Letters From Palestine

2010-03-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

My BLOG has been dormant for eighteen months because I was not in Palestine so my knowledge of Palestine was the same as my readers, second hand. For many months I filled in with articles I thought my readers would appreciate. Eighteen months ago, I returned to my house in Palestine. So much has happened during my return, I feel it necessary to rejuvenate my BLOG. I will begin by reposting the first entry of March of 2005 because it gives the history of why and how I ended up living in Palestine.

Living in the Village
by Bronwin Peel

For fifty years my life was influenced by an inexplicable attachment to a man with whom I rarely lived happily. I traveled to occupied Palestine in the fall of 2005 to care for him. In 1994 he had left the US to return to the village on the West Bank where he was born and grew up. Thirty years of breathing toxic chemicals while employed as a research and works chemist in the US had destroyed his lungs. He was dying a slow and agonizing death by asphyxiation. He spoke only once of his dread of the concluding moments of his life, saying he hoped the final suffocation was over quickly. I was thankful he was unconscious when the end came.

He is buried now not 30 yards from my front door in the family cemetery. Another 30 yards behind his grave is the front porch of my father-in-law’s house where my memory sees him in 1982 holding court for dozens of villagers. They gathered from miles around to visit on his first trip home from Jordan in three years. Tired by his many years, the guests rejuvenated him. He entertained his audience for hours with stories that spanned his nine decades of life, from his military service with the Ottomans to modern life in Amman. His wit was such that even though his stories were translated to me from Arabic and spanned two cultures I laughed aloud. He left us a few years later and now Sami’s grave is located a few feet from his. In the evenings as I dress for bed, I see the framed portraits of our grandchildren glowing with their young beauty and I think of the future.

A dozen spring kids from an exotic breed of goats frolic and bleat in the nearby barnyard. Young children play on the only road. Of the 120 people in the village 75 are under the age of sixteen. The children seem friendly and unspoiled. The charming shyness of one five year old has motivated me to improve my Arabic so I can talk to her. She has large dark eyes and a mop of shining, black hair. In the mornings I’m sometimes awakened by a pair of mourning doves cooing at my window sill. A family of feral cats gathers occasionally at my door and begs for food. Sami fed them before his illness compelled him to leave the house in November for the warmer hotel in the city. An older cat remembers. He leaps up boldly on to the window sill and meows shrilly. They have lived for generations on human food disposed of in the dumpsters. Last week I recognized one of my beggars lying dead beside one of the dumpsters, run over by a passing car. I hesitate to feed them as they will depend on me and then I will leave. One kitten with a long snout and bushy tail resembles a small fox; I’m tempted to tame and adopt.

When my sons and I arrived here from the city in February a week after Sami’s death the almond trees were in full bloom. The blooms are gone now and almonds encased in their fuzzy spring green cocoons hang from the trees. The wild cyclamens that covered the ground in front of the house are fading. The space is colored by red wild poppies intermingled by blooms of blue that resemble wild asters. Yellow flowers crowd most of the space and dance in the spring breeze, their exuberance matched by the brightness of their color. Interspersed throughout the plant life are ancient stones jutting two to three feet from the ground. The stone outcroppings are loaded with fossils created a million years ago when the area was under the sea. The family has used many of the stone fossils to build terraces for planting flowers around the old stone house that was built by Cidi (grandfather) sixty years ago. Not far up the incline from my house are the ruins of Saul, a town mentioned in the Old Testament.

A young neighbor, Naseer, spent an hour with me last evening, updating my computer and sharing the plans he has for turning the forest beyond the village into a public park. The trees in the forest were planted by my father-in-law, when he worked as a forester for the British Mandate, during the thirties and forties. A lovely stone fence borders the road leading up the mountain and into the village and the forest beyond. Sami supervised the building of it when he was in high school back in the forties. It’s now in danger of being removed to widen the road to make space for the hundreds of people who drive up this mountain on the weekends to picnic and enjoy the beauty of the place. I discussed with Naseer charging these visitors enough money to finance cutting a new road farther down the slope to save the fence. He agreed and said if people would pay; it would finance building the park and would provide jobs for some of the young people of the village. If the activities of the visitors were supervised they might behave better. They’ve been found cutting down trees and they litter the forest with trash.

Heba, an eighteen year old sister of the five year old charmer, cleaned house for Sami while he was ill. She came by this afternoon with another sister to return laundry she had taken to her house yesterday to wash. Her stocky build and firm square jaw speak of her dependability and I wasn’t surprised when she told me she enjoys housecleaning. I’m glad to see the dangling silver earrings I gave her add to her charm. Playful, they have softened her sturdy face. She refuses to take any pay, seems insulted at the suggestion, so I’ve been generous with gifts. She’s a storehouse of useful information for me. I showed her today where I was having a problem with a leak in the bathroom. She told me immediately who I must call for help. Her English is rudimentary. I’m helping her with new English words while she teaches me a few new Arabic ones each day. I’m learning slowly. Though I enjoy learning new words, I’ve decided I don’t have a talent for languages. Maybe time and persistence will give me an adequate vocabulary. I hope.
I’m certainly practicing the simplicity of my Quaker brethren. I came with only the 140 pounds of luggage allowed by the airlines, much of which was used for gifts. I’ve discovered the advantages of living simply. My one concession to extravagance has always been my wardrobe as I enjoy beautiful clothes. Now I have a few changes of everyday sports clothes, two dress-up outfits for weddings and funerals, a denim jacket and a dressier coat, three pairs of shoes, pajamas and underclothes and nothing more. I’ve found a sparser wardrobe is easier to care for and I don’t waste time deciding what to wear for the day. In the past my protein has mostly been chicken and fish. Fish is hard to find and chickens are scarce since the Avian flu scare announced from Israel last week. I’ve ceased eating eggs. The goats raised on the farm supply me with goat cheese. That and some veggie burgers I found at the supermarket in the nearby town are my sources of protein. A vegetable peddler comes to the village daily in his truck so I have a steady supply of fresh vegetables and fruits. I buy yogurt and milk from the grocer in a nearby town as I find the flavor of the goat yogurt and milk too strong for my taste. Tomorrow I’ll go into the city where I can buy whole wheat bread from a grocer. I like pita but not as my only source of bread. Though mayonnaise is available I’ve found yogurt makes a good substitute and is healthier. I’ll buy mustard and catsup tomorrow and perhaps some ground beef. I find that I anticipate eagerly my weekly shopping excursions. I’m learning first the Arabic words for different foods and fee? (Do you have?) was the first question I learned to ask.
I’m tempted to retire to this house in the village. My sons and I own it now. My money is adequate to live on here and would provide me with a trip back to the states at least once per year. Though I would miss my grandson, the granddaughters live so far away I rarely see them anyway. Before they returned to the states, both sons spoke of traveling here in the summers with their families for vacations, but I doubt if it will happen often. The quiet peace of this place encourages me to write, sketch, and catch up with all the things I planned to do in a hectic, hurried life that interfered with my best intentions. The village is very safe and I’m treated like a star as they’ve never had anyone of my background living among them before. Before he died, Sami said it’s unimaginable to them that an estranged wife would travel all the way from the US to care for an old sick man. That surprised me as I find them to be more generous and hospitable than westerners.
I plan while in the city tomorrow to buy a microphone for my computer so I can make international calls through it at a much cheaper rate than by phone. I miss my friends but the world is truly a global village. With the Internet, I’m still in touch with everyone. Once I have the microphone, I can speak for free with anyone in the US who is willing to download the web page and buy a microphone. I’ll have the whole world available to me from my little house in the village where I am familiar with the cycle of life in dramatic and intimate ways.
This Shangri La, this heaven exists in the midst of a hell created by the Israeli occupation. I listen daily to stories of the cruelty meted out by the Israelis to the inhabitants of this land they continue to occupy and steal. Neighbors of mine, the village muktar, and his wife had a quarrel with their teenage son last week concerning his study habits. He left the house angry and threw rocks at a nearby settlement, a settlement built on land stolen from his village neighbors. The settlers arrested him, and then went to the family home to threaten further arrests and the destruction of their home if another family member throws a rock. They forbade the parents to see their son for three months. If the Israelis follow their usual policy the boy will be tortured and remain incarcerated for three years.
Muhammad, the keeper of the goats at the family farm, must walk from his village and cross the valley near the settlement to arrive here. The settlers often stop him and force him to sit in the hot sun for hours before letting him continue. This is done only because he is Palestinian.
My late brother-in-law, who grew up here and inhabited the village at various periods of his life, is buried now in the family plot. He died five years ago from bone cancer. When the physicians at the American hospital where he went for treatment x-rayed him they discovered every bone in his body had been broken. They hurried into his room to ask what had happened to him. What happened? In the sixties he led a strike against an Israeli employer. He was arrested, thrown into an Israeli prison and tortured to the point of near death. A brave and compassionate Israeli attorney, a woman, came to his rescue, represented him in court, and obtained his release.
I visited my sister-in-law, Jamilah, this past weekend. She told me stories of the incarceration of other Palestinians. Sickening stories! Soldiers take a cup, four or five of them spit into it, then force the prisoner to drink it; sometimes they urinate in the cup or on the prisoner. She spoke of a villager who in 2001 was painting a fence near the settlement. The settlers kidnapped him, cut out his eyes while he lived, murdered him, then threw his body under his house where his twelve year old daughter discovered him the next morning. Jamilah struggled to describe the composure of the young widow, the mother of five, as she received her visitors at the funeral. She became overcome and said she wished she had not remembered because now she would have trouble sleeping.

I, an American accustomed to freedom and security, explained to Naseer I was reluctant to spend money on renovation of my village house because the Israelis might take it from me and my money would be wasted. His reply was an incredulous, "But why?"
The villagers do not hesitate to remodel their homes. Tomorrow night I’m invited to the wedding celebration of a neighbor. I’m urged daily to come for tea by others. When I go for a walk a woman asks me to come in for candy to welcome the birth of a new baby. The mournful wail of the call to prayer interrupts the village quiet five times a day. The majority of the people continue to celebrate their weddings, pray to their God, educate their children, care for their neighbors, and have their babies while they practice passive nonresistance. The American newspapers continue to emphasize only the suicide bombers.

2009-06-06T06:23:00.000-07:00

The American tax payers give these people $5 billion a year!!!

2009-03-01T05:55:00.000-08:00

A reprint from The Huffington Post emailed to me by a friend.

