umkahlil

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0606240220jun24,0,71062.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed

My response to an editorial which appeared in the Chicago Tribune today, "The Gaza Battleground."

Dear Editor:

"They [Palestinians] elected Hamas and now live with the consequences of its rigid doctrine of hate," the Tribune editorializes (June 24).

For one week (June 15-21) according to the Palestine Center for Human Rights, Gaza Palestinians suffered eight dead, including three children and a pregnant woman; 45 civilians, including 24 children, were wounded by Israel's Occupation Forces gunfire; Israel's occupation forces made 50 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank; 57 Palestinians, including 4 women and 2 children were arrested; 15 more were arrested at checkpoints; four houses were taken over by the military; three houses were demolished, and land was confiscated.

Palestinians' legal, personal, civil, and human rights which include the inalienable right to return home (Article 13, Section 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) to their personal property precludes the recognition of Israel as the "Jewish" state. And for this they are maligned in the western press as "haters" and are brutalized by Israel.

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2006/22-06-2006.htm

My response to a feature story in the Washington Post today on the inhabitants of Sderot: "Shellshocked By More Than Just Rockets"

letters@washpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301540.html

Dear Editor:

Sderot is today home to many Russian and Ethiopean immigrants living on village lands of the defaced and ethnically cleansed village of Najd, one of 418 depopulated Palestinian villages documented by Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi in All That Remains.

Najd's villagers were mainly farmers and engaged in animal husbandry. "Fields of grain and fruit trees surrounded Najd on all sides," according to Khalidi. There were 82 houses in Najd and its children went to school in the nearby village of Simsim, also obliterated. Palestinian Arabs owned 12,669 dunums of land in 1944/45; whereas Jews owned 495.

The key to peace in Palestine is implementation of the Palestinian refugees' inalienable rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Palestinian personal, human, civil, and historic rights must not be relative to those of Jewish immigrants.

Nancy Harb Almendras
Wiesbaden, Germany

This is my letter to the Washington Post in response to "Israel is not the threat to Christians," a letter that appeared today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301462_pf.html

letters@washpost.com

Dear Editor:

One small example of Israel's treatment of Christians within Israel proper is the treatment of the Christian villagers of Kafr Bir'im. The villagers were expelled in in 1948 and although the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in July 1952 that there was no reason to prevent their return, their village was demolished in 1953, "the only standing structure is the church and its belltower," according to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi in All That Remains. The villagers of Kfar Bir'im are among the 276,000 internally displaced Palestinian refugees within Israel according to the CIA factbook.

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Safad/Kafr-Bir'im/

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2194.html

http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2006/05/kfar-birim-we-will-forget-bitter-days.html

Nancy Harb Almendras
Wiesbaden, Germany

Israel Is Not the Threat to Christians

Saturday, June 24, 2006; A20

Robert D. Novak's April 17 op-ed, "Caught by Israel's Wall," contained numerous errors. Among them:

? Mr. Novak claims that the Gaza Strip is "one of the world's most densely populated places." At 8,666 people per square mile, density in the strip is less than Washington, D.C., which exceeds 9,000. San Francisco, Cairo and Manila are much more densely populated.

? Mr. Novak alleges that the security barrier is "cutting to pieces the promised Palestinian state." The barrier as planned and constructed encompasses no more than 8 percent of the West Bank. Remaining territorial contiguity is as great or greater than that of pre-1967 Israel. And a state was not promised; Palestinian Arabs have been offered an opportunity to build one through negotiations and performance.

? The column alleges that "the wall threatens Israel's tiny Christian minority and particularly Aboud's Christian roots." Aboud is in the West Bank, not Israel; its Christians are Palestinian Arabs, not Israeli Arabs. Israel's Christian Arab population has grown from 34,000 at the country's founding in 1948 to nearly 130,000 today. Meanwhile, the Christian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, estimated at 8 percent or more of the total after World War II, is now less than 1.7 percent (under 50,000). The decline has accelerated since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1993.

? Mr. Novak refers to "deadly daily artillery barrages" by Israel in response to rockets "ineffectively fired" by "undisciplined Palestinian militants." There have not been "deadly daily artillery barrages" by Israel. In response to near daily, indiscriminate Palestinian rocket fire, Israeli counterattacks have included air-to-ground missiles targeting specific terrorists and artillery barrages aimed at launch areas.

Mr. Novak apparently writes about Israel from behind a barrier of his own, one that isolates him from the facts.

ERIC ROZENMAN
Washington Director
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East
Reporting in America
Washington

http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2030850

Lisa Taraki
Published: 23 June 2006

Israeli scholars have either collaborated in the occupation or turned a blind eye. They deserve a boycott, argues Lisa Taraki

Although Menahem Milson's career path and mine have been on a collision course, we have never met. In 1976, I joined Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank as a junior instructor in sociology. The same year, Milson, a professor of Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University, became "adviser on Arab affairs" in the Israeli Government.

By 1981, when the academic community I was part of was struggling under the crushing yoke of Israeli punishments, he was appointed head of the military administration in the West Bank. One of the highlights of his tenure was the notorious "Village Leagues" scheme, a failed experiment in promoting a class of Palestinian collaborators to mediate Israeli rule.

Milson's service fits into the classic paradigm of a colonial regime enlisting scholars to assist in ruling the "natives". He told an American Jewish publication in 1995 that to "serve an Arab population responsibly, one needs to know language and civilisation. That is why so many professors have been called to do this". Indeed, the list of Israeli academics who have served government agencies and the occupation regime is impressive.

Today, that list includes demographers, psychologists and a host of strategic analysts.

