Israeli soldiers ran wild in Gaza

Taken from the Toronto Star, Mar 20, 2009
By Oakland Ross

JERUSALEM–Israeli soldiers killed unarmed Palestinian civilians without provocation or warning and vandalized their property during this country's January offensive in Gaza, say some of the soldiers who fought there.



The soldiers blamed the behaviour on poor discipline, lax rules of engagement, and a low estimation of the value of Palestinian life.

The Israel Defense Forces said it had no prior knowledge of the sometimes shocking comportment of its troops, described by the soldiers themselves in a group discussion last month that followed a course they took at an Israeli college.

The IDF said yesterday it would investigate the accounts, which were published yesterday in the Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Maariv.

Haaretz said it would print additional reports in coming days, recounting more acts of serious misconduct by Israeli soldiers during the Gaza operation.

"We have the most moral army in the world," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio yesterday.

"I say to you that, from the chief of staff down to the last soldier, the most moral army in the world stands ready to take orders from the government of Israel. I have no doubt that every incident will be individually examined."

In one incident, Israeli soldiers apparently herded a Palestinian family into a single room of their house and left them there, while the troops took positions upstairs and also set up a sniper's post on the roof.

Several days later, soldiers instructed the family to leave the house, directing them to depart the area by heading to the right. They neglected to inform the sharpshooter on the roof what they were doing.

One mother and her two children mistakenly turned to the left and were promptly shot dead by the rooftop sniper.

"He shot them straight away," the squad leader said during the college discussion.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because, after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given."

The same squad leader reported a general attitude of contempt for Palestinian civilians, a mindset that enabled Israeli soldiers to engage in callous or sometimes lethal behaviour.

"I don't know how to describe it," he said. "The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers.

"So, as far as they are concerned, they can justify it that way."

In another incident, a company commander is said to have ordered his troops to shoot and kill an elderly woman walking past them at a distance of about 100 metres.

"You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it – to write `Death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can," said a squad leader who opposed the order.

"I think this is the main thing: to understand just how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

Other soldiers described widespread abuses of property.

"We would throw everything out the windows to make room and order," said one soldier.

"Everything in the house was tossed out the windows – refrigerators, plates, furniture. The order was to throw all of the house's contents outside."

Human rights groups have harshly criticized the Israeli military for its conduct of the war in Gaza – including the use of white phosphorus, a chemical harmful to humans – but the reports published here yesterday were the first documented accounts by Israeli soldiers themselves about widespread abuses.

According to the most recent Palestinian figures, 1,417 Gazans died during the three-week conflict, more than 920 of them civilians.

At least one Israeli organization, the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, puts the civilian death toll much lower.

The college course at which the soldiers related their experiences was taught by Danny Zamir, who said he was "shocked" by what he heard and decided to publish a transcript of the discussion in a newsletter for course graduates.

He told Haaretz he believed the military would conduct a serious examination of the reports.

"They do not intend to avoid responsibility," he said.

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The Israeli's may blame individual soldiers being indiscipline but it is far from the truth. We have seen many times this sort of action in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon and within Israel - this is not the act of individual soldiers - this is an organised crime by the government. It is great that a pro Israeli newspaper like Haaretz is doing the fact find - just wish our own media in the west would publish reports that were fair and accurate rather than Israeli propaganda.

here's more news...

UN envoy sees Israeli war crimes in Gaza
United Nations human rights investigator said that Israel's massive military assault on densely populated Gaza appeared to constitute a grave war crime.

Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the Geneva Conventions required warring forces to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians.

"If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law," Falk said.

"On the basis of the preliminary evidence available, there is reason to reach this conclusion," he wrote in an annual report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council.

Falk gave the same death toll from Israel's offensive - 1,434 Palestinians, including 960 civilians - as the Palestinian human rights centre.

Israel, which lost 13 people during the war, disputes the figures and has accused Hamas militants in Gaza of using civilians as human shields during the conflict.

Falk called for an independent experts group to be set up to probe possible war crimes committed by both Israeli forces and Hamas.

Violations included Israel's alleged targeting of schools, mosques and ambulances during the December 27-January 18 offensive and its use of weapons including white phosphorus, as well as Hamas firing of rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel.

Falk said that Israel's blockade of the coastal strip of 1.5 million people violated the Geneva Conventions, which he said suggested further war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

The aggression was not legally justified and may represent a crime against peace - a principle established at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals, according to the American law professor who serves as the Human Rights Council's independent investigator.

He further suggested that the Security Council might set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal to establish accountability for war crimes in Gaza, noting Israel has not signed the Rome statutes establishing the International Criminal Court.

The question is will the UN and the rest of the world do anything baout it?

Israel takes control of more West Bank land

Taken from Yahoo News, 16 February 2009
By Karin Laub, Associated Press

JERUSALEM – Israel has taken control of a large chunk of land near a prominent West Bank settlement, paving the way for the possible construction of 2,500 settlement homes, officials said Monday, in a new challenge to Mideast peacemaking.

Successive Israeli governments have broken promises to the United States to halt settlement expansion, defined by Washington as an obstacle to peace. Ongoing expansion is likely to create friction not only with the Palestinians, but with President Barack Obama, whose Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, has long pushed for a settlement freeze. Obama has said he'd get involved quickly in Mideast peace efforts.

The composition of Israel's next government is not clear yet following inconclusive elections last week. However, right-wing parties are given a better chance to form a ruling coalition, with hardline leader Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm.

Netanyahu supports settlement expansion and has derided peace talks with the Palestinians as a waste of time, saying he would focus instead of trying to improve the Palestinian economy. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has dismissed Netanyahu's approach as a non-starter, and his aides said recently that peace talks can only resume after a settlement freeze.

At the center of the latest expansion plans is Efrat, a settlement of about 1,600 families south of Jerusalem.

The mayor of Efrat, Oded Revivi, said the Israeli military designated 425 acres (172 hectares) near Efrat as so-called state land two weeks ago at the end of a lengthy appeals process. He said nine appeals were filed by Palestinian landowners, adding that eight were rejected and one was upheld.

Revivi said Efrat plans to build 2,500 homes on that land, but that several steps of government approval would still be needed before construction could begin — a process that could take years. Eventually, Efrat is to grow to a city of 30,000 people, he said.


The settlement is situated in one of the three major settlement blocs that Israel expects to hold on to in any final peace deal. Palestinian reaction to the latest development was not immediately available.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's peace partner, warned that continued settlement expansion would cripple peace talks.


"We oppose settlement activity in principle and if the settlement activity doesn't stop, any meetings (with the Israelis) will be worthless," Abbas said.

Nearly 290,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements today, or 95,000 more than in May 2001 when Mitchell first called for a settlement freeze. At the time, he led a fact-finding mission to Israel and the Palestinian territories to find a way to end months of violence and resume peace talks.


Mitchell called on the Palestinians to halt attacks on Israelis and demanded that Israel halt construction in settlements.

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So much for peace efforts if one country deliberately builds more settlements in areas it shouldn't - denying Palestinians places to build their future homes, continously forcing Palestinians off thier homes and into regufee camps - so as to give more places to so called Jews from New York, Moscow, London who have no connection to Israel. No doubt nothing will be done by the US or the UK on this newspiece.

Israel 'completes Gaza troop withdrawal'

Taken from the Independent, UK, 21 January 2009
By Jeffrey Heller, Reuters

Israel said it completed a troop pullout from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip today, starting its relationship with US President Barack Obama by quitting Palestinian land devastated by its 22-day offensive.