The Return of Benjamin Netanyahu
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mustafa-barghouthi/the-return-of-benjamin-ne_b_170353.html

By Mustafa Barghouthi

February 26 , 2009

The return of Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud party does not bode well for the prospects for a comprehensive and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. Throughout his campaign, the cornerstone of Netanyahu's policy toward the 'Palestinian Question' suggests an intention to deepen the conflict rather than solve it.

Netanyahu has stated repeatedly that he does not want to get tangled up in 'final status issues' -- the boundaries of a future Palestinian state, the rights of Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements in the West Bank and water rights. These issues form the core of what must be negotiated between Palestinians and Israelis. Yet the man most likely to become Israel's next Prime Minister does not want to discuss them.

Instead, his plan for the 'economic development' of the Palestinian Territories is a euphemism for intensifying the Apartheid regime that exists there. Rather than move toward the solution that the majority of Palestinians, the United States and the international community embraces -- an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel -- Netanyahu would have the West Bank divided into disconnected Bantustans. Palestinians would be given "business projects" as compensation for the self-determination Israel has denied them for more than four decades.

Netanyahu wants to better accommodate life under occupation, not lift the occupation itself, in the hopes of pacifying Palestinians' desire for freedom and our demand for the recognition of our most basic human rights.

This has been tried many times in the past. It has always failed. A process with no prospects for peace, as was Annapolis under Olmert, is no different to Palestinians than no process and no prospects for peace under Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has also clearly stated that the occupation of Palestinian lands will increase rather than decrease during his tenure. He has promised not to build any new settlements, but to allow for the 'natural' expansion of existing ones -- so as not to 'choke them'.

According to international law, and a number of Israeli human rights organizations, there has been nothing 'natural' about settlement growth from the beginning. The population of settlements over the last two decades has grown at an average of 4-6% annually in sharp contrast to Israeli society as a whole at 1.5%. In 2008, during the ongoing Annapolis 'Peace' Process and amidst condemnation from the United States, settlement construction in the West Bank increased by 30%. If settlements continue to grow as 'naturally' as this, they will soon devour the entirety of the West Bank.

Furthermore, it is not only the settlements which constitute the occupation. By themselves, the settlers consume only 3% of the West Bank; however, the public utility and military infrastructures which unite them to the state of Israel consume over 40%. Total control of our borders and economy is compounded by 700 checkpoints and movement restrictions, a race-based regime of roads and tunnels, a massive cement Wall and barrier which is twice the length of our internationally recognized border and built almost entirely inside the West Bank, and on top of this, we play host to nearly half a million hostile ideologues who consume 80% of our water resources.

Netanyahu seems only too eager to continue 'managing' the conflict long enough to pass it onto our children and grandchildren. However, given the make-up of his likely coalition, he may not have a choice in the matter anyway.

Far-right parties such as Shas and Yisrael Beitenu have gained more strength proportionally in these elections than Likud and will surely be part of the new coalition. They call for more than 'management' of the status quo and a refusal to negotiate a solution; they offer extreme measures of their own - solutions which would be marginalized in any modern democracy. These include more disproportionate violence aimed at 'teaching Palestinians to respect their masters', more institutionalized racism within the 1948 borders, more settlements and even full-scale population transfers - a more palatable expression for ethnic cleansing.

These parties have proven their ability to collapse a government if any meaningful negotiations with Palestinians are to take place and will most likely maintain that pledge with an increased mandate in any new governing coalition.

In sum: meaningful negotiations may not even be feasible on the Israeli side; and if they are, the 'offer' from Israel will most certainly be unacceptable to any Palestinian leadership interested in viable statehood. The status quo of 'occupation with no end in sight' looks set to continue into the foreseeable future.

The result of this election will not bring us closer to a one or two-state solution; it will bring us no solution. And if we continue down this path much longer, 'no solution' will manifest itself in the death of the two-state dream and continued Apartheid for the Palestinian people.

Mustafa Barghouthi is the Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI). The opinions expressed here are his own and can be found regularly at www.palestinemonitor.org.

2008-12-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:09:10 -0500
Subject: Jesus as understood by Muslims and Christians

I thought this message might hearten many of us. I received it from a
Muslim friend.

Greetings of Peace and Joy to all my Christian friends on these very
joyous days for the Christiandom worldwide. I did think of getting
each of you a more personal and tangible gift; but after a look at the
list, the numbers and my wallet I realized that a bailout would have
been necessary. However, since I don't think I'll qualify for it, then
the next best thing I can give you is this essay from one of members at
ADAMS. Ibrahim is my best friend's husband, and I have known him for
over a decade. So I can tell you, with direct knowledge, that these
words are very heartfelt. With his words he gives a voice to the
feelings of millions and millions of Muslims in this country. So,
without further ado, here's the essay:

Love for Jesus Can Bring Christians, Muslims TogetherBy Ibrahim Hooper

"Behold! The angels said: 'O Mary! God giveth thee glad tidings of a
Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in
honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those
nearest to God.'"

Before searching for this quote in the New Testament, you might first
ask your Muslim co-worker, friend or neighbor for a copy of the Qur'an,
Islam's revealed text. The quote is from verse 45 of chapter 3 in the
Qur'an. It is well known, particularly in this holiday season, that
Christians follow the teachings of Jesus. What is less well understood
is that Muslims also love and revere Jesus as one of God's greatest
messengers to mankind.

Other verses in the Qur'an, regarded by Muslims as the direct Word of
God, state that Jesus was strengthened with the "Holy Spirit" (2:87)
and is a "sign for the whole world." (21:91) His virgin birth was
confirmed when Mary is quoted as asking: "How can I have a son when no
man has ever touched me?" (3:47)
The Qur'an shows Jesus speaking from the cradle and, with God's
permission, curing lepers and the blind. (5:110) God also states in the
Qur'an: "We gave (Jesus) the Gospel (Injeel) and put compassion and
mercy into the hearts of his followers." (57:27) As forces of hate in
this country and worldwide try to pull Muslims and Christians apart, we
are in desperate need of a unifying force that can bridge the widening
gap of interfaith misunderstanding and mistrust. That force could be
the message of love, peace and forgiveness taught by Jesus and accepted
by followers of both faiths.

Christians and Muslims would do well to consider another verse in the
Qur'an reaffirming God's eternal message of spiritual unity: "Say ye:
'We believe in God and the revelation given to us and to Abraham,
Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and
Jesus, and that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord. We make no
distinction between any of them, and it is unto Him that we surrender
ourselves.'" (2:136)

The Prophet Muhammad himself sought to erase any distinctions between
the message he taught and that taught by Jesus, who he called God's
"Spirit and Word." Prophet Muhammad said: "Both in this world and in
the Hereafter, I am the nearest of all people to Jesus, the son of
Mary. The prophets are paternal brothers; their mothers are different,
but their religion is one."

When Muslims mention the Prophet Muhammad, they always add the phrase
"peace be upon him." Christians may be surprised to learn that the same
phrase always follows a Muslim's mention of Jesus, or that we believe
Jesus will return to earth in the last days before the final judgment.
Disrespect toward Jesus, as we have seen all too often in our society,
is very offensive to Muslims. Unfortunately, violent events and
hate-filled rhetoric around the world provide ample opportunity for
promoting religious hostility. And yes, Muslims and Christians do have
some differing perspectives on Jesus' life and teachings. But his
spiritual legacy offers an alternative opportunity for people of faith
to recognize their shared religious heritage.

America's Muslim community stands ready to honor that legacy by
building bridges of interfaith understanding and challenging those who
would divide our nation along religious or ethnic lines. We have more
in common than we think.

[Ibrahim Hooper is National Communications Director for the
Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the
nation's largest Muslim civil liberties group. He may be contacted at:
mailto: ihooper@cair. com ]

With my best and purest love,
Farhanahz

PEACE CANNOT BE BOUGHT, IT MUST BE BUILT, AND WE MUST START RIGHT NOW!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2008-11-17T15:27:00.000-08:00

Is Rahm Emmanuel really a dual American and Israeli citizen?

Text of an email received from James Zogby,founder and president,of The Arab American Institute.

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:21:42 -0500
To: Bronwin Peel" bronwinpeel@hotmail.com
From: "James Zogby"
Subject: Washington Watch: Lessons That Should Be Learned
Washington Watch

November 17, 2008

Lessons That Should Be Learned

by Dr. James J. Zogby (c)

On November 5th, my office sent an email to tens of thousands of our members and contacts congratulating President-elect Barack Obama. In our message, we noted the historic transformation his victory represented and commended the thousands of Arab Americans who participated in this winning campaign.

The initial and near universal response was heartwarming, with many sharing moving anecdotes of their campaign experiences, their reactions to the victory, and their hopes for change.

One day and one announcement later, the tide turned.

With the naming of Congressman Rahm Emanuel as Obama's White House Chief of Staff, the euphoria of some, not all, turned to despair. The emails and calls to my office were both troubled and troubling because much of the reaction was based on misinformation and because of what the entire episode revealed about the larger political dynamics involved.

First, the facts.

Rahm Emanuel is a brilliant strategist and a practitioner of hard-ball politics who in campaigns, his time in the Clinton White House, and more recently in Congress has demonstrated that he knows how to get a job done. Because there will be critical legislation the President-elect will need to move through Congress, from an economic recovery package and health care reform to a comprehensive approach to alternative energy, Obama has tapped Emanuel for his proven political skills. It is that simple.

This, of course, was neither the content nor the concerns raised by the emails I received. Some charged that Emanuel was an Israeli citizen or a dual U.S.-Israeli national (he is neither, he was born in Chicago in 1959); or, they alleged that he served in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and lost his finger confronting a Syrian tank during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon (he did not serve in the IDF, and lost his finger in a freak accident while working as a teenager in an Arby's restaurant). A few accused Emanuel of skipping U.S. military service to join the IDF in 1991 (also not true - in the midst of the 1991 Gulf War, while U.S. forces were manning Patriot missile batteries in Israel and the Arab Gulf, Emanuel volunteered for a few weeks, as a civilian, doing maintenance on Israeli vehicles). The most recent story alleges that Rahm Emanuel was fired from the White House in 1998 after being implicated by the FBI, together with Monica Lewinsky, in a Mossad plot to spy on then-President Clinton (a total fabrication, compliments of a shady character who claims to have been a U.S. intelligence official and is a purveyor of many bizarre tales).

