who devoted his life to the protection of Palestinian children. On the day of his death, eyewitnesses and family members say, Abu Maria joined a solidarity march with the victims of the Gaza fighting, which set out from the main mosque in Beit Ummar. His aim was to protect the local children and prevent them from following their usual custom of throwing stones at the Israeli troops who raided the town.

He stood at the back of the group of protestors, not in front, shooing the children away. Some people heard him tell them, “Go home, this is dangerous. It’s not for you. You are children – demonstrations are for adults. Go home and play with your computers.”

That was the role he assumed in such protests. But a moment later, the sharpshooter’s bullet pierced his heart, exited from his back and struck another demonstrator, lightly wounding him. Abu Maria collapsed, then managed to lift himself up for an instant and call out, “They killed me,” before dying.

Two IDF soldiers in a jeep were at the entrance to Beit Ummar this week, too, when we got there. We drove past them in the car of Prof. Yusuf Abu Maria, Hashem’s brother, who teaches psychology at Al-Quds Open University. Also with us was Riad Arar, Hashem’s colleague at DCI.

Hashem Abu Maria was killed on Friday, July 25, on the main street of his town, next to the carpentry shop of the Al-Alami family. A photograph of their son, Tareq, is pasted on the door of the shop; he was killed in March 2004 while on his way to pick mint leaves from his garden.

The day Abu Maria was killed, hundreds of people turned out after the Ramadan Friday prayers to demonstrate against Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. They threw stones and burned tires. That morning, recalls his widow, Samira, he had watched the news from Gaza on Al Jazeera and wept. His colleague, Riad Arar, relates that at work, too, Abu Maria constantly watched television broadcasts from Gaza. He also repeatedly wrote on his Facebook page, “Stop killing the children in Gaza.”

After watching the scenes from Gaza that fateful morning, he went out to the garden and spent some time looking at the view. He performed the ablutions ahead of the noontime prayers and arranged to meet at 4 P.M. with his brother Mahmoud – who himself was seriously wounded by IDF fire in the past – in order to continue building the duck cage.

We sit in the garden of the family’s handsome two-story home. With its grove of fruit trees and doves, ducks and peacocks, the garden was Abu Maria’s “kingdom,” his family says. Located at the western edge of Beit Ummar, the house has two kitchens and four bathrooms. It is perched on a hill with a view that almost goes as far as the sea.

Mourning notices now drape the house, together with banners of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the organization in which Abu Maria was active politically. His family say he loved life and loved his home. He wanted to take his son, Ayham, to the Friday prayers, but fortunately the boy was sleeping and his father decided not to wake him. Ten-year-old Ayham has two sisters: Majdal, 14, and Siba, 6. Before Hashem was killed he told Ayham on the phone that he was standing next to the carpentry shop, and that the demonstration would soon be over and he would return home. Just minutes later, on local television, the boy saw his father killed.

Immediately afterward, Israeli soldiers shot and killed Abdul Hamid Bregeith, a 32-year-old father of three, and Sultan Zaqiq, 29, a father of two.

The IDF Spokesman’s Office stated in response this week: “An investigation by the Military Police has been opened into the circumstances surrounding the incident, and upon its completion the findings will be transferred to the office of the military advocate general for examination. The incident took place during violent and illegal disturbances in Beit Ummar, during which stones and firebombs were thrown at IDF troops.”

Abu Maria’s family says that Beit Ummar is still in shock: Why did the Israelis kill Hashem, the residents ask. Did they deliberately target him – the man who all his life wanted only to protect children?

DCI, which placed a mourning notice in Haaretz, is now trying to conduct its own investigation and is demanding answers from the IDF about the killing of its employee. According to the organization’s website, Abu Maria was the coordinator of DCI-Palestine’s community mobilization unit, most recently focusing its efforts on Palestinian teens, and on monitoring and documenting violations of children’s rights in Hebron.

