whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution

On Sunday evening in the U.S., the CBS news magazine, 60 Minutes,
aired a segment entitled `Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?´
which reported on the situation in the West Bank with settlers and
checkpoints.

You can watch the video here (hat tip Michael Moore):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG6sAjgVoj4

Or read the transcript here: http://tinyurl.com/avpjr8

That this report was aired on national television, on the most watched news
magazine in the U.S., seems to me nothing less than exceptional. (those of
you who live in the U.S. and regularly watch the mainstream media, am I
wrong on this?)

If you´d like to call or email CBS to thank them, here´s their contact info:

email: 60m@cbsnews.com
Phone: +1 212 975-3247
(you can bet they're also getting plenty of grief for this report)

U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice

My email to CBS:
Thank you
For this: http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=KG6sAjgVoj4
From Italy
Urbano Cipriani
http://urby.motime.com/

Firenze Italia

American people, take care of Obama (remember Rabin). Pay attention to your home terrorists. Israel, in this moment, is unsafe not only for Gaza, but also for all of us. 
 

posted by: Whitebeard at 18:59 | link | comments |
us, civil rights, democracy, israel, palestine, censored news, resisters, gaza

Gaza is the problem

Israel’s Message
January 17th, 2009  |  Published in Articles by Ilan Pappé

 Email This Post  Print This Post

Ilan Pappe, London Review of Books, 14 January 2009

In 2004, the Israeli army began building a dummy Arab city in the Negev desert. It’s the size of a real city, with streets (all of them given names), mosques, public buildings and cars. Built at a cost of $45 million, this phantom city became a dummy Gaza in the winter of 2006, after Hizbullah fought Israel to a draw in the north, so that the IDF could prepare to fight a ‘better war’ against Hamas in the south.

When the Israeli Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz visited the site after the Lebanon war, he told the press that soldiers ‘were preparing for the scenario that will unfold in the dense neighbourhood of Gaza City’. A week into the bombardment of Gaza, Ehud Barak attended a rehearsal for the ground war. Foreign television crews filmed him as he watched ground troops conquer the dummy city, storming the empty houses and no doubt killing the ‘terrorists’ hiding in them.

‘Gaza is the problem,’ Levy Eshkol, then prime minister of Israel, said in June 1967. ‘I was there in 1956 and saw venomous snakes walking in the street. We should settle some of them in the Sinai, and hopefully the others will immigrate.’ Eshkol was discussing the fate of the newly occupied territories: he and his cabinet wanted the Gaza Strip, but not the people living in it.

Israelis often refer to Gaza as ‘Me’arat Nachashim’, a snake pit. Before the first intifada, when the Strip provided Tel Aviv with people to wash their dishes and clean their streets, Gazans were depicted more humanely. The ‘honeymoon’ ended during their first intifada, after a series of incidents in which a few of these employees stabbed their employers. The religious fervour that was said to have inspired these isolated attacks generated a wave of Islamophobic feeling in Israel, which led to the first enclosure of Gaza and the construction of an electric fence around it. Even after the 1993 Oslo Accords, Gaza remained sealed off from Israel, and was used merely as a pool of cheap labour; throughout the 1990s, ‘peace’ for Gaza meant its gradual transformation into a ghetto.

In 2000, Doron Almog, then the chief of the southern command, began policing the boundaries of Gaza: ‘We established observation points equipped with the best technology and our troops were allowed to fire at anyone reaching the fence at a distance of six kilometres,’ he boasted, suggesting that a similar policy be adopted for the West Bank. In the last two years alone, a hundred Palestinians have been killed by soldiers merely for getting too close to the fences. From 2000 until the current war broke out, Israeli forces killed three thousand Palestinians (634 children among them) in Gaza.