That stories such as these have been circulating, and have taken hold, is as reprehensible as the "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim/Manchurian candidate" tale, or the anti-Arab anti-Muslim canards to which I and many of my colleagues have been subjected over the years.

Putting aside the fiction or, more accurately, the slanderous myths, the truth is that Emanuel is an effective leader in Congress. He is a strong supporter of Israel. But then, how many members of Congress are not?

Emanuel is Jewish and his father is an Israeli. Arab Americans should be especially sensitive to attacks on anyone based on religion or ethnicity. He has worked closely with and is liked by the Arab American Members of Congress from both parties, and he was the architect of the 1993 White House lawn signing ceremony for the Oslo Accords that brought Arab Americans and American Jews together. When, in 1994, Rahm accepted my invitation to a luncheon with Arab American community leaders, those who met him were impressed by his openness and honesty.

Beyond these facts, however, there are two concerns that must be addressed.

It is deeply troubling how quickly, for some, the excitement of Barack Obama's victory was eclipsed by cynicism and suspicion, and how receptive some were to wild tales. This could only occur, on one level, because the victory itself was not understood. If it had been, the excitement would have been tempered by an appreciation of political realities.

Obama's victory, no doubt, demonstrated that change is possible - but incremental change. Pressures remain, from the right and the left as well as the interest groups of all sorts that continue to have influence, limiting political options. The economy is in free-fall and, after eight years of Bush neglect and recklessness, dangers abound in the world. An Obama victory doesn't alter those realities. And so our excitement was justified, but our euphoria should never have taken us so high as to lose our grounding and understanding of the limits of what is possible.

My concern is that, for some, the need for change became so great as to make them susceptible to wild swings - from unrealistic expectations to unwarranted despair and, therefore, to become prone to believe the worst.

But the fault here should be shared. I am concerned by the slowness of the Obama camp to respond more quickly or effectively to address the situation. Modern political operations have learned the need to confront false stories, to manage perception, and to anticipate problems -- and, here, the Obama team had been especially masterful.

During the campaign, for example, they repeatedly demonstrated how tuned-in they were to public perception - and in particular to matters that might have created discomfort in the Jewish community. They knew that these stories needed to be shot down quickly. (American Muslims understood much of this, despite feeling slighted, at times.) But in this most recent instance, the Obama camp displayed both inattentiveness and tone-deafness to Arab misperceptions about who Rahm Emanuel is, and what role he will play. (Aside from the flap over the comments made by Rahm's father, for which Rahm, himself, has now profoundly apologized.) As a result, the situation festered.

The campaign is now over, and the President-elect is playing on a world stage with more than one audience at stake. And in the Middle East, especially, sensitivities are as great and (perceived) sleights are felt as acutely as they are among any people in the world. With feelings having been rubbed raw by decades of U.S. policy miscues, with U.S. favorability ratings at all-time lows, and with extremists preying off resentment and fear - perceptions matter.

If we are to succeed in making changes in U.S.-Arab relations - and I believe that an Obama Administration can - greater attentiveness and sensitivity is in order.

Bottom line - there are lessons to learn and work to be done. Arabs and Arab Americans need to ground their expectations in political realities and be wary of slanderous attacks smacking of anti-Semitism, and U.S. political leadership must learn to be as attentive to Arab sensitivities as they are to the concerns of others.

Washington Watch is a weekly column written by AAI President James Zogby. The views expressed within this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Arab American Institute. We invite you to share your views on the topics addressed within Dr. Zogby's weekly Washington Watch by emailing jzogby@aaiusa.org.

This email was sent to: bettyeb2002@yahoo.com
To unsubscribe, go to: http://www.aaiusa.org/unsubscribe

Arab American Institute
1600 K Street, NW Suite 601
Washington, DC 20006
www.aaiusa.org www.yallavote.org

2008-11-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers:
Three months ago I had major surgery, a total knee replacement, and have just now returned to my BLOG. My apologies for my absence. I'm feeling much better though have not fully regained my stamina.

What an exciting week we've just lived through. I thought you might enjoy the following communiation I've had with a friend of mine from England regarding Obama's election.

-Brownin

I wrote my friend that this week because of this presidential election I have felt prouder of being an American than I can ever remember feeling. Following is her reply:

> Dearest Bronwin,
>
> And you should feel proud - it is absolutely
> fantastic and brought tears to
> my eyes all day yesterday.
> I was working at home so had the TV on in the
> background - everyone in the
> UK is absolutely thrilled.
>
> One of the things that touched me most was seeing
> people queuing up to vote
> with pictures of their dead relatives (Mothers,
> Fathers), in order to take
> them to vote on this historic day.
>
> America has not had good press in the last few
> years, but it must be a truly
> great country to have achieved this. I read somewhere
> that in a generation
> its changed - in Virginia when Obama was little it
> was illegal for his parents
> of mixed race to marry - to being the President of
> the USA. That is
> something. You should rightly be proud.
>
> I was up and up all day yesterday and footage on the
> telly showed that
> everyone was so happy in the States and almost a
> wave of euphoria. We stayed up
> till about 11.45 pm on Tuesday night, but results
> not really in here till
> early Wednesday morning.
>
> What's the reaction in your neighbourhood?
>
> Anyway, will stay in touch
> All my love
> Kathy xx

I'm isolated on a fifty acre horse farm so don't know
my neighbors. At the Senior Center I have made friends
with a couple from Ramallah. They are thrilled. My
housemate voted for Obama, but the only emotion he
ever shows is anger, so I don't know how he feels. I
belong to the Arab American Institute and worked with
them to encourage people to vote. I was invited to a
big victory party held at a local Hilton hotel but I
still lack stamina because of the knee surgery so I
didn't go. It was held late.

My first cousin back in Alabama told me months ago
that she didn't trust Obama. I know it is because of
the color of his skin. She has two biracial great
grandchildren and she told her granddaughter, the
mother, that she must never return to that town with
"those children".

I loved my father but he was a rabid racist,
absolutely hated blacks for no cause. One of his
grandmothers grew up on a 3,000 acre plantation in
Alabama where the family owned many slaves. I never knew that
until about five years ago.

I can remember as a child in Alabama walking on a
sidewalk toward a black man. When he saw me he
immediately stepped off the sidewalk and bowed his
head until I had passed. Behavior like that was
typical then. To save their hides blacks always
groveled before whites. Even as a child it made me
very uncomfortable. Once when a car of blacks passed
us on the road the black children and I waved at each
other. My father became livid and told me if he ever
saw me wave at a black again he would beat me until I
couldn't sit for a week. Actually he used the "N" word.

When Sami and I married my father flew home from
California where he lived to hire an attorney to annul
the marriage. The law in Alabama at that time forbade
whites from marrying Asians as well as blacks. The
attorney talked him out of it.

What has occurred encourages me about the Israeli
Palestinian issue. There are now more Arabs in the US
than Jews. The young ones are organizing. If the
blacks achieved this, the Palestinians can turn things
around also.

Stay in touch.

-Bronwin

2008-07-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

The following email just arrived from a friend of mine.

Subject: FW: Israeli soldier filmed shooting Palestinian

Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:43:27 -0400
Israel---Bastion of democracy in the Middle EAst!!! so sayeth Fox News and our President.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Israeli soldier filmed shooting Palestinian
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:02:34 -0400
Please copy and paste the following to read and see story in full:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/
middleeast/2008/07/200872019223738901.html

An Israeli human rights group has released graphic video footage obtained during clashes between Israeli troops and demonstrators protesting against the separation barrier on the West Bank.
The video has sparked outrage, as it shows what appears to be an Israeli soldier shooting a Palestinian at close range.
Watch the Video:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/
middleeast/2008/07/200872019223738901.html

More Information:

http://youtube.com/aljazeeraenglish

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2008-07-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Subject: Help ADC Stop Hate!
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:12:18 -0400

Dear Bronwin Peel,

Help ADC STOP Hate!

Hateful rhetoric continues to target the Arab-American community, both Christian and Muslim, and ADC needs your help to put an end to it. During this election season we have seen a dramatic increase anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias. One does not have to look past main stream media outlets to notice how the images and names of Arabs and Muslims are routinely connected with negative stereotypes.

ADC’s forthcoming Hate Crimes Report, which will be widely distributed, documents a continuing pattern of hate and bias toward the community.

The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (www.adc.org) continues to work for you and defend the rights of the Arab-American community. Below are some of our recent accomplishments. Please consider making a 100% Tax Deductible contribution to the ADC-Research Institute so that you can help us help the community, defend our constitution and encourage a foreign policy based on equality and human rights for all. As the premiere Arab American Organization in the United States -- with chapters across the Nation and members in every state of the Union -- ADC is leading the fight to protect the community and needs your help to do so.

Click below to make a secure donation:

Donate to ADCRI

ADC continues to:

Conduct extensive cultural competency training to corporations, institutions, schools and local, state and federal law enforcement;
Play a major role in the political and legal challenges to abolish profiling of Arab and Muslim Americans
Play key roles in the passage of legislative resolutions on the Hill
Serving as the only US-based organization certified as an expert civil society representative working with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on combating Islamophobia in over 56 countries including the United States
Launch a voter registration drive so that Arab Americans make a difference in local, state and federal elections
Publish and distributed a report discussing Israeli violations of international and humanitarian laws during the 2006 war on Lebanon
Promote a balanced US foreign policy in the Middle East.
Make several media appearances and placing letters to the editor and Op-Eds in the Nation’s largest media outlets (See below)

Recent ADC Op-Eds, Articles and Letters and Media Appearances

ADC Op-Ed on TSA Security Scanners in the Arab American News

http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Community&article=1240

ADC Op-Ed on Obama and Arab and Muslim Americans in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/22841629.html?location_refer=Opinion

ADC on CNN discussing Arab Americans and the Presidential Campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La5F5JeAyLY

ADC in Wall Street Journal Discussing the Election

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121417738005395419-jaNaD3h0w4YLPGWD45q_WypZgDc_20090623.html

ADC on Voice of America on the Plight of the Palestinians

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-05-08-voa37.cfm

ADC Letter in South Dakota Argus Leader

http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080629/VOICES09/806290321/-1/voices09

ADC Letter on Obama Campaign in The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/opinion/l27obama.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

ADC Op-Ed on the 60th Anniversary of the Nakba in The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/11/for_palestians_mourning/

2008-07-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

A friend just sent me the following via an email:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Josef Avesar, President
Israeli-Palestinian Confederation
15915 Ventura Blvd., Suite 302
Encino , CA 91436
Phone: (818) 783-2934
Cell: (818) 324-3182
Fax: (818) 783-4917
josefavesar@sbcglobal.net
www.aboutIPC.org

ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFEDERATION
TO HOST
A Panel discussion

Washington D.C. - Saturday, July 19th, 2008

Panel of experts and scholars on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict will debate the question of an Israeli Palestinian Confederation helping to solve this conflict.