After his brother’s death, Yusuf Abu Maria watched the Israeli news broadcasts, expecting to hear something about the events in Beit Ummar. But there was nothing. Not one word, he says, about the killing of three demonstrators, one of them his brother.

A duck quacks in the garden of the house in which we sit, and a rooster crows. The family will finish building the duck cage without Hashem.

Source

[panopticon]

Open the Erez border crossing, immediately
By Amira Hass 7th August 2014



People and merchandise must be able to move freely.

Here’s an urgent request for the Palestinian delegation in Cairo: Don’t let the Israelis pull the wool over your eyes and the whole world’s eyes with the arrangements to operate the Rafah border pass, the color of uniforms worn by Mahmoud Abbas’ soldiers, the number of units and the manner of their salute.

At this point don’t insist on an airport and seaport in Gaza. Focus on rehabilitating the essential, natural, logical connection between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Insist that the free movement of Palestinians (not only a few senior officials and traders) between them is resumed immediately. This should be your main mission.

Israel's establishment, commentators and most of its public see the demand to connect the Strip and West Bank as "ridiculous." This word embodies Israel’s aggressive arrogance. Egypt is justly afraid of Israel’s intention to push the Strip and its residents and problems back to it. Take advantage of that fear. This is what Israel has been striving toward since 1990 — to create Palestinian enclaves, isolate them and turn the Strip into a separate political entity.

Israel’s success has so far appeared considerable, aided by the sectarian selfishness of the Palestinian organizations. The Palestinian leaderships have neglected the basic demand to respect the right for freedom of movement. The Palestinian Authority’s senior officials made do with the privileges that enabled them to go through the Erez checkpoint. The leaders of the political-religious movement forgot the Erez checkpoint and the West Bank because they knew they wouldn’t get permits, and if they did, they’d be arrested.

The reconciliation government that was formed in Abbas’ image — bereft of inspiration and voluntarily paralyzed — nonetheless shows that Israel’s success in the separation has cracked. The rupture between the Strip and the West Bank is revocable.

This is the idea that must direct you in Cairo and guide all the Palestinians and those who oppose the occupation. Did anyone believe any Palestinian organization could plan a military campaign that would so confuse the No. 1 drone exporter? Who imagined that a Palestinian organization could learn from its mistakes in 2008-2009 and defy Israel's military power?

All your military surprises, Hamas, are worthless unless they are converted to a change in your civilian thinking. You rediscovered the West Bank after your channels to Egypt were blocked. So you fled to the reconciliation government. Israel’s wholesale killing of Gaza residents returned them to the awareness of the PLO and West Bank Palestinians. This is the moment to demand: Open the Erez Crossing. Israel will, as usual, scream "SOS security." Let it scream. There cannot be security for Israelis as long as they do not recognize Palestinians' right to life, and to live in dignity.

PLO delegates, Hamas and Islamic Jihad representatives: Rectify the criminal negligence that characterized your treatment of Gaza residents. Demand that the world pay the bill for its declarations. Pull out all the World Bank, IMF and EU reports. There's no rebuilding the Palestinian economy, no rebuilding of Gaza — no life at all — unless people and merchandise can move freely. This includes exports from Gaza, studying in universities, praying in Al-Aqsa and eating hummus in the Old City. It includes a trip from Nablus to the Beit Lahia beach.

The Gaza Strip will cease to be a large concentration camp only when it and the West Bank are again an hour’s drive apart, 32 shekels there and back, with a discount for children and large families.

Source

[panopticon]

There are accusations that IDF troops have been shooting into residences within the buffer zone.

If true this is a violation of the ceasefire.

Hamas have complained to the IDF and the IDF deny knowledge of it having occurred.

On the ceasefire...

The Israeli Cabinet meets in about 2 hours to discuss the negotiations etc.

IJ, PA & Hamas all seem quite up-beat (well as up-beat as they get anyway) about it all.

There is talk that if the truce holds a month then there will be talks about a seaport etc.

Seems like a lot of talks & intended talks.

Save us from the bureaucrats!