What is most significant for those of us who argue for a boycott of the Israeli academy is that these academics, instead of facing censure and opprobrium from their peers for their complicity in oppression, are rewarded with the highest privileges. The toleration of racism and bigotry under the guise of scholarship is also remarkable; the legitimacy and normalcy of the discourse of "the demographic threat" is a striking example.

Opponents of an academic boycott complain that it violates academic freedom by restricting Israeli scholars' access to international academic networks.

They also claim that since Israeli universities are generally "liberal", the action punishes those who are least in agreement with the policies of their Government. These complaints betray a striking disregard for the indivisibility of academic freedom (the academic freedom of Palestinians being of no concern) and misrepresent the reality of the Israeli academy and Israeli academics.

When I arrived at Birzeit, the first institution of higher education established by Palestinians in the occupied territories, the university president had been deported by the Israeli Army. He was accused of "inciting" students against the occupation. He lived in exile for 19 years until he was allowed to return in 1993. As resistance to the occupation escalated in the 1980s, universities were treated to a constant diet of "closure orders" as punishment for student demonstrations.

As soon as a military closure order was issued, we young faculty would go into top gear and fire off appeals to Western consulates, the media and human rights organisations. Because arrests invariably followed closure orders, we also fell into a routine of preparing for students' encounters with the system of military "justice". We attended trials in seedy military courtrooms where some of the prosecutors and judges were academics on reserve duty. I can still remember watching those colourless individuals as they assiduously avoided the eyes of the Palestinian academic observers on the benches.

Later, and after we had organised makeshift lectures and laboratories scattered throughout Ramallah and Jerusalem, we would evade Army patrols bent on criminalising our efforts to rescue the semester or the entire academic year. I remember teaching a seminar on the Iranian revolution in the kitchen of an empty apartment in Ramallah, just as I recall travelling to Gaza to help a graduating student being held under house arrest finish his matriculation requirements (this trip, as the one to Jerusalem, is no longer conceivable, and we no longer have students from Gaza).

So where have Israeli academics been during the long siege of Palestinian higher education? Aside from a handful of progressive academics, the Israeli academy has remained silent. Business as usual has been the order of the day for nearly four decades. Virtually all Israeli academics have continued to serve in the Army's reserve forces and, as such, have been perpetrators of, or witnesses to, the many crimes committed by their military.

What is there left to do? Global centres of power have stood firmly by Israel as it has wreaked havoc with the lives and futures of Palestinians.

Our only hope is pressure from international civil society. And that includes academics. We want our colleagues abroad to know that, with every conference they attend at an Israeli university, with every review they write for an Israeli institution, they are unwittingly helping to maintain the system of injustice.

The academic boycott aims to make Israelis realise that there is a price to be paid for complicity, complacency and silence. Milson may have retired, but his successors continue to enjoy the fruits of academic freedom in the Israeli academy. The rest do not care.

Lisa Taraki is associate professor of sociology at Birzeit University.

  

Dadan's excellent poster in response to SLATE's lack of coverage for Palestine's refugees on World Refugee Day, while highlighting the occupiers as refugees (see story below). See a larger image of the poster here.

On World Refugee Day, June 20, I was apprised by my friend in an e-mail that CNN was running a promo for world refugee day- "and will visit a Palestinian refugee camp." This was indeed exciting news and so I immediately went downstairs to check it out and wrote about it here. And while the feature on the Abu Nidal Abu Akar family of Dheishe Refugee Camp was excellent, CNN did not include in its report on the world refugee population information about the largest and longest suffering refugee community. That glaring error prompted a message to their feedback form from my friend:

2 errors
Roberts announced the largest refugee group- and got it wrong- largest is Palestinian- and it is the longest running refugee crisis.

Also your list of relief agencies Totally forgot UNRWA- as if the Palestinian refugees do not exist!

In addition we sent CNN thank you messages which included information about "right of return."

My friend and I were in contact all day, checking out the media's coverage of World Refugee Day; however, neither of us thought to check SLATE. Their abysmal coverage first came to my attention on June 21, when I checked out the beautifully designed blog, Ohoud's Arab Rhabsody. And I was thrilled to see that several bloggers, including Qwaider of Memories Documented, Hamzeh of Scatter Load, and Dadan, had resisted Slate's efforts to feature the oppressor prominantly on World Refugee while ignoring the largest and longest suffering refugee population:those registered with UNRWA number 4,255,120 and if one includes unregistered refugees the total for 1948 refugees alone is 6,400,000.

What started from a post on Qwaider's Blog:

"I was shocked and appalled by Slate.com for the way the have absolutely disregarded the Palestinian refugees. The hundreds of thousands that were driven out of their lands, forced into the conditions worse than Auschwitz and suffered ethnic genocide by their oppressors. These opressors were rewarded today by Slate which showed a picture from "Sha'ar Ha'aliya" in Haifa in 1950. For those who don't know "Sha'ar Ha'aliya" was just a triage point to manage the huge influx of Jewish occupiers that were flocking from all over the world to take over the ancestral land of the Palestinians. The Palestinians were consequently driven from their homes, farms, schools universities and businesses into the humiliating life of refugees. Helpless and hopeless in scattered refugee camps."

Found its way to Mazin Qumsiyeh's widely circulated e-mail of June 22 (although Qwaider's term "occupiers" should replace "refugees" after Jewish) below:

"-(this action is from a reader Iman)
Slate Magazine highlight forgets largest remaining refugee population in the
world while highlighting Jewish refugees
http://todayspictures.slate.com/20060620/?GT1=8295

Submit your comment:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/admin/help/popup/frame_pageSlateQC.htmlWhat some bloggers did:
http://scatterload.blogspot.com/
http://blog.sweetestmemories.com/default.asp?Display=110
http://arabesquerhabsody.com/blog/?p=270"

This is an excerpt from Hamzeh's excellent letter to SLATE:

It is impossible to imagine a good reason why Slate would choose to commemorate the stories of several refugee populations from across the world, and fail to honor the story of 4 million Palestinian refugees. It is obvious that the conflict that led to the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland was not absent in the mind of the people that prepared this "Today's Pictures" piece, as they clearly did not forget to feature the picture of a Jewish absorption camp in Haifa in the year 1950.