The panel includes :

1) Hussein Ibish ?
Senior Fellow, American Executive Director for the American Leadership

2) Paul Scham
Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Instutute in Washington D.C

3) Mitchel Plitnick
Former Policy Director, Jewish Voice for Peace;
widely published Middle East Analyst.

4) Kamal Nawash
Palestinian born attorney based in Washington D.C.

5) Josef Avesar
Israeli-born Attorney;
President of the Israeli-Palestinian Confederation

To use a well-known quote, everybody talks about the Middle East conflict, but nobody does anything about it. The IPC has a fresh idea. It proposes the establishment of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation within the broader context of the current Israeli and Palestinian nations. The Israelis would still answer to their government and the Palestinians to theirs. However, a third governing body (the confederation) would be set up by both Israelis and Palestinians and would legislate issues unresolved by the separate governments.

We will debate the feasibility and implementation of this novel proposal to help these long-time adversaries achieve peace. As the panel represents different backgrounds and points of view, the event promises to be lively, engaging, and controversial.

Date: Saturday, July 19, 2008
Time: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Place: Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
901 G Street
Washington D.C 2000_

All are welcome, no charge.

For additional information on the Israeli-Palestinian Confederation Debate or the IPC in general, please contact Josef Avesar, or log on to our website at www.aboutipc.org. Mr. Avesar is available for interviews and would be happy to explain the IPC agenda.

Very truly yours,

Josef Avesar
President
Israeli-Palestinian Confederation
15915 Ventura Blvd., Suite 302
Encino, CA 91436
Tel.: (818) 783-2934
Fax: (818) 783-4917
E-mail: josefavesar@sbcglobal.net =

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Famous, the infamous, the lame - in your browser. Get the TMZ Toolbar Now!

2008-06-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

Following is a comment I posted on the BLOG: www.desertpeace.wordpress.com
in response to an article concerning Israel's torture of Palestinians.

There is nothing new about Israel using this form of torture on Palestinians. My late husband was a Palestinian. His brother was tortured in Israeli prisons in the sixties and seventies. He was almost killed until a very brave and compassionate Israeli lawyer. Ms. Felicia Langer, came to his rescue and managed to get him freed via an Israeli court. She later moved back to Europe because as she said she could no longer endure watching her fellow Jews treat another people the way Europeans had treated hers.

My brother-in-law’s “crime” was that he had led a strike against an Israeli employer. His punishment included electric shock applied to his genitals and beatings of such brutality that later x-rays revealed every bone in his body had been broken. He died five years ago from bone cancer.

Bronwin Peel

2008-06-07T04:32:00.000-07:00

A group of religious fanatics in a Middle Eastern country burning several hundred copies of the New Testament under government orders immediately following George Bush’s birthday bash in Israel should have been headline news for days in America. According to the standards immediately set following the attacks on 9/11, there should have been minute-by-minute updates along with a steady stream of commentary from all the Neocon regulars hell-bent on shystering American parents into sending their beloved children off to fight and die in defense of the Jewish state. There should have been the obligatory ‘we told you so’ business by the Jewish press in America and how ‘right on the money’ George Bush was in bombing the hell out of Iraq and–more importantly–how ‘right on the money’ bombing the hell out of Iran, Syria and elsewhere will be. All the typical buzzwords–‘intolerance’, ‘bigotry’, ‘jihad’ and of course, lest we forget–‘Islamo-Fascism’–should have been brought to bear in describing this recent event that had as its precedent the infamous book burnings by the eeeeeeeeeeeeevil. hated Nazis of the Third Reich.

And indeed all this would have been the case were it not for a few minor facts complicating the matter, not the least of which is that it took place in the one country said to be America’s ‘only ally’ in the Middle East–Israel–and was not perpetrated by turban-wearing/sword-wielding/Koran-quoting/Islamo-Fascists but rather by those said to be Christianity’s greatest friends in the world, meaning Jews.

Cut and paste the following to read entire article:
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/book-burnings-in-the-holy-land-are-considered-%e2%80%98kosher%e2%80%99-provided-the-books-are-christian/

2008-05-27T08:44:00.001-07:00

Subject: Umm Kulhum highlighted on NPR
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 14:07:19 +0000
The highly-acclaimed Documentary, Umm Kulthum:
A Voice Like Egypt was highlighted on NPR's
Weekend Edition program of Sunday 11 May 2008.

You can view the program rundown on NPR's website:
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=10&prgDate=5-11-2008

The story link provides further details, including the full audio
of the shows broadcast and clips from the film.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90326836

Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt
REMASTERED SPECIAL EDITION DVD NOW AVAILABLE!

"Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt grows more revealing
as it proceeds, helped enormously by the rich legacy of
films and recordings."
- The New York Times

"The voice of Umm Kulthum lives on in Goldman's film."
- The Boston Herald

She had the musicality of Ella Fitzgerald, the public presence of
Eleanor Roosevelt and the audience of Elvis Presley.

Born a peasant at the turn of the last century, legendary Egyptian
singer Umm Kulthum earned a position of great wealth and influence.
She was a powerful symbol, first of the aspirations of her country,
and then of the entire Arab world. Four million people filled the
streets of Cairo for her funeral in 1975, and to this day her songs
outsell those of many contemporary Arab female vocalists.

Narrated by Omar Sharif, Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt takes
viewers into her home village and to the streets and cafes of Cairo
where she lived and worked. Featuring concert footage, film clips and
interviews with the famed singer’s friends and colleagues, Goldma's
documentary places the life and career of Umm Kulthum in the context
of the epic story of 20th century Egypt.

DVD Features:
* Limited edition 20 page booklet of rare photographs of Umm Kulthum
* Insightful new commentary by director Michal Goldman
* Umm Kulthum filmography
* Production photo gallery
* Theatrical trailer for Umm Kulthum's 1947 film, Fatma

Directed by Michal Goldman | U.S.A. / Egypt | 67 minutes | 1996
In Arabic & English with English subtitles

The DVD is available at Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

2008-05-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

Special Guest Columnist
Palestine before and after

May 4, 2008

http://www.washingt ontimes.com/ apps/pbcs. dll/article? AID=/20080504/ COMMENTARY/ 569743177&template=printart

By Sherri Muzher - People are tired of hearing about it," a friend once told me matter-of-factly about the Middle East conflict. Tell me about it.

As a first-generation American of Palestinian descent, I can vouch that nobody is more tired of this conflict than Palestinians. But many of us don't have the luxury of flipping the channel or ignoring what is happening to our relatives and friends.

Palestinians with serious illnesses in Gaza are denied access to medical care. More than 150 have died and children are being stoned on their way to school by Jewish settlers.

We do what we can but it never feels sufficient. And though we're 100 percent Semitic, the usual tiring label of "anti-Semite" is thrown at us for speaking out against the injustices.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of Israel's creation and the dispossession of the Palestinians from their land. I'll save the history lessons because the realities have even been acknowledged by Israeli historians, most recently by Professor Ilan Pappe in 2006 with his book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."

Instead, I'd like to focus on the Palestinian people.

Denying their humanity has taken on many forms in the Israeli PR arsenal — from employing pop culture to paint Palestinians as terrorists at conception to the media's glorification of Israel's birth.

In recent years, pro-Israeli commentaries claim our parents don't love us. Apparently, my parents' years of love and sacrifice illustrate they never read the Palestinian manual for parents.

Sarcasm aside, it all makes strategic sense: Dehumanize Palestinians or deny their heritage long enough that any action against them doesn't seem so outrageous, even if they are expulsions at gunpoint.

Consider that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said in 1969 in an oft-repeated statement, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian. " Too bad she didn't read up on history because there has been a collective consciousness of their unique identity for millennia. The ancient Canaanites weren't called Palestinians, but neither were the Mesopotamians called Iraqis or the Celts called Irish or British. Still, the roots are unquestionable and run eternally deep, from archeological finds to folktales.

Another example of whiting out the Palestinian heritage is using the term "Israeli Arab." I've never heard of a generic Arab race — every Arab has a specific heritage, be it Palestinian, Lebanese, Algerian, etc. Think of Latin America, where they all speak the same language (Spanish, except in Portuguese-speaking Brazil) and most share the same religion (Roman Catholic). In the Arab world, they all speak Arabic and most are Muslim. Nonetheless, each country has its own dialect, foods and customs. Mexicans and Argentines differ, as do Palestinians and Egyptians.

And within each Arab nation, there is even more diversity — from distinguishable dialects and expressions, to being able to identify the region a Palestinian woman came from by the intricate embroidery on her traditional dress. Palestinians have always had a rich and vibrant culture that is all their own, before and after Israel's creation.

There is no question that Palestinians have taken a bruising with poorly made leadership decisions and factional fighting in recent years. But what has remained steadfast is their fierce embrace of identity and their resilience. This is true not only of Palestinians in Palestine but those of Palestinian descent in the diaspora.

Whether it was the election of Tony Saca to the presidency in El Salvador or respected fiscal conservative U.S. Sen. John Sununu being singled out for praise by Time magazine or Dr. Motia Khaled Al-Asir being awarded the British Empire Medal by Queen Elizabeth II, those of Palestinian descent continue to make their mark around the world.

It is worth repeating that the Jewish Torah teaches us that man was created in God's image. The Palestinians have never been absent from this equation.

Sherri Muzher is director of the Michigan Media Watch in Woodhaven, Mich.

2008-05-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

From: My son, Rashid
Subject: New York Times: Endless War
Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 01:13:08 +0000

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm plan on reading the book, but first I will write a letter to the editor. Morris' telling of what occured in '48 according to this review is incorrect. Jamal

May 4, 2008
Endless War
By DAVID MARGOLICK
Skip to next paragraph
1948

A History of the First Arab-Israeli War.

By Benny Morris.

Illustrated. 524 pp. Yale University Press. $32.50.