"As of this morning, the last of the Israel Defence Forces soldiers have left the Gaza Strip and the forces have deployed outside of Gaza and are prepared for any occurrences," an army spokesman said, about 13 hours after Obama's inauguration.

Israel had withdrawn most of its forces before Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, in a move analysts saw as an attempt to avoid any early tensions with his administration that could cloud the start of a new era in a key alliance.

Obama's predecessor, George Bush, endorsed Israel's right to defend itself against rocket fire by the Gaza Strip's ruling Hamas Islamists. Obama, before taking office, declined to comment in detail on the Gaza crisis.

Israel's attacks in an offensive it launched on Dec. 27 killed some 1,300 Palestinians and made thousands homeless. Gaza medical officials said the Palestinian dead included at least 700 civilians. Israel says hundreds of militants died.

Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians, hit by cross-border rocket fire, were killed in the conflict.

The United Nations, whose secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, toured Gaza's rubble-strewn streets on Tuesday and described the destruction he witnessed as heartbreaking, has estimated some $330 million is needed for urgent aid in the coastal enclave.

Reconstruction, if it can be launched in light of the frost between Hamas and the West, may cost close to $2 billion, according to Palestinian and international estimates.

Although aid agencies said they planned a massive inflow of supplies through Israeli crossings, help will be complicated by the Western boycott of Hamas as a "terrorist" organisation and an Israeli blockade on many items, including building materials, that can be used to make weapons.

Hamas, announcing a ceasefire on Sunday - hours after an Israeli-declared truce went into effect - had demanded Israeli troops quit the territory within a week.

The group held what it termed victory rallies in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, but many Palestinians have returned to their homes only to find they had been reduced to piles of rubble.

"We've won the war. But we've lost everything," said Nabil Sultan, commenting on Hamas's V for Victory signs as he surveyed the wreckage of his home on the outskirts of the city of Gaza. "This was my house," he shrugged, by a pile of smashed concrete.

In his inaugural speech, Obama promised to reach out to Muslims worldwide and "seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect".

Sources familiar with the matter said in Washington that Obama would move quickly to name a Middle East envoy, possibly former Sen. George Mitchell, who had tried on behalf of the Clinton and Bush administrations to bring about an end to Israeli-Palestinian violence.

In a 2001 report, Mitchell called for a freeze in the construction of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land and for the Palestinians, who were waging an uprising, to stop attacks on Israelis.

Hailing Obama's election as "a change of historic significance", Israeli President Shimon Peres said: "What can be expected of the new president is a winning team to really rout violence from the Middle East and move the peace process forward."

Bush's efforts, late in his second term, to reach at least a framework peace deal in renewed talks between Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, fell short of any agreement.

Immediate diplomatic steps were likely to focus on turning the Gaza truce into a long-term ceasefire, and more comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace moves would have to await the outcome of Israel's Feb. 19 parliamentary election.

Hamas has said it was continuing talks in Cairo over Egypt's proposal for a deal that would guarantee the reopening of Gaza border crossings, including a terminal on the Egyptian frontier that had served as the territory's main exit to the outside world.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared his government's mission accomplished - noting a flurry of diplomatic efforts by the United States, Egypt and European countries to prevent Hamas rearming.

That would mean as yet unspecified measures to stop Hamas smuggling weapons across the Egypt-Gaza frontier, a sensitive matter given Cairo's past efforts to play down its scope.
Iran, accused by Israel of supplying arms to Hamas militants, said on Wednesday that resistance groups around the world like those in the Gaza Strip had the right to have access to weapons to fight against "colonialists".

"A government or a people who would like to defend themselves, it is very natural they will do their utmost to get weapons from whatever place possible," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in a speech on the conflict in Gaza.

British Jews attacked for pro-Gaza solidarity

Taken from the Independent, UK, 18 January 2009
By Emily Dugan

British Jews have been attacked for expressing support for Palestinians suffering under Israeli military strikes in Gaza. Police confirmed yesterday that they have provided protection to a number of people believed to be victims of UK-based Zionist extremists angered by expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.

Israel's assault on Gaza has prompted a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain, with more than 150 incidents reported by the Community Security Trust (CST), an organisation for the protection of Jews. But the past two weeks have also seen aggression within the Jewish community towards those sympathetic to the plight of Gaza.

Rabbi Elchenon Beck, 39, was among six rabbis expressing support for Gaza's Palestinians who were set upon by a gang of what they allege were Zionists while walking back from opposing rallies outside the Israeli Embassy on 6 January. "They were shouting and pushed someone to the floor, so we called the police," Rabbi Beck said. "All the time they are trying to intimidate us, but we get used to it."

Rabbi Aharon Cohen, a Palestinian sympathiser and member of the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta, had his letter box destroyed by a powerful firework after attending the peace march in Manchester this month.

Mark Gardner, of the CST, said it had not kept records of attacks within the Jewish community, but condemned those using the situation in Israel to justify violence in Britain.

"There's passionate political debate," he said, "but what's vitally important is that it does not spill over so that we become participants in a war by proxy."

We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas

Taken from The Times, UK, December 31, 2008
By William Sieghart

Last week I was in Gaza. While I was there I met a group of 20 or so police officers who were undergoing a course in conflict management. They were eager to know whether foreigners felt safer since Hamas had taken over the Government? Indeed we did, we told them. Without doubt the past 18 months had seen a comparative calm on the streets of Gaza; no gunmen on the streets, no more kidnappings. They smiled with great pride and waved us goodbye.

Less than a week later all of these men were dead, killed by an Israeli rocket at a graduation ceremony. Were they “dangerous Hamas militant gunmen”? No, they were unarmed police officers, public servants killed not in a “militant training camp” but in the same police station in the middle of Gaza City that had been used by the British, the Israelis and Fatah during their periods of rule there.

This distinction is crucial because while the horrific scenes in Gaza and Israel play themselves out on our television screens, a war of words is being fought that is clouding our understanding of the realities on the ground.

Who or what is Hamas, the movement that Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, would like to wipe out as though it were a virus? Why did it win the Palestinian elections and why does it allow rockets to be fired into Israel? The story of Hamas over the past three years reveals how the Israeli, US and UK governments' misunderstanding of this Islamist movement has led us to the brutal and desperate situation that we are in now.

The story begins nearly three years ago when Change and Reform - Hamas's political party - unexpectedly won the first free and fair elections in the Arab world, on a platform of ending endemic corruption and improving the almost non-existent public services in Gaza and the West Bank. Against a divided opposition this ostensibly religious party impressed the predominantly secular community to win with 42 per cent of the vote.

Palestinians did not vote for Hamas because it was dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel or because it had been responsible for waves of suicide bombings that had killed Israeli citizens. They voted for Hamas because they thought that Fatah, the party of the rejected Government, had failed them. Despite renouncing violence and recognising the state of Israel Fatah had not achieved a Palestinian state. It is crucial to know this to understand the supposed rejectionist position of Hamas. It won't recognise Israel or renounce the right to resist until it is sure of the world's commitment to a just solution to the Palestinian issue.

In the five years that I have been visiting Gaza and the West Bank, I have met hundreds of Hamas politicians and supporters. None of them has professed the goal of Islamising Palestinian society, Taleban-style. Hamas relies on secular voters too much to do that. People still listen to pop music, watch television and women still choose whether to wear the veil or not.

The political leadership of Hamas is probably the most highly qualified in the world. Boasting more than 500 PhDs in its ranks, the majority are middle-class professionals - doctors, dentists, scientists and engineers. Most of its leadership have been educated in our universities and harbour no ideological hatred towards the West. It is a grievance-based movement, dedicated to addressing the injustice done to its people. It has consistently offered a ten-year ceasefire to give breathing space to resolve a conflict that has continued for more than 60 years.