Between 1967 and 2005, Gaza’s land and water were plundered by Jewish settlers in Gush Katif at the expense of the local population. The price of peace and security for the Palestinians there was to give themselves up to imprisonment and colonisation. Since 2000, Gazans have chosen instead to resist in greater numbers and with greater force. It was not the kind of resistance the West approves of: it was Islamic and military. Its hallmark was the use of primitive Qassam rockets, which at first were fired mainly at the settlers in Katif. The presence of the settlers, however, made it hard for the Israeli army to retaliate with the brutality it uses against purely Palestinian targets. So the settlers were removed, not as part of a unilateral peace process as many argued at the time (to the point of suggesting that Ariel Sharon be awarded the Nobel peace prize), but rather to facilitate any subsequent military action against the Gaza Strip and to consolidate control of the West Bank.

After the disengagement from Gaza, Hamas took over, first in democratic elections, then in a pre-emptive coup staged to avert an American-backed takeover by Fatah. Meanwhile, Israeli border guards continued to kill anyone who came too close, and an economic blockade was imposed on the Strip. Hamas retaliated by firing missiles at Sderot, giving Israel a pretext to use its air force, artillery and gunships. Israel claimed to be shooting at ‘the launching areas of the missiles’, but in practice this meant anywhere and everywhere in Gaza. The casualties were high: in 2007 alone three hundred people were killed in Gaza, dozens of them children.

Israel justifies its conduct in Gaza as a part of the fight against terrorism, although it has itself violated every international law of war. Palestinians, it seems, can have no place inside historical Palestine unless they are willing to live without basic civil and human rights. They can be either second-class citizens inside the state of Israel, or inmates in the mega-prisons of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. If they resist they are likely to be imprisoned without trial, or killed. This is Israel’s message.

Resistance in Palestine has always been based in villages and towns; where else could it come from? That is why Palestinian cities, towns and villages, dummy or real, have been depicted ever since the 1936 Arab revolt as ‘enemy bases’ in military plans and orders. Any retaliation or punitive action is bound to target civilians, among whom there may be a handful of people who are involved in active resistance against Israel. Haifa was treated as an enemy base in 1948, as was Jenin in 2002; now Beit Hanoun, Rafah and Gaza are regarded that way. When you have the firepower, and no moral inhibitions against massacring civilians, you get the situation we are now witnessing in Gaza.

But it is not only in military discourse that Palestinians are dehumanised. A similar process is at work in Jewish civil society in Israel, and it explains the massive support there for the carnage in Gaza. Palestinians have been so dehumanised by Israeli Jews – whether politicians, soldiers or ordinary citizens – that killing them comes naturally, as did expelling them in 1948, or imprisoning them in the Occupied Territories. The current Western response indicates that its political leaders fail to see the direct connection between the Zionist dehumanisation of the Palestinians and Israel’s barbarous policies in Gaza. There is a grave danger that, at the conclusion of ‘Operation Cast Lead’, Gaza itself will resemble the ghost town in the Negev.

Ilan Pappe is chair of the history department at the University of Exeter and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine came out in 2007.
http://ilanpappe.com/

posted by: Whitebeard at 16:27 | link | comments |
israel, palestine, gaza

Now it is the time to call for ostracism of Israel

Now it is the time to demonstrate, to call for ostracism of Israel, for resignation of Mubarak, and it is the time to support the legitimate government of Gaza.

Gaza at War
 
By Israel Shamir – January 3, 2009

Cold wintery evening in Tel Aviv, the evening of the ground invasion, a new step in the escalation of what may become a new big war. There were hundreds of demonstrators – many young people, a lot of families with children, all sorts of Israelis and Palestinians, under red banners calling to end the warfare in Gaza. In Jerusalem, deep fog all but covered the walls of the Old City.

But even deeper is the fog of war. It is too early to predict the future developments. We still do not know what the goals of the Israeli invasion are, and we do not know the strength of Palestinian resistance. Fighters decide the future now, not the pundits. The war may go on to confrontation with Iran; it may bring too long rule of Hosni Mubarak to an abrupt end, it may cause a new intifada, it may re-shape the Middle East.

First week of war did not bring much success to Israel. The attack began as a firestorm of fury, but its only “success” was a surprising bombing of a graduation ceremony at the Gaza police school with some three hundred casualties, mainly young graduates. Next time, they may bomb schools on September 1st with even "better" results. Besides, the Light-unto-Nations-people bombed the university and a few mosques, and killed a few babies as a late tribute to King Herod on the Innocent Martyrs Day. Certainly war crime, undoubtedly mass murder, but hardly the holocaust they promised.