While this camp was mainly setup to act as a triage point to help in absorbing the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who were then settling in the newly established Jewish state, other camps were being setup across the Middle East and in the new Jewish state itself to handle the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes and were driven out of their villages in the process. Today, there are 59 Palestinian refugee camps recognized by the UN, opposite Jewish populations living in the cities and villages that these refugees originally came from. Slate Magazine today chose to commemorate the Jewish refugees of the past and completely ignore the Palestinian refugees of both past and present.

This is mine:

SLATE is irresponsible in refusing to acknowledge the longest suffering and largest refugee population, the Palestinians, 4,255,120 of whom are registered with UNWRA. Ironically, the European Jews at an absorption center in Haifa that SLATE depicted, may be living in the 675 totally depopulated towns and villages of Palestinian Arabs. Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, expert on Palestinian refugees, describes the Zionist process for depopulating some of these villages:

"In the spring of 1948, some Jewish mukhtars (headmen) of Jewish colonies in Palestinian went over to the Arab Palestinian mukhtars in the nearby villages which maintained good neighbourly relations with them and whispered in their ears, 'we are your good friends and neighbours and we must give you our sincere advice. Those vicious Palmach soldiers who just landed from Europe have no mercy. They intend to clean out Arab villages. Take your family and run for your life before it is too late.' That was no 'sincere' advice. This ‘whispering campaign’, was ordered by Palmach commander, Yigal Allon (Paicovich) and it resulted in the depopulation of at least 12 villages."

Sderot, for which Israel's government uses as justification for its slaughter of Palestinian innocents was founded in 1951 on the village lands of Najd, one of 418 ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian villages described by Princeton historian, Dr. Walid Khalidi in All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948.

Unfortunately, based upon SLATE's coverage of World Refugee Day,seems as if Palestinian lives and history are not just irrelevant to Israel's government.

http://www.amin.org/eng/uncat/2006/june/june5-0.html

http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2006/06/sderot-built-on-ashes-of-ethnically.html

Mabrook to all the resolute Arab bloggers who effectively resisted SLATE's misleading and irresponsible coverage of World Refugee Day. It is my hope that we continue to work together to both challenge and, when due, praise the media. Check here often for what you can do, and I will check out your blogs as well.

"We will continue to make Israel an open nation living securely in its own land, to develop an enlightened and a just society of culture and quality that absorbs immigrants and that knows to be just to all its citizens," Ehud Olmert said today.

How can a society be "enlightened" and "just" if it doesn't implement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, section 2, which states: Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. This is an example of the mindset of one "immigrant" who is free to illegally settle on confiscated land; in "132 Palestinian legislators on the wall... ♪...132 Palestinian legislators" this transplant from New York writes:

"Treppenwitz's 2-Step Plan for Stopping the Qassams

"Step 1: Send a public message to the PA and Hamas leadership telling them that starting tomorrow, for every single day that even one Qassam falls inside Israel, one member of the PA/Hamas Leadership (including the Palestinian Legislative council) will be targeted with one of our much more accurate missiles.

"Step 2: Make good on that threat.

"I figure we will probably burn through two, maybe three PLC Ministers before they figure out we're not bluffing."

In response to the following comment:

"Interesting idea, definitely preferrable to carpet bombing a refugee camp. Can I assume that the plan would be to target the legislators with the most dubious history and try to leave someone with some credibility who would be in a position to negotiate and enforce a truce should they see the error of their ways?"

Olmert's immigrant replies:

"... No, actually that's the great part. While we would be using pinpoint accurate laser-guided missiles to target the PLC Ministers, the actual person designated for evaporation would be selected randomly by pulling a name a day from a big lotto-style air machine. Since they use such a random weapon (the Qassam) it is only fair that we try to respond in an equally random manner."

I guess some women get off on this kind of talk.

The comments are mostly yea sayers, including one who says he likes the smell of napalm in the morning.

Of course, Dr. Salman Abu Sitta (now there's a patriot and a statesman and a man to emulate) warns us that soldiers take on different forms. Zionists come in many different varieties, but remember, even Jeff Halper, for all his good works, is an immigrant from Wisconsin who has the mistaken notion that Israel was once "progresive," and in spite of its "original sin" could one day rise again and be a veritable "light unto the nations."

Another immigrant on another blog, who is of the Zio-lite variety, actually seems to infer that an Israeli aggregate for blogs is enlightened because "The homepage of the Hebrew aggregate site has a permanent logo on the upper left square that says, 'This blog opposes targeted assasinations in heavily populated civilian areas.'"

Well, gee, thanks for that. This must be the other side of Zionism, Zionism with a big fat heart that never forgets to say sorry like Ehud Olmert.

Olmert says he's sorry for the babykilling, the killing of the pregnant woman and her brother, but he's not sorry for the beach killing cause Israel didn't have a hand in that. He's also not so griefstricken as to stop illegal extrajudicial assasinations.

"I am sorry from the depths of my heart for the unintended deaths of innocent people in Gaza and Khan Younis. No one understands that kind of pain more than us."