Talking about bureaucrats here's the difference in how the IDF & Palestinians in Gaza see Operation Protective Edge...

Palestinians talk about this:
Gaza counts the cost of war: 'Whole families smashed under the rubble'.

The IDF talk about this:
Protective Edge, in numbers.

Now that's a bit of a difference...

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Where is the rage over the brutal murder of a Palestinian protester by Settlers in the West Bank?

Here's a short article on the Hamas claims of ceasefire violation. In it the anti-ceasefire protests (I'm not willing to call them pro-War protests) in Tel-Aviv are mentioned:

The Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza accused Israel on Friday of a cross-border shooting in violation of a truce that has largely held since getting off to a shaky start on Thursday.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said: "We have no knowledge of such an incident."

The Palestinian ministry in the coastal territory dominated by Hamas Islamists said Israeli troops shot at houses east of the town of Khan Younis.
[...]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet debated the emerging deal at a meeting held behind closed-doors on Friday, after a protest by 10,000 Israelis in Tel Aviv, angry at the war's inconclusive results and the prospect of facing more rocket fire from Gaza once the truce comes to an end.
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-- Pan

[panopticon]

Sometimes cartoons tell the story just so well.

Here's First Dog On The Moon explaining the Arms Cycle


Source

To see what first dog's up to click here (Anarcho-Marsupialist's are cool! OK!).

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Israeli police's war against Arab protesters
By Nir Hasson and Yaniv Kubovich, August 16th, 2014


Man arrested at a protest in Nazareth against the Israeli operation in Gaza, July 21, 2014. Photo by Gil Eliahu

Some 350 demonstrators have been charged since the unrest began early in July; none are Jewish.

On a Friday afternoon, about a month ago, Aya Salame arrived in Haifa with her husband and three kids to break the Ramadan fast at one of the city's restaurants. They arrived early and Salame, 38, a biology teacher in a Kalansua high school and a student of Chinese medicine, decided to spend the time remaining before the meal touring the German Colony and the Bahá'í Gardens. Drawn by curiosity, she approached a crowd of anti-war protesters, but quickly made her way to leave – only to be blocked by police officers.

"I told the policeman that I wanted to join my husband and leave," she says. "I never attended a protest. I felt like I was in a movie. They wouldn't let me leave for an hour and a half or an hour."

When she noticed that a man standing beside her was bleeding from his mouth she demanded that a police officer on the scene give the injured man assistance, but her pleas were ignored. "I asked whether he wasn't ashamed of himself," she said. "Honestly I was shouting at him." At this point a group of riot police officers surrounded her. "One officer, I felt that he was grabbing me by the chest in order to insult me. Another grabbed me by the hair, and yet another slapped me in the face."

Salame, who spent the day fasting, was taken to a police car and was left there until midnight without food or drink. At the police station she fainted and was taken to the hospital. The next day she was released by the court under restriction. She and her family were barred from entering Haifa for two months.

Zecharia Mahrab, 39, a construction company manager from Lod, went to Haifa to attend the protests that began following the murder of a Palestinian teen, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, in the East Jerusalem last month. "We walked down the street in a row," he recounts. "Pushing began. Suddenly I saw police all around me. They pulled me out and told me I was arrested. They took as many as they could, without any reason, just to cause the demonstration to disperse. On Saturday evening they took me to see a judge, who ordered that I remain in prison until Monday. On Sunday they took us to be interrogated. We heard that they were too busy and that they wouldn't interrogate us. On Monday we were at the court again and the judge gave them until Wednesday. I was interrogated on Tuesday. They claimed that I assaulted a police officer; they didn't say which officer, only that they had photos of me pointing at a police officer, and that counts as a threat. They arrested us only to intimidate us and to punish us for protesting."

Arabs are charged, Jews aren't

Salame and Mahrab were lucky – no charges were pressed against them. According to a police spokesman, "Since the civil unrest began, the police arrested 1,471 suspects across Israel, and 350 are being prosecuted, mostly by the State Prosecutor's Office, for disturbing public order, unlawful gatherings, rioting and violence against people and property."