The Israeli drag-queen of the Defence Minister Ehud Barak improved his ratings: 53 percent of Jews are satisfied with his performance (Gawd, they are easy to satisfy!) compared to just 34 percent about six months ago. “Polls now predict five additional Knesset seats for his Labor Party in the coming February general election. That's 40 Palestinian corpses per seat. No wonder Barak promises it's just the beginning: at this pace, it will take Labor just about two thousand additional corpses to go from rags to riches, from a dead political party to an absolute majority in parliament like in the good old days”, noted Ran ha-Cohen.

Barak’s roundish Pickwickesque figure has been marketed by his PR campaigners as Der Fuhrer (Ha-manhig) of his folk, “he is not nice, but he is a leader”. “He is not nice; he is murderer” – replied the demonstrators in Tel Aviv. Barak is quite unlikely fuhrer, with his feminine face, a perfect mate to the masculine butch Tsipi Livni who is being marketed as “another Fuhrer”. Our friend and Livni’s cousin Gilad Atzmon wrote of these gender-confused characters in charge of the Jewish state: “Both Livni and Barak have to provide the Israeli voter with some real exhibition of devastating carnage, so the Israelis can trust their leadership.”

Meanwhile they do not make much progress. Despite daily bombardments, the Gazans keep shooting back, improving their hits and their weapons, reaching as far as Beer Sheba. Moreover, they are not begging for unconditional ceasefire, and the Israeli wish-list of ceasefire conditions appear as hopeless as that they had vis-à-vis Hezbollah two years ago. The initiative remained firmly in the Hamas hands – until today.

The Gaza leadership made a daring if calculated risk when they refused to extend the lapsed ceasefire agreement unless the Jews lift the siege off the Strip and agree to observe it on the West Bank as well. These demands infuriated the petty fuhrers who were used to decide the questions of war and peace alone, and propelled them into action.

The Israeli government miscalculated: their action received justifiably hostile response all over the world. Some of the best pieces against Israeli aggression appeared in the Western mainstream: by Mark Steel and other writers of the Independent. With expected exception of President Bush’ administration, the West speaks and demonstrates against the invasion. For sure graffiti on a synagogue wall brings out more demonstrators than bombing of a mosque and killing of all worshippers, but still it is possible that the Jewish yoke over the Western public opinion may be broken in the result of this intervention. What is unexpected, is that Russian media, usually strongly pro-Jewish, speaks in one voice against Israeli aggression.

Now it is the time to demonstrate, to call for ostracism of Israel, for resignation of Mubarak, and it is the time to support the legitimate government of Gaza. Stay tuned.

posted by: Whitebeard at 12:34 | link | comments (1) |
us, israel, gaza

It's up to us...it's up to you!

Urbano

Your help is needed. On Tuesday, Inauguration Day, will there be any challenge to Obama's expansion of the war in Afghanistan?  Will an announced closure of Guantanamo cover continuing torture carried on by the United States through compliant governments in third countries?

Will the crimes of the Bush regime be swept under the rug?

Will there be silence as the anti-gay bigot Rev. Rick Warren assumes the role of the new Billy Graham?

Or will people see thousands of signs and dramatic actions placing the urgent need to stop the crimes of our government centerstage?

It's up to us...it's up to you!

Monday, World Can't Wait organizers from around the country will converge in D.C. to make sure your voice is heard! We will be ready to protest the pardons Bush may make including possible blanket pardons covering torture. We have a full schedule of actions that we hope you can be a part of (see side bar).   We will be in the news, and around the White House, to demand prosecutions, and most importantly, that people take responsibilty to stop the cirmes of their government.

$2,000 is still needed to coverage transportation cost and print the fliers, buttons, and posters needed to deliver the message:

Stop the US war OF terror and torture...the world can't wait!
Stop Occupying Iraq & Afghanistan! Stop the assault on Gaza!

NO Common Ground with Bigot Rick Warren!

Prosecute the BUSH War Crimes!