Spare us the empathy. Have the dignity to just shut up. You're killing refugees who were deliberately and systematically ethnically cleansed from their native villages. What you didn't demolish then and cover up with trees (remember the dimes for Israel) and give some Hebrew name, you stole and appropriated for yourselves and you continue to steal and appropriate for your immigrants. You and Elie Wiesel, the former journalist for Irgun when it massacred the villagers at Deir Yassin, and who doesn't have a damned thing to say about that in his full hypocrisy, probably full on King Abdullah's hummus at the big feast you fat cats are having, Olmert thinking about who he's going to take out next, as Wiesel challenges Mohammed Abbas to condemn suicide bombing as a war crime. Please.

None of you have the dignity or courage of a kid who throws rocks at a tank barrelling down his concrete refugee camp.

"The two leaders shook hands, embraced and kissed each other on the cheek. Asked about his handshake with Olmert, Abbas said, 'It was very warm, very warm.'"

Source

From Sabbah's blog.

I did not cry when I watched these photos; I froze.

Sderot was settled by Jews in 1951. According to Walid Khalidi in All That Remains, it along with the settlement of Or ha-Ner, founded in 1957, were established on the village lands of Najd, which means "elevated plain" in Arabic.

Najd's Palestinian villagers, approximately 620 in 1945, were expelled on 13 May 1948, before Israel was declared a state and before any Arab armies entered Palestine. According to UN Resolution 194 and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2, the villagers of Najd have a right to return home to their personal property and to their native village.

Today, according to Khalidi, "some old trees grow" on the site of the village. It is "overgrown with cactuses and Christ's thorn and sycamore trees and contans the crumbled walls of unidentified buildings...."

There were 82 houses in Najd. Children went to school in Simsim, two kilometers away. According to Palestine Remembered the village has been completely "defaced."

In 1596 Najd's population was 215.

In 1838, Edward Robinson, an American biblical scholar "observed the villagers winnowing barley by throwing it into the air against the wind with wooden forks" [Robinson (1841) III: 260 as quoted in Khalidi 128].

Najd's villagers were mainly farmers and engaged in animal husbandry. "Fields of grain and fruit trees surrounded Najd on all sides."

Najd is fourteen kilometers from Gaza. Palestinian Arabs own 12,669 dunums in Najd although Israel refuses to honor their rights to their personal property, and refuses them their inalienable right to return home. In 1945 Jews owned 495 dunums of land in Najd and public lands consisted of 412 dunums.

Najd is one of 418 ethnically cleansed villages by Zionist Jews that Dr. Khalidi includes in his seminal work. Khalidi dedicates his book:

To all those for whom these villages were home and to their descendants.

Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated By Israel in 1948. Institute for Palestine Studies: Washington, D.C., 1992.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Today, Palestine Center For Human Rights, Gaza, identified the dead children:Mohammed Jamal Shukri Rouqa,6; Samia Mahoud Ziad al-Sharif, 5; Bilal Jasser al-Hissi, 16.

Mohammed Roka, 5, and his sister, Needa, 7, and an unnamed teenage girl, were killed today by Israel's Occupation Forces. John Pilger recently wrote "In Palestine, War on Children":

On my last trip to Palestine, I was rewarded, on leaving Gaza, with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering from inside the walled compounds. Children are responsible for this. No one tells them to do it. They make flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and one or two climb on to a wall and hold the flag between them, silently. They do it, believing they will tell the world.

But the world kow-tows to Olmert and his fellow ethnic cleansers, pictured above at the World Zionist Conference in Jerusalem today. The idiotic US Congress, against the objections of John Sununu and Henry Hyde seek to pass resolutions which are blatantly despicable lies:

"Whereas this year marks the 39th year that Jerusalem has been administered as a unified city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected."

The day started out well. CNN featured a Palestinian family on World Refugee Day.

I should have known better.

People of Sderot, living on the ethnically cleansed village of Najd, called for their government to do more. Five people from Sderot have been killed in five years from rockets fired by Palestinians. People of Sderot, rest well tonight.

Memory eternal, Needa and Mohammed.

The plight of the longest suffering and largest refugee population in the world, totals 4,255,120 through 31 March 2006, according to United Nations Relief and Works Association (UNRWA) records. However, if one includes unregistered refugees the figure for refugees from 1948 alone is 6,400,000, according to Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, an expert on Palestine's refugees. Today seventy-five percent of Palestinians are refugees. Palestinian refugees living in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan do not fall under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), hence are sometimes mistakenly not referred to as the oldest and largest refugee population in the world.

Israelis like to talk about reality and CNN's Paula Hancocks, bantering with Shihab Rantissi, said today that the Israel government and the US government have stated that right of return for Palestine's refugees will "never happen."

However, Abu Sitta talks about the Palestinian refugees' reality: "There is a reality that the refugees have never given up, nor will they give up, their right to return home. There is a reality that 97% of them are within 100 km of their homes, 50% within 40 km and many are within sight of their homes. The reality is, in spite of wars, raids, occupation and Israeli brutal policies, they have not surrendered or given up, all three generations of them."

Certainly the Abu-Akar family featured today by Paula Hancocks on CNN doesn't share Israel's reality. And so it was heartening to see this family from D'heishe Refugee Camp featured by Hancocks on CNN's World News throughout the day. Hancocks interviewed sixty-three year old patriarch Abu Nidal Abu-Akar, provider for an extended family of sixteen. He works two jobs, a furniture painter by day, and a gas station attendant at night. Abu-Akar, a distinguished looking man, tells Hancocks that his sons are in jail. He points to a picture and says, "It reminds me of my land and suffering I experienced. This picture of my land reminds me of my history," he continues. Um Nidal, Abu-Akar's wife, says "Inshallah" (God willing), she has faith that if not she and Abu Nidal, her children will return to their home.