The incidents in question took place during protests that followed the murder of Abu Khdeir on July 2, and which escalated after Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of citizens, mostly Arabs, went out to protest the destruction and killing in the enclave. This reaction was expected, but the number of arrests and new criminal records opened, and the mass arraignment of protesters, indicate a loss of control and discrimination on the part of the police. No charges have been pressed against Jewish protesters from either the left or right ends of the political spectrum – not even those who acted violently.

A year before the murder of Abu Khdeir, Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino said in an interview with "Uvdah," a Channel 2 newsmagazine show, that he opposed the prosecution of Daphne Leef and other social activists, saying, "I wouldn't like to see Daphne Leef convicted of criminal charges…or punished for starting a protest movement." After the attorney general ordered the charges against her dropped, Commissioner Danino asked that the cases brought against Leef's fellow activists be reviewed and that only those few that warranted a trial be pursued.

It is doubtful whether Danino will order the closing of unwarranted cases brought against Arab protesters. Some 1,500 protesters were arrested between July 2 and August 6. Over 650 criminal records were opened and more than 350 people were charged. In one month, hundreds of requests to remand protesters until the end of the legal proceedings against them were filed. Danino apparently doesn't see anything wrong with this. In more than one occasion he has stated that the Israel Police would continue to crack down on protesters as it sees fit.

Some "1,500 arrests and hundreds of arraignments are numbers that are more befitting of Egypt than the State of Israel," says Prof. Shimon Shamir, a member of the Or commission, an inquiry into the clashes between the security forces and Arab Israelis in October 2000. According to him, this mainly points to a panic in the police. "I would have expected to hear Yohanan Danino telling the Arab protesters the same things he said to the protesters of Rothschild Boulevard."

'Arabs seen as potential enemy'

The protests in East Jerusalem were naturally less organized and more violent, including rock throwing and fire bombs, and it is clear why the police saw these incidents as riots. The police in the capital boasted – and rightfully so – their success in containing these protests and that there were no fatalities or serious injuries. There, too, protesters were arrested, and nightly raids took place.

The demonstrations that took place in Israeli towns and cities within the Green Line were organized and mostly non-violent, and were attended by members of parliament and dignitaries. But the police didn't view them this way. The Israel Police's official website stated that "while the civilian front of Operation Protective Edge is being managed, the fight against violent riots across the country continues," as if the protests were another front on which the war in Gaza is being waged.

"The wave of arrests is intended to silence and crush the right of Arab citizens to protest, via police violence and hostility," says attorney Suhad Bishara from the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – Adalah, who represented many of the detained demonstrators. "The Israel Police treats the Arab community as a potential enemy, and unfortunately, the court approved many of the police's requests for extended remand, even when there was no ground for this."

In the last month, the police hauled hundreds of protesters to court every day, and mostly received the courts' backing for their arrests. In her ruling regarding arrests of protesters in Haifa, District Court Judge Rivka Fuchs wrote: "The incident took place during Operation Protective Edge when the entire nation was is on edge and helping with the difficult undertaking that involves the civilian home front. Under these circumstances I believe that protesting is legitimate but that this protest must be within the limits of the law."

No judge may accept violation of the law, but the judge's words suggest that during the operation, the law should be enforced more harshly, allowing the police to fill holding cells with demonstrators, most of whom don't have a criminal record.

Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh (Hadash) participated in a rally in Nazareth with his son. When the protesters began to disperse, he says, police officers walked up to his son and arrested him. "He was arrested just because he took part in the protest," MK Barakeh says. "In the remand hearing they said he tried to run away from the police officers, but that is nonsense – he was in his vehicle and wasn't going anywhere. Afterwards they said he was holding something in his hand, possibly a stone, but found that it wasn't a stone. They just took people that were finishing the protest, they weren't chasing those that threw stones and ran away."