The Bush-Blair response to the Hamas victory in 2006 is the key to today's horror. Instead of accepting the democratically elected Government, they funded an attempt to remove it by force; training and arming groups of Fatah fighters to unseat Hamas militarily and impose a new, unelected government on the Palestinians. Further, 45 Hamas MPs are still being held in Israeli jails.

Six months ago the Israeli Government agreed to an Egyptian- brokered ceasefire with Hamas. In return for a ceasefire, Israel agreed to open the crossing points and allow a free flow of essential supplies in and out of Gaza. The rocket barrages ended but the crossings never fully opened, and the people of Gaza began to starve. This crippling embargo was no reward for peace.

When Westerners ask what is in the mind of Hamas leaders when they order or allow rockets to be fired at Israel they fail to understand the Palestinian position. Two months ago the Israeli Defence Forces broke the ceasefire by entering Gaza and beginning the cycle of killing again. In the Palestinian narrative each round of rocket attacks is a response to Israeli attacks. In the Israeli narrative it is the other way round.

But what does it mean when Mr Barak talks of destroying Hamas? Does it mean killing the 42 per cent of Palestinians who voted for it? Does it mean reoccupying the Gaza strip that Israel withdrew from so painfully three years ago? Or does it mean permanently separating the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, politically and geographically? And for those whose mantra is Israeli security, what sort of threat do the three quarters of a million young people growing up in Gaza with an implacable hatred of those who starve and bomb them pose?

It is said that this conflict is impossible to solve. In fact, it is very simple. The top 1,000 people who run Israel - the politicians, generals and security staff - and the top Palestinian Islamists have never met. Genuine peace will require that these two groups sit down together without preconditions. But the events of the past few days seem to have made this more unlikely than ever. That is the challenge for the new administration in Washington and for its European allies.

William Sieghart is chairman of Forward Thinking, an independent conflict resolution agency

Robert Fisk: Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony

Taken from The Independent, UK, Tuesday, 30 December 2008

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago, when tidal waves of refugees had washed over Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and when a bunch of Arabs kicked out of their property didn't worry the world.

Well, the world should worry now. Crammed into the most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world are a dispossessed people who have been living in refuse and sewage and, for the past six months, in hunger and darkness, and who have been sanctioned by us, the West.

Gaza was always an insurrectionary place. It took two years for Ariel Sharon's bloody "pacification", starting in 1971, to be completed, and Gaza is not going to be tamed now.

Alas for the Palestinians, their most powerful political voice – I'm talking about the late Edward Said, not the corrupt Yassir Arafat (and how the Israelis must miss him now) – is silent and their predicament largely unexplained by their deplorable, foolish spokesmen. "It's the most terrifying place I've ever been in," Said once said of Gaza. "It's a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa."

Of course, it was left to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to admit that "sometimes also civilians pay the price," an argument she would not make, of course, if the fatality statistics were reversed. Indeed, it was instructive yesterday to hear a member of the American Enterprise Institute – faithfully parroting Israel's arguments – defending the outrageous Palestinian death toll by saying that it was "pointless to play the numbers game". Yet if more than 300 Israelis had been killed – against two dead Palestinians – be sure that the "numbers game" and the disproportionate violence would be all too relevant. The simple fact is that Palestinian deaths matter far less than Israeli deaths. True, we know that 180 of the dead were Hamas members. But what of the rest? If the UN's conservative figure of 57 civilian fatalities is correct, the death toll is still a disgrace.

To find both the US and Britain failing to condemn the Israeli onslaught while blaming Hamas is not surprising. US Middle East policy and Israeli policy are now indistinguishable and Gordon Brown is following the same dog-like devotion to the Bush administration as his predecessor.

As usual, the Arab satraps – largely paid and armed by the West – are silent, preposterously calling for an Arab summit on the crisis which will (if it even takes place), appoint an "action committee" to draw up a report which will never be written. For that is the way with the Arab world and its corrupt rulers. As for Hamas, they will, of course, enjoy the discomfiture of the Arab potentates while cynically waiting for Israel to talk to them. Which they will. Indeed, within a few months, we'll be hearing that Israel and Hamas have been having "secret talks" – just as we once did about Israel and the even more corrupt PLO. But by then, the dead will be long buried and we will be facing the next crisis since the last crisis.

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Another brilliant article by Robert Fisk - I wish there were more journalist like him - telling the truth with accurate reporting.

this is an interesting article extracted from Haaretz, 31/12/2008

Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about
By Barak Ravid

Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.

The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike. Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.

Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip. This intelligence-gathering effort brought back information about permanent bases, weapon silos, training camps, the homes of senior officials and coordinates for other facilities. The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops.

So it was all pre-planned including killing civilians - women and children included!

Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling

Taken from The Independent, Monday, 29 December 2008

The world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide vests or rockets. Israeli leaders have convinced themselves that the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave.

They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall – as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 – there is nowhere to hide.

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, "We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?" It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: "The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn't have been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions - but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine.

So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas's sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to "pressure" its people to reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food, fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the Gazans were being "put on a diet". According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people. The United Nations says poverty has reached an "unprecedented level." When I was last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling around the streets, scavenging for food.

It was in this context – under a collective punishment designed to topple a democracy – that some forces within Gaza did something immoral: they fired Qassam rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities. These rockets have killed 16 Israeli citizens. This is abhorrent: targeting civilians is always murder. But it is hypocritical for the Israeli government to claim now to speak out for the safety of civilians when it has been terrorising civilians as a matter of state policy.

The American and European governments are responding with a lop-sidedness that ignores these realities. They say that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate while under rocket fire, but they demand that the Palestinians do so under siege in Gaza and violent military occupation in the West Bank.

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.

The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on "their" side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them.

The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli writer Larry Derfner. He says: "Israel's war with Gaza has to be the most one-sided on earth... If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas's court – it is in ours."

Abbas: Israel must free all 11,000 Palestinian prisoners

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 15/12/2008
By Tomer Zarchin

Israel on Monday released 227 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to mark the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), which marks the end of the hajj pilgrimage.

Of the prisoners, 209 were transferred from Ofer Prison, near Jerusalem, to the Beituniya checkpoint in the West Bank. The remaining 18 prisoners were to be transferred from Shikma Prison in the Negev, to the Erez checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border. At his office in Ramallah, Abbas greeted each of the 209 prisoners released to the West Bank individually with kisses on the cheeks, but said Israel should release all Palestinians it was holding.

"Our happiness will not be complete until all of the 11,000 prisoners are freed," he said. "We promise you we will work to free all prisoners from all factions."

Hundreds of relatives and supporters waited on the Palestinian side of the Beitunia checkpoint, waving Palestinian and yellow flags of Abbas' secular Fatah movement and carrying posters of late Fatah leader Yasser Arafat. The two Palestinian territories have divided leadership.

Gaza is ruled by the militant Hamas organization, which refuses to recognize Israel; the West Bank territories are largely under the control of Abbas and his Fatah organization, which is engaged in a sporadic peace process with Israel.

"We hope these releases will be seen as an important confidence-building measure designed to strengthen the trust and the confidence in the [peace] negotiations," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The Supreme Court gave a green light Monday morning for the release, hours after Justice Elyakim Rubinstein ordered that the state must first reply to a petition against it. The petitioners had argued that freeing jailed Palestinians placed the region at risk of renewed conflagration.

According to prosecutors, an examination of the prisoners listed for release showed that none had been charged with causing injury to Israelis, Army Radio reported. As a matter of general precedent, the courts rarely intervene with the government's decisions on matters of policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The prisoners being freed are a fraction of the 11,000 Palestinians held by Israel. Their release was originally due to take place last week, during Eid.