CNN reminds us that on this day of refugees, there is no cause for celebration; however, it is hopeful that a Palestinian family is featured throughout the day in the mainstream media. In a preceding feature, President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, said that former president's Charles Taylor's trial before the World Court will "enable [us] to put the ugly past behind us." She noted that of 233,00 Liberian refugees, all but 69,000 have returned home from Sierra Leone.

And so will the Palestinian refugees return home. The noble nature informing their efforts for implementation of the inalienable right to return to their personal property and native villages and towns, will put the ugly past meted out by political Zionism's enforcers behind them. Or as an internal refugee from the ethnically cleansed village from Bir'im says:

Your people, Bir'im have not died
And will not forsake a grain of sand from you
As long as you have men like these
As long as you have men like these
Who continually strive for justice
they do not care what others may say
And they always say to the oppressor
Our Bir'im is more precious than money.
And the return will never disappear
We will return contented
We will forget the bitter days.

My response to Scott Wilson's Washington Post feature "Jerusalem Finding 'Oxygen' In Revival of Creative Arts," June 19

Another 'putting a good face on Israel story.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800737.html

Dear Editor:

Although Russian immigrant artists to Israel may be "oxygenated" by a revival of creative arts in Jerusalem, Palestinian Jerusalemites are left gasping for breath. According to the suppressed EU Report on East Jerusalem: "When the [separation] barrier is completed, Israel will control all access to East Jerusalem, cutting off its Palestinian satellite cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah, and the West Bank beyond." Not the makings for "a country that's fun to live in" or to breathe in for its non-Jewish inhabitants.

http://www.jerusalemites.org/articles/english/Dec2005/13.htm

Olmert's Risky Security Quest

My response to Jim Hoagland's "Olmert's Risky Security Quest," which appeared today in the Washington Post.

Dear Editor:

Israel has dealt with the Palestinian "threat to Israel" by deliberate ethnic cleansing in 1948. Israel has dealt with the Palestinian "threat to Israel" by refusing residency within Israel to Palestinian spouses from the occupied territories who wish to marry Palestinians in Israel. Israel has dealt with the Palestinian "threat to Israel" by shooting refugees who tried to return to their personal property in the 1950's. Israel has dealt with the Palestinian "threat to Israel" with hugely subsidized efforts to whisk Jews from all over the world to immigrate to Israel. Israel has dealt with the Palestinian "threat to Israel" by denying that there is such a thing as a Palestinian. That didn't work, nor will Olmert's cheerleading for civil war ultimately succeed in removing the "threat." The dismantling of this racist state founded upon ethnic cleansing and the ashes of 530 demolished villages should neither be threatening nor cause for alarm for Europe and the US, rather recognized as the only way toward peace.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/16/AR2006061601557.html

My response to Steven Erlanger's "4 Months Into Aid Cutoff, Gazans Barely Scrape By"

Dear Editor:

Steven Erlanger writes that seventy percent of Gaza's residents are refugees and poignantly conveys the latest plight of the Palestinians, selling gold and even alluding to a father, no longer able to provide a dime allowance for his children, contemplating suicide. This deadly game waged by Israel is becoming ludicrous: what does a forced submission from starving people of Israel's "right" to exist on the refugees' stolen personal property mean anyway?

As if Congressmen paying attention to some transplanted American fool, Justus Weiner, to Israel about Muslim-Christian Palestinian relations wasn't enough, a man who wrote a book in which his lies were refuted by people he interviewed, the book in which he set out to prove that Edward Said was not Palestinian, we now have the usual suspects co-sponsoring another idiotic resolution centering around a concept that has come and gone and come again in order to suit Israel's propaganda agenda.

I read about this in the New York Post. Abby Wisse Schachter informs us in her story riddled with lies that Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan) are putting together yet another nutty resolution:

"As Nadler put it in a press release, 'When the Middle East peace process is discussed, Palestinian refugees are often addressed. However, Jewish refugees [from the 1948 war, when the Arab states attacked the just-declared state of Israel] outnumbered Palestinian refugees, and their forced exile from Arab lands must not be omitted from public discussion on the peace process. It is simply not right to recognize the rights of Palestinian refugees without recognizing the rights of Jewish refugees,' said Nadler."

Schachter explains: "Under the resolutions, when the subject of Middle East refugees is raised at, say, the United Nations, U.S. representatives must ensure 'that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees is matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees, as a matter of law and equity.'"

Nadler gets big bucks from AIPAC to shill for Israel and make our Congress a laughingstock.

In the late seventies World Organization of Jews From Arab Countries tried to push the concept of "Jewish refugees," but Arab Jews, proud Zionists, weren't having any of it.

Yehouda Shenhav in "Hitching A Ride on A Magic Carpet," quotes several:

"Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: 'We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations.'

"Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: 'I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists.'

"Ran Cohen stated emphatically: 'I have this to say: I am not a refugee.' He added: 'I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee.'"

Schachter lies with the best of them: "Jews who had lived for generations in countries like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Morocco and Libya were made to leave their birth countries as soon as Israel was declared."

She also makes a very ignorant statement in reference to whom the resolution represents: "Specifically, non-Palestinian Middle East refugees - Jews and Christians." Does she not know that about fifteen percent of Palestinians are Christian?

Shenhav writes: "The history of the 'Mizrahi aliyah' (immigration to Israel) is complex, and cannot be subsumed within a facile explanation. Many of the newcomers lost considerable property, and there can be no question that they should be allowed to submit individual property claims against Arab states (up to the present day, the State of Israel and WOJAC have blocked the submission of claims on this basis)."

Of course its in the interests of the state of Israel to block submission of individual property claims; imagine if it adhered to UN Resolution 194 and paid claims for the ninety-two percent of Palestine it confiscated from its individual personal property owners.