Donate today and help all those watching, all those hoping, and all those waiting see that there is a movement of people in the United States who haven't drank the 'Obama Kool Aid':  a resistance movement that is committed to and welcomes all those who want to stop the crimes of this government.

http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4666:donate-today&catid=4:donate&Itemid=201

JANUARY 19/20 JOIN us in Washington DC
"Stop the US war OF terror and torture...the world can't wait!"

January 19 (Monday - MLK holiday)

11:00 am  SHOE BUSH rally/march.  David Swanson, Debra Sweet, Adam Kokesh speaking at DuPont Circle.  March to White House to demand Prosecute the War Criminals!
see http://shoebush.org/       
3:00 pm  Union Station DIE-in/theater protest.  "End the occupations of Iraq &
Afghanistan Now!  Stop the US-backed War Crime in Gaza!"  Meet 2pm McPherson Square

January 20 (Tuesday - inaugural parade)

posted by: Whitebeard at 10:56 | link | comments |
us, israel, war, palestine, torture, resisters, gaza

Nürnberg

Please consider a Vote Up on this Idea submitted by  Lancy at Citizens
Briefing Book, Change.gov click here
_http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ideas/viewIdea.apexp?id=0878000000059hs&srPos=8&srKp=087_
(http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ideas/viewIdea.apexp?id=0878000000059hs&srPos=8&srKp=087) 
 
"Over 4,100 American soldiers and over 1,000,000 Iraqis were killed  in Iraq
on false pretenses, George W. Bush's big lies, which are unlawful  deaths,
each and every one, requiring that he be indicted and prosecuted on  murder and
conspiracy to commit murder and charged with one or more of  four charges:
conspiracy to commit crimes alleged in other counts; crimes  against peace; war
crimes; or crimes against humanity. Specific charges  include the murders of
over 4,100 American soldiers and over 1,000,000 Iraqis,  pursuing an aggressive
war, the brutality of the invasion, occupation, and  detention centers, and the
use of illegal  weapons"
**************A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy
steps!
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd=De
cemailfooterNO62)

posted by: Whitebeard at 18:35 | link | comments |
us, war, torture, resisters

Israel broke the cease-fire

posted by: Whitebeard at 13:21 | link | comments |
us, israel, palestine, gaza

Shutdown Guantanamo Stop the Slaughter in Gaza

Dear members,

Reminder: Saturday, January 17, there will be two protest marches in which
our voice will be particularly significant. See below details on both marches
as well as meeting points and contact persons. 

*Shutdown Guantanamo
Saturday, January 17, 3pm
Piazza della Repubblica to U.S. Embassy

Amnesty International in Italy is organizing for what will be the 7th
anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantánamo. On January
17, starting at 3pm, there will be a march from Piazza della Repubblica to
the U.S. Embassy, with 254 activists wearing the infamous orange
jumpsuits, one for each of the remaining illegally detained prisoners.

Meet on the square where Amnesty will have a presence (see map:
http://tinyurl.com/9em8ns). Those who have signed up to represent a
detainee will be meeting at 2pm.

More info at: http://www.peaceandjustice.it/guantanamo-2009.php

*Stop the Slaughter in Gaza
Saturday, January 17, 3:30pm
Piazza Vittorio to Porta San Paolo (Piramide)

On that same day, there will also be a national demonstration calling for an
end to the assault on Gaza. This march will start at 3:30pm from Piazza
Vittorio to Porta San Paolo (Piramide). This illegal attack, which has already
caused the death of close to 1100 Palestinians, of whom nearly half are
women and children, is made possible by political cover from our
government and our tax dollars.

Look for our USC4P&J banner near the newspaper kiosk at the corner of
via dello Statuto and Piazza Vittorio (see map: http://tinyurl.com/7hd6l8).

U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice - Rome
http://www.peaceandjustice.it

posted by: Whitebeard at 20:57 | link | comments |
us, europe, israel, gaza

Gaza: The International community bears the responsibility

Dear all,

 please find here below an article written -on 9TH January 2009- by EP VP Luisa Morgantini before her visit with a MEPs Delegation in Gaza Strip, on 10TH January 2009.