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So 11,000 prisoners held by illegal occupation. Innocent people help captive in Israeli cells, without trial, some abducted by the Israeli army not hust in Palestine but also from Lebanon - yet no one bats an eye lid on why they have been held captive and if they are so dangerous why have they been released as a gesture of goodwill. There rae not terrorist they are innocent people - the real terrorist are the illegal occupiers running the State of Israel.

UN accuses Israel of punishing aid workers

Taken from The Independent, UK, 1 December 2008
By Anne Penketh

The UN official responsible for the welfare of 4.6 million Palestinian refugees has accused Israel of extending its punishment of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip to include international humanitarian staff.

Karen AbuZayd, who is based in Gaza City, said that Israeli authorities have within the past month stopped UN staff based in Gaza from using the diplomatic pouch. They gave no reason for the move, which is a clear breach of international law.

“We can’t send the mail out or get any mail in. I don’t think they could give a reason because there is no way they could justify it,” said Mrs AbuZayd, an American who is commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA is the main provider of basic services – such as education and health – to registered Palestine refugees, including 1.1 million in Gaza.

Two weeks ago the Israelis issued for the first time a written list of goods that cannot be sent into Gaza for UN humanitarian needs, she said. The list, which has baffled UN officials, includes spices, kitchenware, glassware, yarn and paper.

“They are punishing the international community that’s inside,” said Mrs AbuZayd. “For our own office, we are having trouble in keeping it going, because we’re not allowed to bring in spare parts,” she added. UN cars are lying idle for lack of tyres and oil, office photocopiers cannot be mended and computers are not allowed into Gaza. “And we’re supposed to have privileges and immunities,” she added.

As the restrictions have been extended, the international press has been barred from entering Gaza for the past month, and is challenging the Israeli decision in the Supreme Court.

The UNRWA chief officer is to meet the new Israeli co-ordinator, General Amos Gilad, next week to discuss the latest developments. It will be their first meeting since his appointment in September. Until now, the United Nations has privately protested against the decisions but Mrs AbuZayd’s decision to speak out publicly about the crisis is a sign of the level of frustration within the UN.

The Israeli blockade has caused an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza since it was imposed after the election of Hamas in January 2006. But Israel has refused to ease the measures on the ground that Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets on Israel from the territory.

The spokesman for London’s Israeli embassy, Lior Ben-Dor, today said that the restrictions were due to safety concerns. “We can’t operate the checkpoints because we are not willing to risk the lives of Israelis,” he said.best wishes,

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If Israel left the occupied Palestine then there would not be any security issues to ponder about. Palestinians have been suffering for decades, generation after generation by the aggressive Israeli state (who pretends to be the aggrieved). On the same day this story was written, Israel blocked a Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for Palestinians from docking in Gaza. The voyage of the Marwa, which carried food, blankets and powdered milk, was intended to challenge Israel's economic blockade on the Gaza Strip, which has tightened in recent weeks. But as the ship approached Gazan waters at dawn an Israeli naval ship ordered it to turn back.

US charity guilty in Hamas case

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, November 25, 2008

A US court has convicted a Muslim charity and five of its former leaders on 108 charges in the largest "terrorism" financing trial in US history.

The Texas jury reached its verdict on Monday after eight days of deliberations over whether the former Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the largest US Muslim charity, had given money to the Palestinian group Hamas.

The charity, which was shut down seven years ago, was accused of giving more than $12m to support Hamas, which was designated a "terrorist organisation" in 1995 by the US government.

The hour-long verdict, following a seven-week trial, came after a first trial ended in October 2007 with one man acquitted on 31 charges but jurors unable to agree on verdicts for others.

Several relatives of those convicted on Monday wept as the verdict was read out in the Dallas courtroom, with one woman shouting "my father is not a criminal".

Ghassan Elashi, Holy Land's former chairman, and Shukri Abu-Baker, thecharity's ex-chief executive, were convicted of a combined 69 charges, includingsupporting a specially-designated "terrorist" organisation, money-laundering and tax fraud, The Associated Press reported.

Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh were convicted on three counts ofconspiracy, and Mohammed El-Mezain was convicted on one count of conspiracyto support a "terrorist organisation".

The Holy Land foundation itself was convicted on all 32 counts.

'Political' case
While prosecutors said the foundation raised money for Hamas they did not accuse the charity of directly financing or being involved in "terrorist" activity.

Prosecutors said the charity was spreading Hamas's ideology by funding schools, hospitals and social welfare programmes controlled by the group in the Palestinian territories, and permitting it to divert funds to the activities of fighters.

However, the charity's supporters said the government was politicising the case as part of its so-called war on terror and ignoring the foundation's charitable mission in providing aid to the poverty-stricken Palestinian territories.

Government officials had raided Holy Land's headquarters in December 2001, and George Bush, the US president, later announced the seizure of the charity's assets as "another step in the war on terrorism".

But defence lawyers said their clients had been put on trial partly because of their family ties to members of Hamas - Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's political leader exiled in Syria, is the brother of defendant Mufid Abdulqader.

Unidentified Israeli witness
Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman, reporting from Dallas, Texas, where the court case took place, said a former US state department official testified that he was never told that Hamas directed the US charity during intelligence briefings.

But an unidentified Israeli witness told the court that the aid was funnelled through Hamas channels.

Lydia Gonzalez of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the defendants did not get a fair trial.

"When you're supposed to be able to face your accusers fully and against secret evidence and secret witness, I think that leads to reasonable doubt."

Muslim groups say the prosecution has made American Muslims more hesitant to fulfil their religious obligation of helping the needy and the foundation's defenders accuse the government of selectively prosecuting the charity.

"The same charities that these guys gave to the American Red Cross is still giving to, the USAID is still giving to," Mustafaa Carroll of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said.

Israel Builds Museum on Muslim Graves

Taken from Islamonline, Thu. Oct. 30, 2008

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli court ruling allowing the construction of a Jewish museum over graves of some companions of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) in Al-Quds is sparking a controversy.

"Israeli is declaring a global war on Muslims and Arabs," Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, told a press conference on Thursday, October 30.

"A general of the [prophet's] Companions is buried in this cemetery."

Sheikh Salah noted that thousands of other Muslims have been buried in the cemetery, putting the number at 70,000 thousands until 1948.

Israel's High Court on Wednesday, October 29, rejected an appeal by two Muslim groups to halt the building of a Jewish museum on the site of a Muslim cemetery in central Al-Quds.

The court argued that the cemetery has been in public use since the municipality authorities put a parking lot over a small section of the graveyard in the 1960s.

It claimed that a proposal put forward by the museum planners to rebury the bones or cover the graves was "satisfactory" to resolve the issue.

The court said the construction of the museum, halted in 2006 after human remains were discovered during the digging, can resume immediately.

The Mufti of Al-Quds, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, said the verdict was a "grave decision which harms the Muslim holy sites."

He described the construction of the $250-million museum by a Los Angeles-based Jewish group as "act of aggression."

Help Plea

Sheikh Salah appealed to the Muslim world to intervene to halt the construction on the Muslim cemetery.

"We have sent messages to the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to stop this crime."

The Muslim leader said the court verdict was part of the Israeli policies to judaize the holy city.
"But we will not give up our rights."

Israel captured Al-Quds in the 1967 war and later annexed the holy city, in a move not recognized by the international community.

The city is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine and the first Qiblah [direction Muslims take during prayers].