Schachter's bold lie is also countered by Naim Giladi. Giladi prefaces his article, "The Jews of Iraq": "I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called 'cruel Zionism.' I write about it because I was part of it."

WOJAC has been replaced by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, the organization pushing this resolution. The following congressmen, who in addition to favoring starving the Palestinians until they recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, support this resolution: Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Reps. Michael Ferguson (R-N.J.), Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.).

In Route 181 an Arab Jew who immigrated from Morocco talks about how well she got along with her Arab Muslim neighbors. She laments that she ever came to Israel. Surely, if Arab Jews who are longing for their homelands in Arab countries wish to return, they should by all means. It is their inalienable right: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."

So let your people go home already.

As Sam Bahour wrote today,"We have now seen it all."

"Congressmen Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Joseph Crowley (D-NY) are soliciting cosponsors for a bill addressing “the systematic destruction” of the Palestinian Christian community by the Palestinian Authority (PA)."

Yeah, right. And thanks for your concern. Where was your concern when the Israeli storm troopers shot and killed Johnny Thaljieh, a Greek Orthodox altar boy, while he was hanging around in front of his uncle's shop? And where was your concern when Christine Sa'ada, a little Christian girl, was 'collateral' damage from an extrajudicial assasination? Oh, and where was your concern when Kamal Nasser, a fine poet, a friend of my dad's, was knocked off in Beirut years ago by none other than Ehud Barak in drag? And where was your concern when Israel's stormtroopers shot at the statue of the Virgin Mary in Bethelehem? Or destroyed an ancient sixth century church? Or stole land from my cousin's Christian village, Beit Jala, for the so-called Jewish 'neighborhood' Gilo? AIPAC must have greased your palms considerably, boys. Well, for your edification, although I'm not sure if it's worth it, here is a real, live Palestinian Christian on the matter. I'm of the school that Palestinians should speak about themselves, not bought off congressmen, not students of the "Orient," and most definitely not transplanted European and American "Israelis":

“We are disappointed by the resolution drafted by Congressman McCaul and Congressman Crowley purporting to act on our behalf. The resolution seriously misrepresents the situation facing Christians in the Holy Land...

"We have contacted the highest officials in the Catholic and Evangelical Churches in the US and in the Holy Land and they strongly oppose this resolution. We understand that the resolution was drafted without consulting Christians living in the region or local Christian organizations. The resolution grossly misleads the Congress as to the real threat that faces our community." Open Bethlehem’s chief executive Leila Sansour, a Christian from Bethlehem

Patriarchs Atalla Hanna, Michael Sabbah and Reverend Mitri Raheb,Canon Naim Ateek, and other religious leaders in Palestine don't have a problem with the Palestine Authority's relations with Palestine's Christians.

So who did these guys consult? None other than Justus Weiner. Remember him. The schill for Israel who wrote a book that said that Edward Said wasn't Palestinian? Thank God he is the champion of Palestinian Christians. I am so touched. God has answered my prayers for another appearance of the savior. Honestly, could we have a resolution against stupidity in Congress? Or would that be too time consuming?

According to Churches for Middle East Peace: "What information is the basis for the McCaul/Crowley resolution? The research that forms the basis of the resolution was conducted by Professor Justus Weiner, an American/Israeli academic who is a scholar at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in Israel. His research includes little or no input from the local indigenous Palestinian Christians--- Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran communicants, and has significant inaccuracies, exaggerated conclusions and major omissions."

CMEP is very Christian in their assessment of Weiner.

But jokers like these congressmen, and their supporters, those great advocates for the Palestinians (their concern for Christians is touching; as for the rest, they may starve), including Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Connie Mack (R-FL), Mike Pence (R-IN), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Henry Brown (R-SC), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Madeleine Bordallo (D-GU), Mark Souder (R-IN), John Carter (R-TX), Thomas Tancredo (R-CO), and Steve Chabot (R-OH) make me want to express myself in a very un-christian manner.

What you can do and more information here from Churches for Middle East Peace.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/14812947.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_world

HeraldEd@herald.com

Dear Editor,

One underestimates the Palestinians by assuming that current divisions will lead to civil war. Palestinians have remained steadfast in demanding their universal human rights despite Zionist immigration and colonisation beginning in the late 1800's, the Catastrophe of 1948 which resulted in expulsion of seventy-five percent of Palestine's population and demolition of over five hundred of its villages, the occupation of 1967, the tragedy of Beirut in 1982, Israel's breaking of bones during the first intifada; Israel's destruction of infrastructure in 2002 and the whole host of state sponsored atrocities of the second intifada, including four thousand deaths, land confiscation, prison-like conditions, and barbaric uprootings of olive trees, both symbol and source of Palestinian life. In light of this steadfastness, which in Arabic is 'sumud,' there is no reason to assume that Palestinians will break any time soon.

letters@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-miller14jun14,0,3096679.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Dear Editor:

While Abbas' motivation for the referendum is not entirely clear, Aaron David Miller's sophistry is quite apparent. Stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country," yet Miller suggests that the Palestinian Prisoners' Document's advocacy for implementation of an inalienable right is extreme. And what's sacrosanct about Israel's "right" to exist? Israel demolished over five hundred villages, depopulated 570 of them, and refuses to let people return to their personal property. Miller's belief that the affected should now affirm Israel's "right" to exist is analogous to the rapist's victim praising the criminal's act.

Yahoo Main page and Google News thought IOF's denial of responsibility for the beach killings was more important than today's carnage courtesy the "light unto the nations." picture from Sabbah's Blog

Predictably the US media fails to recognize the deaths of Palestinian children as the report that the IOF didn't do it from the folks who wreaked havoc in "the land without a people for a people without a land" headlines google news and yahoo main pages. There is no headline on either page about the eleven Palestinians who were killed by Israel's missiles today.