It was not one of the celebrated moments of what the Israelis call the War of Independence and the Palestinians call Al Nakba, the Catastrophe. But it is one of the more arresting ones.
In late August 1948, during a United Nations-sanctioned truce, Israeli soldiers conducting what they called Mivtza Nikayon — Operation Cleaning — encountered some Palestinian refugees just north of the Egyptian lines. The Palestinians had returned to their village, now in Israeli hands, because their animals were there, and because there were crops to harvest and because they were hungry. But to the Israelis, they were potential fighters, or fifth columnists in the brand new Jewish state. The Israelis killed them, then burned their homes.
As much as in any other scene in this meticulous, disturbing and frustrating book, the ineffable tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians resides in that brutal, heartbreaking image. On the one hand, the Jews were fighting for a safe haven three years after six million of them had been murdered. Undoubtedly some of those soldiers on patrol that day were survivors themselves, who’d lost their entire families in Europe and been handed rifles after washing ashore in Haifa or Tel Aviv.
And then there were the Palestinians, who had watched in horror over the past 75 years as these aliens first trickled, then poured, into their homeland. Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?” he asked. “There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”
The history of the 1948 war desperately needs to be told, since it’s so barely understood or remembered and since so many of the issues that plague us today had their roots in that struggle. Much of that history is military: how the dramatically outnumbered Jews managed to defeat first the Arabs of Palestine, then the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria, along with a smattering of Sudanese, Yemenites, Moroccans, Saudis, Lebanese and others. But arguably even more important than the soldiers are the civilians, specifically the 700,000 Palestinians who fled as the war raged. To understand the Palestinians who now fire rockets from Gaza or become suicide bombers from Nablus, it helps to know how their fathers and grandfathers wound up in Gaza or Nablus in the first place.
No one is better suited to the task than Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who, in previous works, has cast an original and skeptical eye on his country’s founding myths. Whatever controversy he has stirred in the past, Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively. Definitely exhaustively, for “1948” can feel like 1948: that is, hard slogging. Some books can be both very important and very hard to read.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly approved a plan to split Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The as yet unnamed Jewish state — or, as they say in Arabic, “Zionist entity” — would be tiny and divided: nearly half its citizens would be Arabs. Still, the Jews danced the hora that day on the streets of Tel Aviv. Ben-Gurion, who’d spent 40 years working toward that end, didn’t join. “I could only think that they were all going to war,” he said.
Within hours, he was right. Through the following May, when the British Mandate expired, civil war raged in Palestine. On paper and on the ground, the Palestinians had the edge: there were twice as many of them, they occupied the higher altitudes and they had friendly regimes next door. But isolated and outnumbered as they were, the Jews were far better organized, motivated, financed, equipped and trained than their adversaries, who were so fragmented — by geography and tradition and clan — that the term “Palestinian” was either unwarranted or at least premature. The war became a rout once the Jews took the offensive, and the Palestinian refugee crisis began (if “crisis” can be used to describe anything so chronic). On all this, Morris excels.
Transfer — or expulsion or ethnic cleansing — was never an explicit part of the Zionist program, even among its more extreme elements, Morris observes. The first Arabs who left their homes did so on their own, expecting to return once the Jews lost or the fighting stopped. The Jewish mayor of Haifa begged Arab residents to stay; Golda Meir, then head of the Jewish Agency Political Department, called the exodus “dreadful” and even likened it to what had befallen the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. While Jewish atrocities — notably, the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin — were very real, apocalyptic Arab broadcasts induced further flight and depicted as traitors those who chose to stay behind.
But once the Palestinian exodus began, Jewish leaders, struck by their good fortune, first encouraged it, then coerced it, then sought to make it stick. After all, the country needed room for Hitler’s victims, as well as for those Jews fleeing Arab countries. And it also had to protect itself against insurrectionists in its midst. The Arabs, it was said, had only themselves to blame for the upheaval: they’d started it. And, Morris notes, the Jews were only emulating the Arabs, who’d always envisioned a virtually Judenrein Palestine.
Matters took another turn in May 1948, when the British left, Israel declared statehood and the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq marched in. Again, for all their numerical superiority, the Arabs were ill-equipped, inexperienced, unprepared. Some Arab leaders knew they were in over their heads. But given the anger over the Jewish state on their streets and their own tenuous hold on power, not to invade was even more perilous.
Within five and a half months, they were crushed, militarily and psychologically. But for international intervention, their defeat would have been still worse; the Egyptian army would have been annihilated. Only King Abdullah of Jordan, with the best (British-trained) army and limited objectives (not to destroy the Jewish state, but to annex the West Bank), got what he wanted. Meanwhile, Israel grew beyond the partition lines, gained more defensible borders and — by destroying Arab villages — further reduced the Palestinian population.
The Israelis, Morris says, committed far more atrocities than the Arabs, but this was partly a function of success: they had far more opportunities. But had the Israelis committed systematic ethnic cleansing, he argues, there would not be 1.4 million Arabs in Israel today. Of course, by promptly driving out their own Jews, the vanquished Arab leaders became the greatest Zionist recruiters of all.
Deep inside Morris’s book is an authoritative and fair-minded account of an epochal and volatile event. He has reconstructed that event with scrupulous exactitude. But despite its prodigious research and keen analysis, “1948” can be exasperatingly tedious. The battlefield accounts, dense with obscure place names and weapons inventories, are so unrelenting, and unrelentingly dry, that you are grateful for the full-page maps (which themselves are hard to follow). The narrative cries out for air and anecdote and color.
Even Ben-Gurion himself isn’t much illuminated, apart from occasional parenthetical potshots. (It seems the guy was megalomaniacal and hyperbolic.) But Morris shares Ben-Gurion’s bleak outlook on the Israeli-Palestinian future. If anything, in fact, his views are even darker. “Whether 1948 was a passing fancy or has permanently etched the region remains to be seen,” he concludes. In other words, by whatever name you call it, the 1948 war has yet to end — and the winner is still not clear.

David Margolick is a contributing editor at Portfolio magazine.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

2008-05-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

PALESTINE REMEMBERED ~~ 60 YEARS LATER ~~ TEN FACTS ABOUT THE NAKBASixty years ago, more than 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and belongings, their farms and businesses, their towns and cities. Jewish militias seeking to create a state with a Jewish majority in Palestine, and later, the Israeli army, drove them out. Israel rapidly moved Jews into the newly-emptied Palestinian homes. Nakba means "catastrophe" in Arabic, and Palestinians refer to the destruction of their society and the takeover of their homeland as an-Nakba, "The Catastrophe."
Posted May 1, 2008 07:46 AM PST
Category: PALESTINE

"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000
" [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.

"The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." " Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.

"There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969

"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.

David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. 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), pp121.

Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : "We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."

"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI's cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking.)

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.

"We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return" David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"

"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." Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters" Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism,colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.

"Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." -- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [Source: N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]

"We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own." (You Gentiles, by Jewish Author Maurice Samuels, p. 155).

"We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent." (Jewish Banker Paul Warburg, February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate).

"We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not...You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world." (Chaim Weizmann, Published in "Judische Rundschau," No. 4, 1920)

2008-04-27T11:45:00.002-07:00

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April 27, 2008

________________________________________
Precious Metals & Financial Market News: Protect Yourself By Staying Informed
________________________________________

CIA Stonewall: Agency Won't Release 7,000 Documents Related to Torture Program
After identifying some 7,000 pages of classified memos, e-mails and other records relating to its forced disappearance, secret detention and torture program, the Central Intelligence Agency has refused to release the documents.
Posted Apr 27, 2008 11:19 AM PST
Category: COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS
, Category: DICTATORSHIP
, Category: TORTURE SCANDAL

Baghdad Green Zone blasted under cover of storm
Militants bombarded Baghdad's Green Zone with rockets on Sunday, taking advantage of the cover of a blinding dust storm to launch one of the heaviest strikes in weeks on the fortified compound.
Posted Apr 27, 2008 11:10 AM PST
Category: IRAQ
"Attacking us under cover of bad weather? Can they DO THAT?!?" -- Official White Horse Souse

BLACK HOLE IN BUSH'S BRAIN
Judging from the campaign rhetoric coming out of both camps, whoever wins the Oval Office will be inclined to continue the failed military policies in Iraq and to pursue a confrontation with Iran. Apparently it does not matter to either party what will follow those actions, or what these disastrous policies have produced as they played-out in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does not matter who gets elected, whether it is "bomb, bomb Iran" McCain, or "obliterate/massive retaliation" Clinton, nothing will change.
Posted Apr 27, 2008 11:08 AM PST
Category: POLITICS/ELECTIONS/CORRUPTION

THE SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY

THE SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY...
Posted Apr 27, 2008 11:03 AM PST
Category: DICTATORSHIP

The whistleblower's unending story
From the start, though, that protection came into question. Hours after Bush signed, a spokeswoman said the administration believed it applied only to whistleblowers who talked to a Congressional committee pursuing an investigation.
Posted Apr 27, 2008 10:25 AM PST
Category: DICTATORSHIP

From the Nile to the Euphrates; The 'Victims of a Map'
Israel is about to celebrate sixty years of human rights violations against the region, Palestinians and destruction of their ever diminishing lands, reveling, in effect on graves, ancient bulldozed groves and over half a century of decimation of dreams, homes, heritage. The travesty of the theocracy's founding on the above untruth, its betrayal, from the State's inception, is encapsulated in the story of one child, caught in the early displacement of nearly three quarter of a million souls from the land of their birth. A forced flight and fragmentation of families, friends, communities, unceasing over six grinding decades.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8812

2008-04-27T11:45:00.001-07:00

WHATREALLYHAPPENED GCN RADIO SHOW
MON-FRI 8PM CENTRAL TIME, CHANNEL 4!
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SAT 1st hour, Chan 1-4. 2nd hour Chan 2,4. M-F Channel 4
MOST RECENT SHOWS! PODCASTS! DEMOS!