 This article has been published by NEW EUROPE- THE EUROPEAN WEEKLY  on 12th January.

 http://www.neurope.eu/articles/91857.php <http://www.neurope.eu/articles/91857.php>

 Where has humanity gone?

 It's gone from the Mideast

 Author: Luisa Morgantini

 from Italy, is a Vice President of the European Parliament, and the Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left

 12 January 2009 - Issue : 816

 More than 700 Palestinian people killed, including 220 children in less than two weeks of Cast Lead operation actuated by the Israeli Forces against the Gaza Strip. That means against civil inhabitants, about one million and a half collectively punished by the ongoing Israeli bombing attacks and already devastated by a total and inhuman siege lasting several months. Where has humanity gone if this can happen today under our eyes without being able to do anything to stop this massacre, to protect all civilians, to defend human rights and dignity?

 Qassam rockets against Israeli civilians are a crime, but the blockade of the Strip leading to an enormous and unprecedented humanitarian crisis is a crime too: about 290 Palestinians patients died since June 2007 unable to leave the Strip due to the closure imposed by Israel. Amongst these deaths, 35 percent are children. Now, adding to al this, by air, by land and by sea the Gazans are attacked by fire.

Homes, entire buildings, ministries, schools, pharmacies and police stations gutted. Children terrified, hospitals collapsed, medicines nowhere to be found. The Shifa hospital in Gaza city has appealed to the concerned international parties to supply the hospital with morgue fridge units after all its units were crammed with the growing number of bodies. The situation is unbearable. Nothing and nobody are safe from the bombings, also one UNRWA school has been hit killing 45 people in a bash, and no militants were inside shooting rockets, but only refugees and homeless civilians.

 Israel is today -more than ever- an unpunished power that can freely break not only International law, but also abuse all human rights for "security reasons." And we, the International Community and the Quartet, including the EU, have permitted this with our silence, with our negligence that means complicity. Yes, as the European Union, we did a lot to support economically the Palestinians, but they need freedom and independence. Since 1967, Israel has militarily occupied the Palestinian territories: a brutal and colonial occupation. The theft of land; the demolition of houses; checkpoints where Palestinians are treated with contempt, beaten, humiliated; colonies that grow alarmingly, taking over land and water resources, destroying crops. Thousands of political prisoners, who are even denied visits by family members.

 STOP IT

 We have permitted all this, not being able to say to the Israeli Governments "enough with the impunity, respect legality and human rights, respect the peace negotiations with concrete facts: Stop the occupation, Stop the Settlements, Stop the Gaza Siege". Europe recognised the necessity of the creation of two States for two people living side-by-side in peace and security but since now it was not consequent and coherent in implementing this essential goal, opting for an assistance policy instead of a political solution. Aid not justice: exactly the opposite of what Palestinians, but also Israelis and the peace need.

 Furthermore, the EU didn't help the dialogue between Fatah and Hamas: it was a big mistake not to recognise the government democratically elected by the Palestinian people, and even more not to recognise the unity government which came out by the effort of the Palestinian prisoners belonging to all the factions, first of all by Marwan Barghouti. We should have helped Hamas to work on a democratic system and to fight the occupation through the non violent resistance. For this, the EU should ask forgiveness to all the victims - Palestinian, Israelis, Lebanese - of this endless tragedy.

 Of course, also the Palestinian leadership has their responsibilities: the division between Hamas and Fatah have been paid in Gaza and in West Bank by civilians who are now suffering also for the responsibility of the leaderships who are not able to find a stable solution for their unity. And surely Hamas also must assume its responsibilities: launching rockets, generating fear and representing a threat against the Israeli civilian population represents unlawful and criminal actions that are to be condemned and stopped.

 One death is enough to condemn all violence but we must recognise the asymmetry: since 2002, 20 people have been killed in rocket attacks by Palestinian extremists - too many - but at the same time more than 3,000 Gazans have been killed, including hundreds of children. On the other side, Israeli policies have never truly prevent the radicalisation of the conflict by giving a concrete signal of its will of peace nor showing the commitment to achieve a just and shared agreement that would be sustainable and lasting in all the region, and this is the main risk for the State of Israel.