In another case, defense attorneys brought to the court a video showing police beating a demonstrator who was later arrested for assaulting an officer. His remand was extended as per the police's request.

"The judges don’t want to see this video," says Barakeh. "The police have become the government's political arm. We must restore sanity; these are young men who were pained to see what is happening in Gaza."

Rewards for arrests

Since Commissioner Danino took office, the Israel Police has been rewarding commanders for high numbers of arraignments and extended remands, so it is possible that officers are taking advantage of the unrest to get ahead professionally.

"Most of the detainees were arrested for attending protests," says Knesset Member Dov Khenin (Hadash). "Those who threw stones and should stand trial for violence fled. Those who were arrested were apprehended because they stood around and didn't run...

"These are young, educated people who are supposed to be leaders in the future," Khenin says of the protesters who now have a criminal record. "Looking at the number of charges pressed for assaulting police officers, you would think that the hospitals are full of wounded cops, and I don't remember there being any."

Criminal or terrorist?

Even when violence is involved, discrimination against Arabs is apparent.

Public defender Haim Yitzhaki, who represented a youth who allegedly threw a firebomb at a protest, was surprised to learn that his client's charges have been classified as a security case, and that it is being handled by the Shin Bet.

"When a Haredi throws rocks at a protest in Jaffa or Jerusalem, it is considered a criminal case, but when a guy from Taibeh throws a rock, it's a security issue," Yitzkhai says. "My client is a young man who will now be placed in the security wing in prison, and he now has to inform the Israel Prison Service which terror organization he belongs to and whether he prefers to serve his sentence with Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, Fatah or any other group, when it is clear he has nothing to do with any terror organization, and at most lost control at a protest."

The Israel Police said in response that while it respects the freedom of speech and protest, and has made efforts to communicate with local leaders, it has a zero tolerance for rioting.

The police are "enforcing disturbances to public order in an equal manner while making informed use of special means of crowd control with the purpose of maintaining the calm and security on the street," a spokesman said.

An indication that the tide might be turning came from the Haifa District Court last Thursday when a judge reviewing a request to extend a demonstrator's remand questioned whether the bid was warranted.

"While there is no doubt that the actions … are grave and harbor a risk that may constitute reason for arrest, the alleged evidence is weak," wrote Judge Bettina Tauber. "I think that these considerations lead to the conclusion that the order to change the terms of release was unjustified."

Source

[Bob]

Thank you for sharing that Pan, again it begs one to ask, why would anyone who is of Jewish heritage want to go live in the motherland ("fatherland"?) so as to be "free"..

[panopticon]

Posted by Bob (here)
Thank you for sharing that Pan, again it begs one to ask, why would anyone who is of Jewish heritage want to go live in the motherland ("fatherland"?) so as to be "free"..

No worries Bob,

I reckon that's outside of my purview there Bob. I don't understand why anyone would want to create a Nation-State in the first place so it's all beyond me...

Just as an aside, at the moment there is a pro-Palestine protest in Tel-Aviv with over 10,000 in attendance.

Great photo of it from Activestills:



Good to see the red & black waving strong!

-- Pan

[Bob]

Posted by panopticon (here)

Posted by Bob (here)
Thank you for sharing that Pan, again it begs one to ask, why would anyone who is of Jewish heritage want to go live in the motherland ("fatherland"?) so as to be "free"..

No worries Bob,

I reckon that's outside of my purview there Bob. I don't understand why anyone would want to create a Nation-State in the first place so it's all beyond me...

[..]

Just as an aside, at the moment there is a pro-Palestine protest in Tel-Aviv with over 10,000 in attendance.

[..]

Good to see the red & black waving strong!

-- Pan

Agreed. A State that arrests protesters even if they are not a protester, just some bystander passing thru, lumped into the "group".. held, interrogated.. a police state, fascist? worse? i can't find the adjectives to define the abhorrent contradictions spiritually.. they are gonna have their hands full with 10,000 folks.. what are they gonna do gas them? hmmm ugh..