AD INQUIRIES

UPCOMING MEDIA INTERVIEWS
EVERY OTHER WEEK: Mike Rivero on KKCR's "Out Of The Box", hosted by Dave Gerow! 4PM Hawaiian Time (7PM Pacific Time) Thursdays
May 6th: Alex Jones show! 11AM Central Time

April 27, 2008

________________________________________
Precious Metals & Financial Market News: Protect Yourself By Staying Informed
________________________________________

CIA Stonewall: Agency Won't Release 7,000 Documents Related to Torture Program
After identifying some 7,000 pages of classified memos, e-mails and other records relating to its forced disappearance, secret detention and torture program, the Central Intelligence Agency has refused to release the documents.
Posted Apr 27, 2008 11:19 AM PST
Category: COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS
, Category: DICTATORSHIP
, Category: TORTURE SCANDAL

Baghdad Green Zone blasted under cover of storm
Militants bombarded Baghdad's Green Zone with rockets on Sunday, taking advantage of the cover of a blinding dust storm to launch one of the heaviest strikes in weeks on the fortified compound.
Posted Apr 27, 2008 11:10 AM PST
Category: IRAQ
"Attacking us under cover of bad weather? Can they DO THAT?!?" -- Official White Horse Souse

BLACK HOLE IN BUSH'S BRAIN
Judging from the campaign rhetoric coming out of both camps, whoever wins the Oval Office will be inclined to continue the failed military policies in Iraq and to pursue a confrontation with Iran. Apparently it does not matter to either party what will follow those actions, or what these disastrous policies have produced as they played-out in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does not matter who gets elected, whether it is "bomb, bomb Iran" McCain, or "obliterate/massive retaliation" Clinton, nothing will change.
Posted Apr 27, 2008 11:08 AM PST
Category: POLITICS/ELECTIONS/CORRUPTION

THE SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY

THE SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY...
Posted Apr 27, 2008 11:03 AM PST
Category: DICTATORSHIP

The whistleblower's unending story
From the start, though, that protection came into question. Hours after Bush signed, a spokeswoman said the administration believed it applied only to whistleblowers who talked to a Congressional committee pursuing an investigation.
Posted Apr 27, 2008 10:25 AM PST
Category: DICTATORSHIP

From the Nile to the Euphrates; The 'Victims of a Map'
Israel is about to celebrate sixty years of human rights violations against the region, Palestinians and destruction of their ever diminishing lands, reveling, in effect on graves, ancient bulldozed groves and over half a century of decimation of dreams, homes, heritage. The travesty of the theocracy's founding on the above untruth, its betrayal, from the State's inception, is encapsulated in the story of one child, caught in the early displacement of nearly three quarter of a million souls from the land of their birth. A forced flight and fragmentation of families, friends, communities, unceasing over six grinding decades.

Please cut, paste, and read the folowing:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8812

2008-04-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:07:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: "WRITE! Action Alert"
Subject: Letters Needed: WPost Editorial Condemns President Carter To: writealert@yahoo.com
WRITE! For Justice, Human Rights and International Law in Palestine.

The Washington Post editorial writers continue their one sided campaign on the Middle East conflict without any constructive ideas to move forward. Today's dismissal of former President Carter's efforts to break a gridlock in the 'peace' talks by engaging Hamas leaders simply reflects more of the same 'Mr. Zahar and Mr. Carter' (4/17). The majority of Israelis support talks with Hamas and a recent editorial in Haaretz praised Mr. Carter's efforts. Please let the Washington Post know that simplistic, one-sided slogans are no substitute for constructive ideas and sincere efforts for resolving the conflict.

Please write to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com. Include your name, address, phone number, and limit your letters to 150 words.

Haaretz Editorial: Our Debt to Jimmy Carter http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/974893.html
*********************************************************************************************************
Mr. Zahar and Mr. Carter
The former president, on what he says is a road to peace, embraces Hamas terrorists.

Thursday, April 17, 2008; A22

EDITORIAL: Zahar Is a Terrorist

ON THE OPPOSITE page today we publish an article by the "foreign minister" of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Zahar, that drips with hatred for Israel, and with praise for former president Jimmy Carter. We believe Mr. Zahar's words are worth publishing because they provide some clarity about the group he helps to lead, a group that Mr. Carter contends is worthy of being included in the Middle East peace process. Mr. Carter himself is holding what appears to be a series of meetings with Hamas leaders during a tour of the Middle East. He met one militant in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Tuesday and was reportedly planning to meet Mr. Zahar in Cairo today before traveling to Damascus for an appointment with Khaled Meshal, Hamas's top leader.

Mr. Zahar lauds Mr. Carter for the "welcome tonic" of saying that no peace process can succeed "unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without any preconditions. " Yet Mr. Zahar has his own preconditions: Before any peace process can "take even its first tiny step," he says, Israel must withdraw to the 1967 borders and evacuate Jerusalem while preparing for the "return of millions of refugees." In fact, as Mr. Zahar makes clear, Hamas is not at all interested in a negotiated peace with the Jewish state, whose existence it refuses to accept: "Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun," he concludes.

In that fight, no act of terrorism is out of bounds for the Hamas leader, who endorses the group's recent ambush of Israeli civilians working at a fuel depot that supplies Gaza. The "total war" of which he speaks was initiated and has been sustained by Hamas itself through its deliberate targeting of civilians, such as the residents of the Israeli town of Sderot, who suffer daily rocket attacks.

These facts would hardly need restating were it not for actors such as Mr. Carter, who portray Hamas as rational and reasonable. Hamas is "perfectly willing" for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "to represent them in all direct negotiations with the Israelis, and they also maintain that they will accept any agreement that he brokers with the Israelis" provided a referendum is held on it, the former president told the newspaper Haaretz. Compare that claim with Mr. Zahar's own words on the opposite page. In fact, Mr. Zahar has called Mr. Abbas "a traitor" for negotiating with Israel -- a label that is, in the Palestinian context, an incitement to murder.

Mr. Carter justifies his meetings with familiar arguments about the value of dialogue with enemies. But he misses the point. Contacts between enemies can be useful: Israel is legendary for such negotiations, and even now it is engaged in back-channel bargaining with Hamas through Egypt. But it is one thing to communicate pragmatically, and quite another to publicly and unconditionally grant recognition and political sanction to a leader or a group that advocates terrorism, mass murder or the extinction of another state. That is what Mr. Carter is doing by lending what is left of his prestige to an avowed terrorist such as Khaled Meshal -- or Mahmoud al-Zahar.

Thank you,

The WRITE! Team*

====================================
WRITE! TO SUPPORT JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND
INTERNATIONAL LAW IN PALESTINE-ISRAEL

2008-04-17T08:44:00.001-07:00

2008-04-17T07:07:00.000-07:00

New Jewish-American lobby wants to be alternative to AIPAC
By Shmuel Rosner

Test of the 'J Street Project' will be how it affects U.S. policy and how much public support it can engender.

WASHINGTON - On Monday night, Samuel Lewis spoke from a small stage in one of the banquet halls of Washington's Mayflower Hotel to an audience of Anti-Defamation League activists seated around the dinner tables at their annual conference. Lewis, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, was sharing fond memories from the days of the peace treaty with Egypt. Thirty years have passed, but Lewis still gets emotional when recalling that period, and so do his listeners.
The next day Lewis skipped skillfully from the memories of the past to policies of the future when discussing why his part in the new Jewish-American dovish lobby, whose purpose is to promote meaningful American leadership, and push Israel (and its neighbors) toward peace.

In an afternoon conference call, Lewis is also on the line, explaining that not every attempt at persuasion is "pressure" on Israel. "Pressure," he says, "is a scare word." With him on the line are some of the founders, contributors and directors of the "J Street Project," named after the driving force behind the initiative, Jeremy Ben-Ami, former advisor to president Bill Clinton.
Advertisement

After a long gestation period, two results emerged. One - the lobby, which can by law promote a cause, but cannot donate money; and the other - a political action committee (PAC), which will be the donor arm to those politicians who show sufficient allegiance to the organization's somewhat ambiguous goals. On many issues, the similarity between the goals of the group and U.S. official policy may be confusing. In favor of a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Iran; against Israeli settlements in the territories; Jerusalem as Israel's recognized capital after a solution has been reached between the parties; two states, Israel and Palestine, living in peace and security.

This is a clean, laundered formulation, behind which is a clearly dovish agenda. The two organizations and a host of public figures joining the project illustrate its intent more than its declared goals: Friends of Peace Now and Brit Tzedek Veshalom - Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace. The long list of supporters includes former Senator Lincoln Chafee, not usually on the traditional list of Israel's supporters; Clinton peace-team member Robert Malley; Alan Solomont, a prominent Jewish supporter of Senator Barack Obama; and Victor Kovner, a donor to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Israeli supporters on a seperate list include former minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Foreign Ministry directors general David Kimche, Uri Savir and Alon Liel, former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, retired Israel Defense Forces generals Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Amram Mitzna (a former Labor Party chairman and candidate for prime minister in the 2003 election), and Haaretz journalist Daniel Ben-Simon.

The J Street Project supports a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, dialogue with Syria and opposes any use of force against Iran. Its future test: the extent to which it will be able to impact U.S. policy, and how much broad public support it will engender. Its leaders assume that the liberal bent of most American Jews will be to identify with the organization; the heads of more established Jewish groups say that in most cases, people who care are not close to the left-leaning goals of the J Street Project.

During its formative stage, the heads of the J Street Project were reluctant to show publicly their opposition to the strongest and most established Jewish lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). But in yesterday's conversation, this was made officially clear. "I'm not with AIPAC; I do not support AIPAC," Kovner said. The new organization will try to erode AIPAC's strength and restrain what they see as its identification with the American and the Israeli right.

It will not be easy with a budget of $1.5 million now being discussed, not when AIPAC has $100 million in its coffers. J Street Project's people assume that the silent majority of American Jews are on their side. But AIPAC has more than 100,000 registered supporters in almost 20 branches across the U.S.

The heads of the J Street Project hope to ride the new wave of political fund-raising - of which the Obama campaign serves as a model - getting a large number of small donors to strengthen the organization far beyond what appears likely at the outset.

The debate over the need for and the significance of the J Street Project is over what makes up a "pro-Israeli" position. It is not a new debate, but in recent months the election campaign has brought it once more to the fore. Solomont says that in recent years, a pro-Israeli position has been defined by "neocons, right-of-center Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals," and the J Street Project's other leaders agree with him.

Which candidates qualify for their support? The Project is vague on this point, but the people heading it will not support those who "impose impossible conditions on assisting Palestinians." So let the new debate begin: what defines an "impossible" condition.