Al-Quds is also home to some of the holiest Christian worship places, including the Jerusalem Church and the Greek Orthodox Church.

Archmandrite Atallah Hanna also criticized the Israeli court ruling.

"This is the true face of the occupation," he told the same press conference.

The Christian clergy reaffirmed the unity of Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the face of Israeli aggressions.

"We stand shoulder to shoulder in the same trench."

Israeli troops kill West Bank boy

Taken from Al-Jezeera News Agency, Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Israeli troops have shot dead a Palestinian boy during a protest near the separation wall in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian medics and witnesses.

Hammad Hossam Mussa was hit by a bullet fired by Israeli soldiers in the village of Ni'lin on Tuesday, Salah Al Khawaja, a member of Ni'lin's Committee Against the Wall, said.





He died of his wounds while being transported to hospital in an ambulance, medical sources said.
Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland in Jerusalem said that the Israeli military had not yet given a definitive account of the incident.

"They have merely told us that they are carrying out 'a careful and thorough investigation' into how this child died, and only once they have done that investigation will we get their comment on how this boy happened to die," she said.

Live rounds

According to Khawaja, soldiers fired live rounds towards a group of protesters who had run into the village after the army dispersed protesters outside using rubber-coated bullets.

"Protesters arrived at the wall's construction site outside the village and the soldiers started to open fire with rubber bullets and tear gas. This pushed the protesters back into the village where the boy was hit by a live bullet in his chest," he told AFP.

However, other witnesses said that the boy was hit in the head as strone-throwers confronted Israeli troops.

Fifteen people were also lightly injured by rubber-coated bullets during the demonstration in Ni'lin, which has in recent months become the site of regular demonstrations against the barrier.

"This barrier, made of coiled razor wire, deep trenches and a fence equipped with electronic sensors, is cutting through the land of the village," Rowland reported.

Earlier this month, demonstrators in Ni'lin and other locations marked four years since the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding resolution calling for parts of the barrier inside the West Bank to be torn down and for a halt to construction there.

Israel has largely ignored the ruling.

Washington's Battle Over Israel's Birth

Taken from Washington Post, Wednesday, May 7, 2008; Page A21
By Richard Holbrooke

In the celebrations next week surrounding Israel's 60th anniversary, it should not be forgotten that there was an epic struggle in Washington over how to respond to Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. It led to the most serious disagreement President Harry Truman ever had with his revered secretary of state, George C. Marshall -- and with most of the foreign policy establishment. Twenty years ago, when I was helping Clark Clifford write his memoirs, I reviewed the historical record and interviewed all the living participants in that drama. The battle lines drawn then resonate still.

The British planned to leave Palestine at midnight on May 14. At that moment, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, would proclaim the new (and still unnamed) Jewish state. The neighboring Arab states warned that fighting, which had already begun, would erupt into full-scale war at that moment.

The Jewish Agency proposed partitioning Palestine into two parts -- one Jewish, one Arab. But the State and Defense departments backed the British plan to turn Palestine over to the United Nations. In March, Truman privately promised Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, that he would support partition -- only to learn the next day that the American ambassador to the United Nations had voted for U.N. trusteeship. Enraged, Truman wrote a private note on his calendar: "The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. The first I know about it is what I read in the newspapers! Isn't that hell? I'm now in the position of a liar and double-crosser. I've never felt so low in my life. . . ."

Truman blamed "third and fourth level" State Department officials -- especially the director of U.N. affairs, Dean Rusk, and the agency's counselor, Charles Bohlen. But opposition really came from an even more formidable group: the "wise men" who were simultaneously creating the great Truman foreign policy of the late 1940s -- among them Marshall, James V. Forrestal, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson. To overrule State would mean Truman taking on Marshall, whom he regarded as "the greatest living American," a daunting task for a very unpopular president.

Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple -- oil, numbers and history.

"There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other," Defense Secretary Forrestal told Clifford. "Why don't you face up to the realities?"

On May 12, Truman held a meeting in the Oval Office to decide the issue. Marshall and his universally respected deputy, Robert Lovett, made the case for delaying recognition -- and "delay" really meant "deny." Truman asked his young aide, Clark Clifford, to present the case for immediate recognition. When Clifford finished, Marshall, uncharacteristically, exploded. "I don't even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic adviser, and this is a foreign policy matter. The only reason Clifford is here is that he is pressing a political consideration."

Marshall then uttered what Clifford would later call "the most remarkable threat I ever heard anyone make directly to a President." In an unusual top-secret memorandum Marshall wrote for the historical files after the meeting, the great general recorded his own words: "I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford's advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President."

After this stunning moment, the meeting adjourned in disarray. In the next two days, Clifford looked for ways to get Marshall to accept recognition. Lovett, although still opposed to recognition, finally talked a reluctant Marshall into remaining silent if Truman acted. With only a few hours left until midnight in Tel Aviv, Clifford told the Jewish Agency to request immediate recognition of the new state, which still lacked a name. Truman announced recognition at 6:11 p.m. on May 14 -- 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion's declaration of independence in Tel Aviv. So rapidly was this done that in the official announcement, the typed words "Jewish State" are crossed out, replaced in Clifford's handwriting with "State of Israel." Thus the United States became the first nation to recognize Israel, as Truman and Clifford wanted. The secret of the Oval Office confrontation held for years, and a crisis in both domestic politics and foreign policy was narrowly averted.

Clifford insisted to me and others in countless discussions over the next 40 years that politics was not at the root of his position -- moral conviction was. Noting sharp divisions within the American Jewish community -- the substantial anti-Zionist faction among leading Jews included the publishers of both The Post and the New York Times -- Clifford had told Truman in his famous 1947 blueprint for Truman's presidential campaign that "a continued commitment to liberal political and economic policies" was the key to Jewish support.

But to this day, many think that Marshall and Lovett were right on the merits and that domestic politics was the real reason for Truman's decision. Israel, they argue, has been nothing but trouble for the United States.

I think this misses the point. Israel was going to come into existence whether or not Washington recognized it. But without American support from the very beginning, Israel's survival would have been at even greater risk. Even if European Jewry had not just emerged from the horrors of World War II, it would have been an unthinkable act of abandonment by the United States. Truman's decision, although opposed by almost the entire foreign policy establishment, was the right one -- and despite complicated consequences that continue to this day, it is a decision all Americans should recognize and admire.

Richard Holbrooke writes a monthly column for The Post. He co-authored Clark Clifford's "Counsel to the President: A Memoir."

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What a big mistake the recognition of the State of Israel turned up to be. Not just because of the creation of the State of Israel which was forced on the Arab population by anti Semitic Europeans but the United States had a chance to stop all the hatred from the very beginning from happening. If the US felt so compelled to the Jewish cause then it would have been better to move all prosecuted Jews (from Europe) to the United States. Truman was a Zionist and didn’t care of the consequences of his actions otherwise as President of the most powerful nation on earth he had the power to stop the evils from happening.

Furthe reading:

(1) Harry Truman’s Corruption By Zionists - http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=217

(2) Zionists pressured Truman to support the creation of Israel
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/3962

(3) Current state of Affairs in Israel (as supporte dby the united States)

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/index.html

A NOT so merry Christmas in occupied Bethlehem

Bethlehem's struggles continue
Taken from Al-Jazeera news Agency, DECEMBER 25, 2007

By Christian Porth in the West Bank

A normally empty Manger Square was filled beyond capacity on Christmas day as thousands of Palestinians, dignitaries and foreigners descended on the little town of Bethlehem to welcome Michel Sabah the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.



The Patriarch's yearly visit was meant to kick off Christmas festivities but this year, as in others, the spirit of the festive season is uniquely intertwined with the fate of all Palestinians, who say the city has suffered from years of Israeli occupation.