 We saw it with the recent pogrom by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Hebron, a ghost city where 120,000 Palestinians people live as hostages of 500 or 600 Israeli settlers protected by thousands of soldiers and paramilitary forces, where more than 800 Palestinian shops were forced to close because of aggressions and where, after years of complicity, backing, connivance by the different governments succeeded at the Head of the State of Israel carrying on a colonial policy the Israeli settlers' violence exploded attacking Palestinians, uprooting trees, burning homes and mosques.

 WHEN WILL IT END?

 The ongoing war in Gaza is only the last signal of arrogance by Israeli policies and leadership unable or not interested to be farseeing in the way of peace: the risks of fuel the conflict, expanding it to the whole area is tangible now, since news already reports about at least two Katyusha rockets fired from Lebanon towards northern Israel, with the suddenly Israel response by shelling Lebanese lands.

 And the price is and will be always paid by innocents, compelled into a never-ending slaughter under the bombs and probably also targeted by unconventional weapons: Israel admitted the use of white phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon, weapons that causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns, and it is not excluded - as many medical witnesses reported from Gazan hospitals- that they are employed also for the Gaza War, together with Depleted Uranium or Dime (dense inert metal explosive) weapons made with tungsten, the victims might also die from cancers due to the toxicity of tungsten. A complete destruction.

 Thinking of this and to all the victim of this unjustified and illogical violence, the three hours of lull for a "humanitarian corridor" in the Strip sounds like adding insult to injury, to the butchery, as well as the choice of the official name of this war, "Cast Lead," two words from a children's song about a Hanukkah toy. Humanitarian NGOs call on Israel, Hamas and Palestinian armed groups to observe a full humanitarian truce to respond to the needs of the beleaguered civilian population, since a truce that lasts for a few hours a day is simply insufficient, too short to address the urgent and massive needs of the civilians suffering heavy casualties, often used as human shields, a practice prohibited under the Geneva Conventions and that according to Amnesty International is widely used by both sides of the conflict.

 My Israeli friends and peace activists now demonstrating against the war and the siege on Gaza, the same people who since many years, day after day, have been repeating that the logical conclusion for an Israeli government seeking peace would have been to make concessions, ending of the occupation, signing of a peace treaty, foundation of the State of Palestine, withdrawal to the 1967 borders, a reasonable solution of the refugee problem, release of all Palestinian prisoners, say today that "logic has little influence on politics" and I completely agree.

 People often have more gumption than their representatives and each time I go to Palestine and Israel accompanying delegations of MEPs or people of civil society I can meet many extraordinary Israelis and Palestinians struggling together in a non-violent way against the occupation and for rights and dignity for all, representing a culture able to destroy the figure of the enemy and revenge, where everybody loses.

 They are a miracle in that consolidated context of humiliation and reiterated human rights abuses. A miracle that the ongoing war, the impunity of Israel helped by the silence of the International Community risk to destroy tragically together with all hopes of peace. Israel cannot search for security by creating instability and injustice, cannot search peace fuelling the hate and this not only among Palestinians, also civil society in moderate Arab countries are concerned in this escalating conflict: the world entire would be more insecure.

 The International community bears the responsibility of not having the will to stop Israel. We should impose a ceasefire and send International forces to protect civilians. Border crossings in the Strip must be opened to the humanitarian aid and goods, in Rafah must come back International forces, including Arabs and Europeans, to control the entrance and exit. The EU should also tell to Israel that we cannot upgrade cooperation or relations unless it stops the bombing and massacre of Palestinian population in Gaza and stop to build settlement in the West Bank. Occupation, violence, suffering, injustice and the lack of freedom lead to indelible and disastrous consequences on the population. We should help to grow and rise the voices and the forces that in Israel are struggling for peace and say we refuse to be enemies, end the occupation.

 Luisa Morgantini 0039 348 39 21 465; Office 0039 06 69 95 02 17;

luisa.morgantini@europarl.europa.eu <mailto:luisa.morgantini@europarl.europa.eu> ;

 www.luisamorgantini.net
 

posted by: Whitebeard at 18:08 | link | comments |