2008-04-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

Arab Home Razed in Jerusalem
By KARIN LAUB
Associated Press Writer
April 3, 2008
JERUSALEM — An Israeli wrecking crew knocked down Shadi Hamdan's home in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem in just a couple of hours, reducing the upholsterer's savings to a pile of gray rubble.
The demolition of the home, which Israel claims was illegally built, vividly illustrate the toughest issue facing negotiators in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks: conflicting claims over Jerusalem.
Agreeing on how to divide the ancient city, home to 476,000 Jews and 250,000 Arabs, is on the table but has yet to be resolved in talks launched at a U.S.-hosted Mideast peace conference last November. The Palestinians want to establish a capital in east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. Israel claims the whole city but has signaled willingness to cede some Arab neighborhoods.
Since 2004, Israel has leveled more than 300 homes in Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods, citing a lack of building permits. However, critics say the permits are virtually impossible to obtain and consider the demolitions part of a decades-old policy to limit Palestinian population growth in the disputed city.
Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights, a group that fights home demolitions, says Israel is violating the human rights of the city's Arab residents by tearing down their homes.
"Were Israelis and Palestinians to have an equal chance to get a building permit ... it wouldn't be a human rights issue," said Ascherman. "It's a human rights issue because it's intentional and purposeful housing discrimination."
Hamdan's case is especially harsh — his home was destroyed once before, though he lives in an outlying area, Anata, that is among those most likely to become part of a future Palestine in the event of a peace deal.
Already, Anata is cut off from the center of Jerusalem by Israel's West Bank separation barrier.
The single-story structure was first knocked down in 2005 but volunteers rebuilt it over two weeks last summer. Former Jerusalem city council member Meir Margalit, one of Hamdan's supporters, said his group won't be deterred and plans to rebuild again.
On Wednesday, a crane-mounted jackhammer tore down Hamdan's home — two apartments on 1,560 square feet, one for him and one for his parents, 60-year-old Naziha and 70-year-old Hassan. The wrecking crew was guarded by Israeli police, and one Israeli activist was briefly detained for trying to block the demolition.
"I felt my heart would explode," Naziha Hamdan said of watching her house being wrecked. Hamdan, a 30-year-old bachelor, said he'd sleep at his workshop from now on, while his parents would move in with his brother. A small truck arrived to cart off the family's belongings, including a sofa, fridge and window frames.
Hamdan's lawyer, Sami Ershied, said the family applied repeatedly for permission to build on its land in Anata, but was always turned town on grounds that Anata doesn't have a master plan, and without one, permits cannot be issued.
Demolition orders are currently pending against several other Anata houses, he said.
Across east Jerusalem, thousands of residents live in fear of demolition, said Margalit, adding that about 1,000 homes are built there without permits every year.
Israel portrays demolitions as a technical matter — saying it's cracking down on illegal construction across Jerusalem, and that it's doing so without differentiating between Arab and Jewish residents. "It's a matter of enforcing municipal law," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.
(C) Copyright 2008, The Associated Press

========EndArticle on E. Jerusalem Palestinian home demolitions===============

========Begin Article on Bedouin home demolitions========================

Israel Treats Bedouins Unfairly: Report
By DIAA HADID
Associated Press Writer
March 31, 2008
JERUSALEM — Thousands of Bedouin homes in Israel's south are threatened with demolition because they were built on land Israel does not recognize as theirs, a leading human rights group said Monday.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch group said in a report that Israel discriminates against its Bedouin Arab citizens in allocating housing, land and infrastructure in the Negev, a desert that makes up much of Israel's territory, where most of the Bedouins live.
The report touched on a decades-old issue: Israel's refusal to recognize dozens of ramshackle Bedouin villages and encampments in the desert.
Lucy Mair, a consultant to the rights group, said 45,000 homes in unrecognized communities could be issued demolition orders because they were built without permits — which Bedouins cannot obtain in their unrecognized communities. There are 700 current demolition orders against Bedouin homes, she said, quoting information from the Israeli Justice Ministry.
Most of the homes are hastily built shacks, costing around $10,000 to set up, said Hassan Rifai from the regional council, which helps Bedouins rebuild their homes after the authorities knock them down.
In one case, the Israel Land Authority, responsible for managing and allocating land, demolished the homes in one unrecognized village eight times in one year, the report said.
Ortal Tzabar, a spokeswoman for the Land Administration, said it was building 13 new towns and villages, most close to unrecognized villages, and has largely halted home demolitions.
Most of Israel's estimated 160,000 southern Bedouins live in poverty, roughly split between those who live in seven impoverished government-planned towns, and those who live in 35 communities of huts and shacks. Israel recognized six Bedouin communities over the past few years, but so far has not extended services to them, Mair said.
____
On the Web:
http://www.mmi.gov.il/static/HanhalaPirsumim/Beduin_information.pdf
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/03/31/isrlpa18387.htm
___
(C) Copyright 2008, The Associated Press

*************************************************************************

Thank you,

The Staff of the Palestine Media Project

====================================
PALESTINE MEDIA PROJECT: IN SUPPORT OF
JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL
LAW IN PALESTINE

2008-04-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

From: My son, Rashid

Subject: Worth watching, Man from Plains
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:55:41 +0000
Hey Folks,

I rented a wonderful film over the weekend that I would like to recommend, Jimmy Carter, Man from Plains. Very good film, it is excellent resource for understanding the Israel/Palestine conflict for beginners. I hope to persuade our bookstore director to carry here. It would also make a great Peace Café discussion.

Rashid

Amazon.com
No other American president in recent history has had as significant a public profile after leaving office as Jimmy Carter, but public profile isn't all good--as Jimmy Carter, Man from Plains demonstrates. This documentary, directed by Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia ), captures the blaze of controversy that followed publication of Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. As Carter launches his book tour, the rounds of interviews make clear that much of the hubbub was sparked simply by the use of the word 'apartheid' in the title. But Man from Plains isn't just a series of media debates, it's also a portrait of Carter--a man lauded for his fundamental decency and criticized for his deep-rooted stubbornness--and a glancing but not simplified discussion of the Palestinian occupation itself. Most of the movie tracks the former president as he travels from city to city, but scenes at events in Plains and footage from Carter's tenure in office give the depiction of Carter some scope. Demme captures Carter's generosity, his earnest spirituality, and--undeniably--his ego, which (as with anyone who's risen to public office) is not small, despite Carter's sense of humility. This well-rounded documentary is essential viewing for anyone who yearns for the day when our elected officials had integrity. --Bret Fetzer

2008-03-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

I found this essay on www.desertpeace.wordpress.com:

A ROSE IS A ROSE ~~ BUT IS IT REALLY?
March 22, 2008 at 9:19 am (Guest Post, Israel, Palestine, Peace)

The following essay was written by a very dear friend…

The renegade lexicographer
By Deb Reich

People continue to refer to Israel as Israel, no matter onto whose land it expands or how far, as if Palestine could be made to disappear by neglecting to mention it, ever again. In fact, at this writing (March 2008), Palestine is alive and well, if excruciatingly battered and beleaguered, just beneath the surface of Israel, and is rising up all over the place, through the cracks in the sidewalk, in the most unstoppable manner imaginable. Palestine will not be suppressed. Whether we stand for it or against it, Palestine is unsuppressable. However new or not new the Palestinian identity may be, however indigenous or imported the name itself, Palestine is a fact, and Palestinians likewise. We Jews are not the only ones here. However long we have been here, in numbers large or small, we have never been alone here! Get used to it! I deal with this problem by referring to the country as Israel/Palestine, for now. Sometimes (for parity) I call it Palestine/Israel. Not a perfect solution, but not bad.

Aliya / Yerida
Incredibly, Jews around the world still sometimes decide to “make aliya to Israel.” An “aliya” is literally an ascent; the same word is used when a Jew is honored with the chance to read aloud, to the assembled congregation in a synagogue, a text from the Torah. For a believing Jew, immigrating to Israel is also deemed an ascent in spiritual terms. Meanwhile, the actual Israeli land mass is gradually sinking under the weight of its own grotesque moral dilemmas, combined with all that heavy ordnance, the giant home-razing bulldozers, the grim forty-foot Separation Barrier slabs of solid concrete, and the despair in Gaza, a burden too heavy for even geology to bear. To come here these days from Boston or Cincinnati or Buenos Aires must certainly involve descending, not ascending. “Yerida” (descending), which in Israel hitherto meant “emigration from Israel,” is what we should be calling immigration to Israel nowadays; and “making aliya” (heading for higher ground) should refer not to the new arrivals in Israel but to the tens of thousands of Israelis who decamp every year for saner havens abroad. If we don’t get our act together soon, the whole country will finally sink below sea level like the Jordan Rift Valley, and we’ll have to import Dutch experts to help us build dikes along the entire Mediterranean shore. (Won’t the guild of foreign labor import contractors have a field day with that one!)

Devout Jews will doubtless insist that immigrating to Israel is still an ascension in the spiritual sense, but - to put it as courteously as possible - they are utterly, absolutely wrong. Basic Jewish values are under severe and continuing assault here by the dark powers, and as of this writing, the dark powers are way ahead. You have to hunt heroically to find a public figure not accused of, or under indictment for, or about to be indicted for, some gross and sleazy act of corruption or moral turpitude (attention, younger readers: that means, like, you were caught stealing the taxpayers’ money or raping your secretary, or maybe starting a cruel and futile war with the neighbors, while holding a high public office). The military’s mismanagement of its outrageous power in this land has lately given rise to an organization called “Combatants for Peace,” a group of Israeli (and Palestinian) former soldiers and commandos who understand that force is never a permanent solution. They know that two peoples are going to have to live together here and that shedding more blood is not going to teach them how to do it. I wouldn’t be surprised to read one fine day that the saner generals and admirals in the USA who are appalled at the Bush cabal’s Dr. Strangelove-like scenarios for Iran, etc., have invited Combatants for Peace to teach them how to rebel against their own gang of power-crazed politicians drunk on the fantasy of imperial dominion via military adventurism.

A Jew / an Israeli
When I first came to Israel in 1966 as an American Jewish teenager in search of her ethnic roots, I noticed one peculiar thing about the language here, right off the bat. Israeli Jews, speaking Hebrew, often used the words “Israeli” and “Jew” interchangeably. I could not help but wonder about that. I knew, in a vague sort of way, that some Israelis were not Jewish, although I had not yet learned about the large population of Arab citizens of Israel who had been subject to a military administration in their own communities within the State of Israel until well into the 1960s; this community today numbers about 1.1 million. Meanwhile, there I was, definitely Jewish but not Israeli (I acquired Israeli citizenship much later: in 1984). As green as I was at the time, as lacking in context, still I could see that this basic conflation of identity labels probably boded no good, and indeed nothing good has been boded thereby in the forty-plus years that have since elapsed.