And like previous years, despite a boost in tourism, celebrations in Bethlehem have been marred by a poor economic and security situation.

While Bethlehem is the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ atop a hill just 10km away from Jerusalem, the site of Christ's crucifixion, a 10-meter high concrete wall put up by Israel and several military checkpoints keep the two cities very much apart.

Fairy tale Christmas
It is such barriers and restrictions borne of Israeli occupation that has made Christmas bittersweet for Palestinians.

Maxim Sansour, founding board member of Open Bethlehem, an international campaign to address the state of emergency facing Bethlehem, said the city's greatest problems largely go unaddressed every Christmas.

He said: "Christmas comes and goes, but our problems remain."

Issues of growing Israeli settlements which lie immediately on the border of Bethlehem and demolitions of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of the city have made life difficult for Palestinians.

Sansour says Bethlehem will always continue to struggle as long as such Palestinian issues of statehood, economic viability and sustenance under occupation remain unaddressed.

Sansour also believes that visitors and pilgrims who do come show support but at the same time many are also in Bethlehem as part of "the fairy-tale story of Christmas".

Father Garret Edmonds, a Franciscan monk from California who works with pilgrim groups in Palestine and is spending his fifth Christmas in Bethlehem, said: "There are moments of hope but then everything returns to the status quo. It goes on and off like this all the time."

Father Edmonds also highlighted the increasing erosion of the Church and the increasing number of Christians choosing to emigrate from in Palestine.

"It's important to have a viable, living Church, but if things continue the way they are in 25 years there might not be a living church. Bethlehem could become one giant museum," he said.

Life under occupation
In 2006, Open Bethlehem released the results of a questionnaire which examined the reasons behind the high rate of Christian emigration from Bethlehem.

Of 2000 Palestinians surveyed in Bethlehem, 76 per cent said Israeli occupation was the main reason for leaving. Sixteen per cent of the Christians in the city said they are in the process of emigrating, compared to eight per cent of the Muslims.

Many Palestinians also said that foreigners and pilgrims coming to Bethlehem do not experience daily life under occupation.

Palestinians who have Israeli permission to travel between Bethlehem and the West Bank say they are subjected to fingerprint and document scanning, full body searches, and long waits before they are let through.

Some are not even allowed to visit friends and family simply because they live on the wrong side of the wall or in some cases the soldier manning a checkpoint might not feel like letting them through.

Brother Jack Curran, Vice President of Development for Bethlehem University, said: "I have colleagues who haven't been to Jerusalem in years and I can come and go as freely as I want. I feel ashamed of the privilege I have and it's easy to take for granted, I always have to remember that."

"But it is also a privilege that the Palestinians deserve."

Brother Curran, a member of the Lasallian order, felt that Christmas in Bethlehem is not truly reflected because of what he says are the injustices being heaped upon the Palestinians daily.

"The story can't be told without looking seriously at these things," he said.

"Without foreigners," Curran explained, "it would also be a lot worse. We must act as the witnesses and truth tellers, but not just once a year."

Sustain support

Christmas generates a great deal of positive media attention for both Bethlehem and Palestine every year. It is a chance for the world to show the Palestinians some sympathy and solidarity but Sansour said that it never carries on.



"We love good feelings and the Palestinian people deeply appreciate the show of support, but it must be a sustained kind of support."

Bethlehem is a small town; according to the Palestinian Central bureau of Statistics its population in 2006 stood just shy of 30000, and has a very small and localized economy which is dominated by the tourist industry.

According to Open Bethlehem, tourism accounts for 65 per cent of Bethlehem's economy. In November, 80,000 visitors arrived in the city. This was boosted by a further 20,000 in the days leading to Christmas.



Sansour said that while tourism represents a significant portion of Bethlehem's economy many of the tourist operators are Israeli which means that most of the tourists who do come stay for only a short time and promptly return to Jerusalem.

"They come here, take their Disneyland photos and drink some tea from a local shop and go back to Jerusalem," Sansour said.

"Maybe they'll stop by and buy some wood carvings from a shop where the Israeli operators get a commission, but that's about it," he added.

Christmas surge
Most of Bethlehem's local businessmen wait all year just for the Christmas season to come in hopes of boosting their incomes and providing for their families.

It's not surprising given that the poverty rate stands at 60 per cent while unemployment stands at 55 per cent, a slight increase from last year but not overly significant according to George Saadeh, Bethlehem's deputy mayor.

Abed Ibrahim, who works at a sweets shop, said: "Christmas [is] the only time of the year that anyone makes any money."

"It's good for now. But next year it will be bad again until the next Christmas. Nothing will change," he said

Ibrahim added: "Fast dollars won't solve our business problems."

Ameer Jaber, who operates a stall selling boiled corn and roasted peanuts, feels the Palestinians need the kind of media exposure they received for Christmas year-round and not just in Bethlehem, but all over Palestine.

He said: "You foreigners come and help us, but then you leave when you have your pictures and reports, but we're still here and you'll have the same story next year unless we get your help."

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People seem to think that it is only Palestinains Arabs (i.e Muslims) that are occupied and hence not give a second though, but the fact of the matter is that Arab Christians have been living in Palestine peacefully for centuries (well until it had been occupied illegally by Israel). Arab Muslims and Christians in occupied Palestine have been treated harshly, with boarder controls, illegal walls, controls of economic, social and religious activity by the Israelis, leading to many Arab Christians to leave their homes in Palestine and emigrate to another country. This has been happening for decades but you will not get a mention of their plight by the Pope or the archbishop of Canterbury. Maybe Arab Christians are not as important as European/ American Christians? Maybe Bethlehem is not important.

Only Christian TV station in Holy Land closes

Taken from The Guardian, UKm Friday November 2, 2007
By Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem

The only Christian television station in the Holy Land has closed after 11 years because of a lack of funding.

Nativity television, or al-Mahed as it was known in Arabic, broadcast a mix of church services, films and discussion programmes 24 hours a day from a small studio in Bethlehem, not far from the Church of the Nativity.

Samir Qumsieh, the Greek Orthodox owner and director of the channel, said it had lost around $800,000, half of which were his own personal debts. "I have hundreds of letters thanking me and gratitude shields thanking us from all the churches but nobody translated this into financial support," he said. The station closed yesterday.

"I reached the point where I couldn't continue any more," he said.

The channel broadcast mostly in Arabic, and Mr Qumsieh said he sometimes had Muslims and Jews phoning in to talk on discussion programmes.

Mr Qumsieh has been an often outspoken advocate for the shrinking Christian community in Bethlehem.

He said Christians were leaving the city in large part because of the sharp economic slowdown brought about by the Israeli occupation and the effect of the concrete West Bank wall that runs nearby.

Some Christians have also said they feel under pressure from conservative Islamist groups which are on the rise across the Palestinian territories.

"Emigration is our great nightmare," Mr Qumsieh said. He believes the Christian community was likely to shrink drastically within the next two decades and he said he too would now be looking for work abroad. He said his family was typical of Bethlehem's Christians, with four grown-up brothers who live and work abroad.

Unemployment runs as high as 65% in Bethlehem and farmers complain that large areas of their land have been taken up by the West Bank barrier and the several Jewish settlements that have been built nearby. The Christian population of the town of Bethlehem is thought to be around 40% today, down from around 90% in the 1940s.