What our media, enthralled by Israel's spin doctors, doesn't want its readers to see Sabbah provides...death in the concrete (not for the faint hearted).

At 10:30 PM in Germany; however, one could glance at Yahoo's main page news and be totally oblivous to today's carnage--the headlines:

• Iraq PM vows 'no mercy' in security crackdown
• Israel blames Hamas mine for beach blast
• Bush visit may have downside for al-Maliki
• U.S. recognizes Montenegro's independence
• Homeland Security red tape delays weddings
• Airbus announces delay in A380 deliveries
• EPA to phase out use of common pesticide
• U.S. vows to regroup after World Cup loss

And Google runs the same headline now:

"Israel Blames Hamas Mine for Beach Blast."

And this is on its main news page:

Metro Toronto
Israel denies responsibility for Gaza beach deaths
Reuters - 2 hours ago
By Luke Baker. JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel denied responsibility on Tuesday for an explosion on a Gaza beach last week that killed seven Palestinian civilians and led militant group Hamas to call off a 16-month-old truce. ...
Beach deaths 'not Israel's fault' BBC Bulgaria
Gaza at risk of erupting into civil war The Age

Not even a mention of the medics, kids, and other civilians who Israel killed today.

So, the spin is effective; with scant evidence provided in the accompanying stories, other than that "shrapnel" taken from the victims currently being treated in Israeli hospitals doesn't match Israeli shrapnel, the seed is planted in the minds of many Americans, who won't look at the stories, or who are oblivious of Israel's bloody history, that Hamas blew up its own people.

Israel's record speaks for itself. Israel has perpetuated massacres, expulsions, ethnic cleansings, demolitions, well poisonings; Israel shot at refugees returning to their homes in the late 40's and 50's; Ninety-three percent of Palestine was confiscated for 1948 Israel, and Israel continues to murder and lie about it; these fine folks who had everyone going for awhile that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land, and who still have the mainstream media perpetuating their latest in a long line of murderous spin.

UPDATE: Chris McGreal has a story countering the Israeli Spin in today's late afternoon Guardian. Excerpt:

"All the evidence points to the fact that it couldn't have been a mine," said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon expert on battlefields who led the US military's battle damage assessment team in Kosovo and worked for its intelligence wing, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"You have the crater size, the shrapnel, the types of injuries, their location on the bodies. That all points to a shell dropping from the sky not explosives under the sand...

"But after investigating the scene, Mr Garlasco concluded that the army's explanation is deeply flawed. Among the new shrapnel he collected at the scene of the deaths is a piece stamped with the figures: 155MM.

"'The 155mm shell is what Israel uses in the howitzers that regularly shell northern Gaza,' he said."

An excerpt from Dr. Mona El-Farra's From Gaza With Love,

Gaza: On the Beach

It is Friday and Hoda’s family like other Palestinians, were trying to enjoy a little fun. A moment’s escape from the hardship of daily life... economic sanctions from Israel, the EU, and US, military siege, 4 months with no salaries for more than
160, 000 government employees, a Palestinian economy already vulnerable and
impoverished, the high unemployment rate, unsettled political situation,
factional interclashes, vulnerable health services, lack of vital medications,
widespread psychological problems, and child malnutrition.
The moment shattered. An Israeli gunship suddenly fired at random against the
beach, while army tanks fired artillery shells and Apache helicopters crossed
the sky. 40 civilians were injured, 10 killed.

In the Hospital

Whole families were destroyed in minutes, but all I heard was “the Israeli army
will investigate the incident”. American officials commented on the right of
Israel to defend its security!!!!!!!!!

I personally have no comment.
Like many of us in Gaza, I burst into tears. Some
of my collegues at the hospital could not go to the child’s room. The camera
man collapsed at the scene.

Friends

Last week while I was at Al Awda hospital(north of gaza), I visited the health
emergency crew, who were targeted while evacuating the dead bodies of
resistance fighters...

I felt that this was one of the normal practices of the Israeli
army, to attack health emergency teams.

now I am wondering, is it our
destiny as people living under occupation, to deal with abnormal practices as
if they were settled normal facts??

I feel that no place in Gaza is safe. I mentioned that phrase in one of my press
releases at the beginning of the intifada, and I still feel the same way.

letters@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/middleeast/11mideast.html?th&emc=th

Dear Editor,

Steven Erlanger writes "eight Palestinians were killed on a Gaza beach (June 11), apparently by an errant Israeli shell," and then proceeds to write: "The army believes that a shell fell short or that a dud, previously fired, exploded."

Erlanger did not quote Palestinian eyewitnesses in the story. Palestine Center for Human Rights, Gaza reports the following:

"An Israeli naval boat stationed off the coast of Beit Lahya fired seven successive artillery shells at civilians on the beach in the Waha area, north of Beit Lahya. The shells landed on the beach, which had been crowded with civilian men, women and children at the time."

Reporting further PCHR writes: "Israeli television Channel 2 broadcast footage of the Israeli boat firing the shells at the beach, with one of the navy soldiers scanning the beach with binoculars; thus indicating that the crime had been perpetrated with a premeditated intent to kill."