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The occupation of Palestine by the Zionists have made it difficult for Christian Arabs as well as Muslims. The worst thing of all is that almost every Christian majority country throughout the world continues to support the Zionist regime whilst Christains suffer. Some Christian organisations from these countries even advocate assisting in financial aid for settlers, whilst fellow Christians suffer. No one wants to leave thier homeland but the Zionist are winning thier battle by making it difficult for the Palestinians (Christain and Muslim) by keeping them oppressed in thier homeland. It has been noted that US visas have in the past been provided to Christain Arabs but most of the Christains refuse these bribes and want to live in Palestine.

SarCRAZY - the imbecile from France

It's been a bad few weeks for Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France. Last Monday, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Sarkozy telling Israeli Prime Minister Ehud that "Palestinian refugees should be resettled in a Palestinian state, not in Israel"

"Each side should have its own nation-state," he said, according to Israeli officials who were present at the two leaders' meeting. "It is not reasonable for the Palestinians to demand both an independent state and also the refugees' return to the state of Israel, which even today has a minority of one million Arabs."



There are the about three generations of Palestinians that reside in refugee camps in Lebanon and other neighbouring countries of Israel. These are the people that had to flee whilst terrorists took over their country whilst the British Mandate ruled over Palestine. People were killed, women and children were raped by these terrorists, homes, mosques, coffee shops, libraries ever aspects of society were destroyed by these terrorists - some of these terrorists later became Prime Ministers of Israel.

Here are the quotes from David Ben-Gurion, Israels First Prime Minister [1949 – 1954 and 1955 – 1963]

"We must expel Arabs and take their places." -- David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.


"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." -- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

"There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" -- Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." -- David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country." -- David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan's "Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

THESE REFUGEES SHOULD BE ABLE TO RETURN TO THEIR HOMES AND BE COMPENSATED BY THE ISRAELI REGIME AND IT'S SUPPORTERS.

It is ironic that Jews from London, Moscow, New York (who have no ties to the state of Israel) can live in Israel but those who were born in Israel are prevented from returning to their homes - why should they suffer? Israel's policy of bringing just about anyone that has Jewish links has caused them embarrassment recently when it was found out that a few neo-Nazis (that have Jewish roots) have been causing mayhem in Israel (destroying Jewish cemeteries, placing Swastika everywhere, abducting people and beating them up and much more).

Sarkozy, who hosted Olmert at the Elysee Palace, expressed strong support for Israel, describing its establishment as "a miracle" and "the most significant event of the 20th century." "They say that I support Israel because my grandfather was Jewish, but this isn't a personal matter," he continued, according to the Israeli sources.

"Israel introduces diversity and democracy to the Middle East. It's a miracle that out of the remnants of the ... scattered Jewish people, such a state has arisen." "Israel's security is a clear red line, which is not up for negotiation," he added. "That is an inviolable condition, which we will never concede."

The only miracle is that American Taxpayers have not stopped funding billions of dollars into Israel (reported to be over $100billion since it's creation). With funding like that anyone can be successful, yet Israel is not a democracy. Human rights group such as btselem expose these myths. There is also a hierarchy amongst citizens. Jews from the United States and Europe are considered to be intellectual, with all the wealth are first class citizens, Jews from the Arab region (those whose generations of families have lived in the Middle East) are treated as second class citizens, followed by Arab Christians and Ethiopian Jews as third class, followed by the Druze community then Muslims and so on.

Non Jews such as Muslims are discriminated when applying for jobs, studying, getting medical almost everything. It was only recently that employment laws were changed to stop dissemination against Muslims but that hasn't changed anything. It is much worse in occupied Palestine where taxes (Palestinian government money) are withheld by Israeli government preventing the economy from running and causing hardship for everyone: Teachers, civil servants, schools, hospitals staff were sometimes not being paid for long periods, even money from foreign countries in terms of grants and aid were sometimes blocked by Israel making necessities such as food - water and electricity being rationed - that is a Miracle Mr Sarkozy, a miracle that all these people are alive against the most severe conditions placed by an illegal occupier that no one condemns.

The miracle as Sarkozy states is nothing but a well co-ordinated plan by the Zionist to wipe Palestine off the Map and have a poodle doing the dirty work for the colonials superpowers. The genocide that took place is clearly emphasised by Ilan Pappe (Jewish Historian from Israel) in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - this book is a must read!

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This week, France's president abruptly ended a "60 Minutes" interview aimed at introducing him to U.S. audiences, dubbing it "stupid" and a "big mistake" and refusing to answer questions about his wife.

Before the CBS news show interview in Paris even began, Sarkozy called his press secretary "an imbecile" for arranging the session on a busy day.

"I don't have the time. I have a big job to do, I have a schedule," Sarkozy said through a translator before the interview began. In English, he added: "Very busy. Very busy."

Before he left he said his Hungarian father had worried that his surname would be an obstacle in France, "That's what he thought. That a name like Sarkozy was a handicap," the president said. "That's the reason why I like the United States. You can have a name like Schwarzenegger and be governor of California. You can be called Madeleine Albright and be secretary of state. You can be called Colin Powell or Condi Rice, and succeed."

The truth of the matter is that you can do well in America if you support the policies of the Christian right, The Zionists or you have Jewish roots - these are the simple FACTS!

Palestinian inmate dies of wounds

Extracted from BBC, Tuesday, 23 October 2007

A Palestinian prisoner has died of wounds he suffered in a riot at a jail in southern Israel.

Israeli prison officials said the man had been hit by what they called non-lethal objects fired by guards during Monday's riot.

They did not disclose the precise devices used on security grounds.

Palestinians say the guards provoked the riot by searching sleeping quarters at night, and then used unacceptably violent methods to regain control.

The Israeli authorities described the search as routine and said guards had used the correct response in view of the danger to their lives.

Fifteen Palestinians and 15 guards were hurt in Monday's riot, Israeli officials said.

More than 2,000 Palestinians are held in Ketziot Prison, in the Negev desert in southern Israel.

There are more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, many being held without ever having faced trial, the BBC's correspondent in Ramallah, Aleem Maqbool, says. While some have been charged with security offences, most here consider them all to be political prisoners and their release is a key Palestinian demand in the negotiations aimed at ending the conflict, he adds.

Angry demonstrations
Prison authorities identified the man dead inmate only as a 30-year-old male serving a two-year sentence.

Ashraf Ajrami, the Palestinian Authority's minister for prisoner affairs, identified him as Mohammad al-Ashkar, a member of the Islamic Jihad militant group.

Hundreds of Palestinians have come out in protest in the West Bank and Gaza against Ashkar's death and calling for Palestinian prisoners to be released.

At one point early on Monday, some of the prison was on fire as inmates battled with their guards.

Palestinian officials say they believe the number of wounded is far higher and that 10 of the injured prisoners needed hospital treatment.

Shin Bet prevented medical care to Palestinian cancer patient

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 24/10/2007
By Amira Hass

The Shin Bet is refusing to allow a 21-year-old Rafiah man who is sick with cancer and in need of immediate medical care to come to Israel, even though he obtained permission from the Israeli Defense Forces' Coordination and Liaison Administration.

The Shin Bet also arrested the patient's father, who accompanied him to the hospital. Mahmoud Abu Taha was diagnosed with cancer of the small intestine in August 2007. Treatment in Gaza was unsuccessful, and he lost a third of his body weight. In addition, he is not taking all of the vitamins he needs because of the shortage of medications in Gazan hospitals.

Because of his serious condition, the doctors decided to postpone chemotherapy and send him to Tel HaShomer hospital in Ramat Gan. According to Mahmoud's brother, Hanni Abu Taleh, on October 18, they received permission shortly after they filed a request with the IDF. The father and his sick son drove in an ambulance to Erez Crossing, and after a half-hour wait, the father's name was called on the loudspeaker. According to the brother, the patient continued to wait in the ambulance, lying on a stretcher and attached to an oxygen tank and an infusion. After two hours, it was announced on the loudspeaker that he was denied entrance into Israel.

They returned to the hospital in Khan Yunis. At the same time, a person who identified himself as an officer with the Shin Bet called Hanni and told him that his father had been arrested. The family filed another request for Mahmoud to come for medical treatment at Tel HaShomer, but they still have not received a reply. The Shin Bet maintains that "Abu Taha arrived at the Erez Crossing during a specific warning of a terror attack at the border crossing. Due to the fact that it was not allowed to carry out a security check on him, he was prevented from exiting to Israel." The Shin Bet also said that the father of Mahmoud was arrested on suspicion of involvement in terror acitivites.

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The Shin Bet security service have a history of preventing medication going into occupied Palestine as well as allowing medical treatment of Palestinians into Israel. Only a few weeks ago Israeli rights group - Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) reported due to the the Shin Bet organization, in many cases, patients have been denied urgent, life-saving treatment. The report says that the Shin Bet automatically refuses entry permits, and reconsiders its decisions only if legal action is begun. SO why is healt care so rubbish in Occupied Palestine? Could it be that Israel refuses to hand over Palestinian tax payers money so that Palestinians cannot finance themselves? Maybe. Here is a good talkback found in

A jewish racise on the website talkback asked "Give one example of a Jew treated in an Arab WB or Gaza hospital"

Here was a good reply from a sensible person...
Title: #17 Pt 1 - No Israeli would need it,
Name: Rebekah S, City:Washington DC
because Israeli healthcare has not been systematically undermined as it has for Palestinians under Israeli rule. In contrast, healthcare in Gaza was stripped so bare between 1967 and the Oslo Accords, that the PA - which cannot possibly afford to build from scratch an advanced health care system, and which in the case of cancer patients would not be able to do so anyway seeing as Israel refuses to allow radiotherapy equipment into Gaza for "security reasons" - has to pay for advanced treatments abroad. About one-sixth go to Israel, and the PA pays for it. About two-thirds go to Egypt, but the Rafah crossing to Egypt remains closed as long as Israel does not allow the EU monitors based in Ashqelon to enter the Strip and reach the crossing. So a cancer patient today cannot get advanced treatment in Gaza because the Israelis say that would be a security risk, he cannot go to Egypt for it because Israel keeps Rafah closed to punish the Gaza coup, and now he cannot enter Israel either.


LATEST UPDATE: 30 OCTOBER 2007
This week it has been reveale dthat Prime Minister Olmert is to undergo operation for prostate cancer but at the same time the Cancer patient that was prevented from entering the hospital has died.

Palestinians: Settlers hurling stones at us

Dozens of right-wing activists living in illegal West Bank outpost constantly harassing local residents, Palestinians say

Taken from YNetnews Israel, 13.10.07
By Amit Schneider

Dozens of settlers living in the illegal West Bank outpost of Shvut Ami have been harassing Palestinians and hurling stones at their cars, local residents told Ynet on Saturday.

Shvut Ami is one of the five outposts built by right-wing activists during the holiday of Sukkot. About 200 people arrived at the area on the day of construction, but most of them left.

The following day, IDF forces began evacuating the outposts, but the soldiers were forced to return to Shvut Ami the week later after a number of right-wing activists returned to the area.
It appears, however, that there are several settlers still living in the illegal outpost and disrupting the lives of the local residents traveling on nearby roads.

"The road goes under the outpost, and the settlers throw stones from 5 meters above, "said Zakaria Seda, a resident of the village of Jit, near Kedumim. "Palestinians from the Qalqilya and Nablus area who pass by are harassed by the settlers."

Seda said that many drivers were injured on the road as their car windows were shattered by the stones, and that a settler even caused a road accident this week by hurling a stone at a moving car.

"The driver had to suddenly brake, and was hit in the back by another car."

'Police looking into incident'
According to Seda, he filed four different complaints with the local District Coordination Office (DCO) this week, but was ignored.

"There were many complaints to the Israel Police and the DCO, and no solution was provided.

They told me they were working on it and that they would be evacuated, but unfortunately this has not happened. The Palestinians here live in fear. We seek a solution and wish to live in peace with the Israelis."

According to Seda, this was not the first time settlers disrupted Palestinians' lives in the area.

"The Palestinian residents are harassed, mainly by residents of the Havat Gilad outpost who uproot trees or set fire to their property," he claimed.

The Judea and Samaria police said in response that a report filed by a Palestinian claiming that stones were hurled at moving cars near the Jit junction was received on Friday through the DCO, and that the incident was being looked into by the police.

Efrat Weiss and Roee Nahmias contributed to this report

End olive harvest attacks

If understanding with PA to be reached, settler rioters at olive groves should be dealt with

Taken from Ynetnews, israel, 10.10.07
By Yehuda Litani

"A Palestinian farmer residing in the Tal village adjacent to Kedumim was stoned by settlers from the Gilad outpost while harvesting olives. The man was treated at the site and evacuated to hospital. The Rabbis for Human Rights organization lodged a complaint with the IDF and the Coordination and Liaison Authority."

This laconic report by the French news agency Tuesday is just the opening shot ahead of another season of trouble at West Bank olive groves.

Each year during this season the harsh events carried out by settlers attacking the Palestinian olive harvesters are repeated, and each year security officials repeatedly assure they will do their utmost to prevent such attacks. However, both the Palestinian farmers and the settlers know how "serious" these assurances are.

The olive tree was selected this year as Israel's "national tree." Some 8,800 Ynet surfers voted for it ahead of the Olympics in Beijing next year. However, similar to several other matters, the Olive tree is also the national tree of our Palestinian neighbors-enemies. They didn’t select it in an online competition ahead of the Olympics: Since the 1950s the majority of Palestinians have regarded the olive tree as their national emblem. Being torn from their olive trees is a motif that is repeated in Palestinian literature and poetry in the past 10 years.

Each year skirmishes between Jewish settlers and Palestinian farmers take place adjacent to these trees in the West Bank. The farmers blame the settlers for attempting to steal their "single prized possession" – the olive and oil yield on which the livelihood of tens of thousands of families are dependent throughout the long winter months.

In the eyes of the farmers, these attacks are the continuation of another harsh abuse: During the construction of the separation fence in recent years, construction contractors uprooted thousands of olive trees, the vast majority of which were sold to Israeli nurseries.

The attack on harvesters, the damage to the olive groves and the uprooting of trees are perceived by the Palestinian public as an attempt to uproot them from their land. Moreover, the security forces are exhibiting an unfathomable helplessness wherever protecting the Palestinian farmers and in warding off settler aggression is concerned.

The incumbent government is seeking to reach understandings with the Palestinian Authority regarding the West Bank and Jerusalem. The prime minister is seeking to strengthen the heads of the Authority so that the Hamas takeover of Gaza will not be repeated in the West Bank.

Yet while secret understandings are being reached at the covert meetings between Olmert and Abbas, life goes on as usual at the West Bank olive groves.

It is worth noting that this year very low yields are expected (last year there was an abundance of olives, and this year the opposite is expected due to the trees' biennial cycle), and each yield harvested is rare and its price set accordingly.

If this year the security establishment does not show some determination in its handling of the attacks, cabinet representatives will find it difficult to convince Palestinians that their intentions are indeed serious in more critical matters such as establishing a Palestinian state, transfer of land and reaching an agreement on Jerusalem.

Despite the matter being seemingly marginal, perhaps our cabinet leaders should remember that which is written in the bible: A good name is better than precious oil.