No need for Erlanger to provide a forum for excusing Israel's brutality. Erlanger quotes Israeli General Aviv Kochavi who speaks of a false 'equivalence' but is brutally honest in his assessment of Israel's disproportionate attack: "The message we are trying to convey, you can call it deterrence, but it's, 'Ladies and gentlemen, there is an equivalence here: so long as you shoot Qassams at us, we'll shoot artillery at you.' "

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2006/56-2006.htm

Moi taped the wrenching Al-Jazeera video of Hadil screaming "yaaaabaaaaa," which means daddy. My reaction is here and Khalid Amayreh's comment is here. Other reactions to the Bahr al-Sudaniya massacre in Gaza:

We call on the Palestinian Authority to prevent all acts of terrorism, including the firing of missiles and rockets from Gaza. Sean McCormack, Spokesman, US Department of State

I cannot get her voice out of my head. Her screams pierced through my body and soul as she began to fathom the fate of her father lying lifelessly in front of her. "Yaaaabaaaa" means "Daaaaddyyyy". Her Daddy is no more. Her Mommy is no more. Her siblings are no more.
Moi, My Occupied Territory

We called my Aunt, who works with the al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza. She was hysterical, and this is a woman who seldom loses her grip.

She just spoke of blood and body parts, and how one of the cameramen at the hospital couldn't hold it together and dropped his camera as he was filming after he heard a bloodied, batterd girl crying out for her father.

I feel so useless being here, so impotent and angered, and I just want to cry and scream at once. After a week of energizing talks, in which I really felt I could contribute a little bit by informing people this happens. Laila El-Haddad, Raising Yousuf

I just read of this horrible massacre of children on the beach, and my heart sank, and my tears fell. You are not alone in feeling impotent- we feel it in America, too, as we cannot stop our government from facilitating these inhuman Israeli attacks that go against every American principle. I am so sorry for American complicity in these attacks, and will continue to fight to change our foreign policy to one that reflects American values, of fairness and justice for all people, including Palestinians and Iraqis. Comment from Liz on Laila's Blog

A tear tried to escape from my eye, but I am a man, and men do not cry… men fight.Am I a man? I do not know…

Watching that small Palestinian girl on the T.V. arose doubts in my mind… Am I a human being? What did I do after watching her? I only tried to get out her image from my soul but could not.

She was with her mother, father, and sisters in a picnic at Gaza beach. They were setting together… laughing… playing… Suddenly, an "Act of Defense" against this laugh landed on them turning the laughing faces into bloody dead parts…The girl ran from the body of her mother to that of her father trying to wake them… her scream pierced my heart…

I feel so useless, worthless… I feel angry. Khaled Nazzal, Blue Fog

The Israelis have murdered
The family of a hard
Working Gaza farmer
The Israelis have caused
Destruction In our world again
A new massacre on the Gaza Beach Hayam, Palestine Free Voice

The video is heart breaking, full of scenes which you will NEVER, I repeat, you will NEVER see in your media, and I promise you, you will NEVER forget.

While watching all this and more on Palestine TV and Aljazeera, I, my wife and all my kids, all started crying. We could not stand the scene of the wounded and dead kids, women and elders, and especially the girl you see in this video, running on beach after she lost her mind when she saw the dead body of her father laying on beach. Haitham Sabbah, Sabbah's Blog

they were shot at from the sea and the air. why?! is swimming now deemed a threat to israel? i asked how many more mornings would i have to wake up to this kind of news, more importantly- how many more palestinians have to die this way, why must innocent people continue to be killed? why doenst anyone do something, why dont i do something, what can i do anyway? my heart go out to everyone- the victims, their families.....i dont know what i would say them? pat them on the back and say its ok? its not ok- at all. comfort them and tell them i know how they feel? i dont know how the feel- i dont know how it feels to lose a mother a father a sibling to idf brutatlity. so what do i say to them, as a palestinian living here in the states, that is free to go anywhere she wants- she can go to the mall and buy whatever and the only thing that would delay her is traffic on the highway- not a checkpoint. do i go back and express my solidarity with them by living with them- well i cant even do that- i cant stay longer than three months at a time. so what do i say, or what do i do, to make it better? i really dont know. Al-Falasteenyia

PCHR’s preliminary investigation indicates that the attack which killed seven members of the same family took place at approximately 16:40 on Friday, 9 June 2006. An Israeli naval boat stationed off the coast of Beit Lahya fired seven successive artillery shells at civilians on the beach in the Waha area, north of Beit Lahya. The shells landed on the beach, which had been crowded with civilian men, women and children at the time. Seven civilians from the same family (father, mother and five children) were killed. A sixth child from the same family escaped death but was seen on television crying hysterically beside her father’s body. A further thirty-two civilians, including thirteen children, were injured. Two of the injured sustained serious wounds.

The family members killed in the attack were:
- Ali Issa Ghalya (49); his wife
- Ra’eesa Ghalya (35); and their children:
- Haitham (1);
- Hanadi (2);
- Sabrin (4);
- Ilham (15); and
- Alia (17).

Israeli television Channel 2 broadcast footage of the Israeli boat firing the shells at the beach, with one of the navy soldiers scanning the beach with binoculars; thus indicating that the crime had been perpetrated with a premeditated intent to kill. Palestine Centre For Human Rights

IDF officials said Saturday that even if it turns out eventually that the civilians' death was the result of army artillery , the strike took place in open areas where the Palestinian know that movement is banned. Therefore, they said, this is the unfortunate result of the ongoing war on terror, not an operational failure. ynet news

The Israeli navy decided to stop shelling. For now. I guess to give the Palestinians a chance to collect all body parts, which I hear were blown all over Gaza's beautiful beach.

But not to worry.

The army (or navy in this case) will investigate.

They will investigate why people die when shells land on their heads.

They won't be investigating the toxic level of hatred in people's hearts which allows them to keep killing Palestinians in this way, day in and day out.

They won't be investigating the indifference of the Israeli population to these massacres that are committed in their name and for their security.

They won't be investigating the level the dehumanization of the Palestinians has reached that nowadays nobody cries for their dead.

No, they won't. Amal Amireh, Improvisations: Arab Woman Progressive Voice