Zionism / Zayyinism
The packaged fantasy about this country that is sold to Jews abroad still features “Zionism” as something especially positive and inspirational. Jews outside Israel either don’t know, or don’t care, that for over a million citizens of the State of Israel, a sixth of the population, Zionism is about as positive and inspirational as Columbus Day is for native American (“Indian”) nations. The yin of Zionism is “hooray for us Jews!” but the yang of Zionism is “can’t all those [native-born] Arabs find some other place to live?” Purely on a logical basis, there is no special reason why Zionists or Zionism should be popular with the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, many of whose great-grandparents, even if they did not call themselves Palestinian, were already here when the Zionists began arriving. Immigrants are never all that popular, no matter where on earth they appear; the more immigrants who appear all at once, the less popular they tend to be with the pre-existing population; and newcomers who arrive with the declared intention of asserting sovereign rights in place of the existing local authorities are certainly never going to win any popularity contests. When Zionism said, in effect, “Move over, Rover; we’re coming, and we’re taking charge,” its cool reception by the locals was foreordained.

When I learned Hebrew, I was amused to discover that the sacred word “Zionism” is pronounced entirely differently in Hebrew: tsee-yo-NOOT. The closest Hebrew phonetic match to the English name “Zion” (which denotes biblical Israel, birthplace of Judaism, etc.) is the Hebrew word “zayyin” which means two things: (a) the letter “z” in Hebrew; and (b) a weapon; but in colloquial usage: a slang term for penis.

Yes, indeed. In popular parlance, “zayyin” means “dick.” Ergo, “zayyinism” can be fairly construed as “dickism” – in other words, aggressive male domination: leading with one’s dick; screwing people over; coercion as the preferred style of interaction; brutality as default mode. Sad to say, “zayyinism” in that sense is a reasonably accurate description of the Israeli Jewish zeitgeist circa 2008. You see it in the nasty way people elbow each other aside in a checkout line at the supermarket; you see it in the arrogant way so many drivers routinely endanger other drivers on the highways; you see it in the abusive way so many off-duty Israeli soldiers talk to their families; and you see it in the brutal way too many on-duty Israeli soldiers relate to Palestinians young and old, lame, sick, pregnant, bleeding, whatever. Today’s Israeli Zayyinist in uniform points his (or even sadder, her) phallic-looking weapon at helpless civilians and gives orders. Aggressively.

Yes, Zayyinism lives. But Zionism? As originally envisioned, as a noble movement of national renaissance, Zionism is effectively dead. Depending on your background, you may find this statement very hard to accept - honestly, I sometimes find it hard to accept, myself - but denying the reality is not going to change it. At best we could say that Zionism in 2008 is a dream fulfilled, or anyhow a dream whose time has come and gone. At worst, from the other side of the wall, it’s a continuing nightmare, a golem, a grotesque caricature of itself. That is terribly sad; no question about it.

A new dream in search of a name

A dream shared by millions of people over multiple generations makes very significant waves when it dies. The Kubler-Ross model is apt: First there is denial (“Zionism lives!”); then anger (“How dare you, you self-hating Jew!”); then bargaining (“If those other countries will ignore our little human rights quagmire here, we’ll ignore theirs”); then depression (“They all hate us anyway, what’s the point of even trying”); and finally - acceptance.

Nothing good can grow on a grave until the body is buried. When Zionism morphed into Zayyinism, the noble movement for Jewish national renaissance in the land of our ancestors effectively died. When we accept the fact of its demise and bury it, a supremely worthwhile new dream can grow on the grave of the old one.

Here is what the new dream is about: It is about fashioning a new, inclusive, imaginative, shared civil society in this land where every single human being, and all their myriad individual and group identities - religious, national, ethnic, linguistic, and otherwise - can flourish. (No more war! Onward with synergy and pluralism!) If we can just once glimpse, all of us, however dimly, a shared dream in those terms, we can begin the real work of co-creating a shared homeland of which we can all be proud.

2008-03-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:18:19 +0000
The Israel Litmus Test

Why do so many American Jews demand unwavering commitment to Israel from their politicians?By Aaron David Miller
March 9, 2008
'You're nothing but a self-hating Jew, and your boss is an anti-Semite.' It was the spring of 1990. I was an advisor to then-Secretary of State James Baker, and I was briefing a Jewish group from Atlanta -- and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Baker was tough on Israel when he needed to be, but he was no anti-Semite. I told Mr. Atlanta that if he wanted to argue about policy, fine; otherwise, we should keep the ad hominem out of it.

Almost 20 years later, here we go again. This time, a Democratic candidate for president, not even the official nominee of his party, is under attack from some deeply confused and ill-informed American Jews. Again, the charges of hostility toward Israel are being irresponsibly bandied about.

Some of this, to be sure, is the seasonal silliness associated with political campaigns. But the persistent attacks on Sen. Barack Obama -- and especially on former Clinton administration official Robert Malley, one of his many informal advisors -- shouldn't be casually dismissed as crackpot commentary. They reflect two troubling reactions, or, more precisely, overreactions, within the American Jewish community that undermine its credibility and harm American interests in the process.

First, some full disclosure. I'm not associated with any political campaign and am not running for anything. For nearly 20 years, I worked at the Department of State, under Republican and Democratic secretaries of State, on the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.

What's more, I am a close friend of Malley, who served as special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs between 1998 and 2001. Malley and I continue to collaborate on Op-Ed articles and conferences.

In recent weeks, I've been extremely disturbed to see him attacked as an enemy of Israel and as an apologist for the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Perhaps most offensive, several publications have run personal attacks on Malley because his father, in the 1960s, founded and edited a left-wing magazine called Afrique-Asie, which was friendly toward the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Third World movements.

But so what? These charges are ridiculous. There's no question that Malley has been critical of certain Israeli actions and behavior (as have I). He was criticized, for instance, for an article he wrote in the New York Review of Books that took issue with the notion that Arafat was solely responsible for the failure of the Oslo peace process. But he is not 'anti-Israel,' let alone the Israel hater his critics portray him to be. He is well-respected by Arabs and Israelis alike, and he believes deeply in the idea and the reality of Israel's right to exist as a sovereign and secure Jewish state. He would never do anything to jeopardize that.

In a joint letter last month, five of his longtime colleagues (former Clinton national security advisor Samuel R. Berger; former U.S. ambassadors to Israel Martin Indyk and Daniel Kurtzer; former U.S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross; and myself) made Malley's commitment to Israel unmistakably clear. As for the mean-spirited guilt-by-association charges having to do with his family, Malley told the Forward, a Jewish newspaper, that while he loved and respected his father -- who died in 2006 -- he did not agree with him on everything.

The attacks on Malley (which are, of course, really attacks on Obama) don't merely reflect concerns about the views of a single mid-level advisor; they flow from a deeper dysfunction. The first piece of that dysfunction is what you might call the 'cosmic oy vey' -- the tendency of many American Jews active in pro-Israeli causes to worry about everything, without a capacity to identify what is important and what isn't.

Don't get me wrong. Jews -- and yes, I am one of them -- worry for a living. Their history compels them to and to be always vigilant. Yet in America, where they have achieved a level of security, acceptance and power unparalleled in their history, their existential worries paradoxically seem to have grown even greater. When Jimmy Carter writes a book -- a bad book, incidentally -- comparing Zionism to apartheid, many American Jews go crazy. When two university professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, write another bad book -- about what they call 'the Israel lobby' -- many Jews react as if the sky is falling.

The fact is (and many American Jews are reluctant to accept it), the conflict in the United States between Israel's supporters and its detractors is over. And the pro-Israel community has won. No figure in American mainstream politics can be viable without being firmly supportive of Israel. Americans overwhelmingly back Israel's right to exist safely and securely as a Jewish state. For reasons of shared values, as well as strong domestic political support, Israel has become an organic part of American culture, religion, politics and foreign policy for Jews and non-Jews alike. Our most recent presidents, Clinton and George W. Bush, have been the most pro-Israel presidents -- ever.

For too many American Jews, these successes haven't created a greater sense of security; they have only persuaded them to keep up the fight to ensure their good fortune continues. Too often this means stigmatizing people who criticize, or even question, particular Israeli policies as detrimental to U.S. interests or to the peace process or to Israel's security itself. There is a strong tendency even in parts of the mainstream American Jewish community to interpret any such questioning -- of the type that occurs every day in Israel itself -- as outright hostility.

I've lost count of the number of times Jewish activists or friends have said to me that this official or that journalist or this academic must be anti-Semitic. On other occasions, I have been told that I myself should not to be so publicly critical of Israel, lest we give our enemies grist for their propaganda mills.

This 'us versus them' mentality still runs deep, and it is particularly harmful when it comes to the Arab-Israeli issue. That conflict is not some kind of morality play in which the forces of evil do battle against the forces of light. It is a conflict in which both sides have legitimate needs and requirements and do both good and bad things in pursuit of them.

To be called an Israel hater for speaking out against Israeli actions when they are wrong and counterproductive -- actions such as building settlements and bypass roads or confiscating land -- or to be called an anti-Semite for suggesting alternative ways of thinking when the status quo is leading nowhere is not only absurd, it's dangerous.

In the end, American Jews who impose a litmus test of boundless commitment to every single Israeli action hurt not only their community but the United States as well. Israel is a tiny country living in a dangerous neighborhood. The U.S. and Israel need a special relationship based on confidence and trust to further their mutual interests -- but that does not mean we need an exclusive relationship in which America acquiesces to everything that Israel or its supporters in the United States think is wise. This is a critical distinction. One can only hope that, next time around, we are fortunate enough to get a president and Middle East advisors who understand it.

Aaron David Miller, who served at the State Department as an advisor to six secretaries of State, is a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the author of the forthcoming 'The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab/Israeli Peace.'

2008-03-07T10:54:00.000-08:00

Subject: Greens urge economic pressure and cutoff of all military aid to Israel as Gaza situation worsens Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 15:25:59 -0500

Press Release

Greens urge economic pressure and cutoff of all military aid to Israel as Gaza situation worsens
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Monday, March 3, 2008

Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, cell 202-904-7614, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@gp.org

Demanding an end to illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, Greens urge widespread grassroots support for the Palestine BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Campaign

Greens blast Clinton, Obama, and McCain for uncritical support of Israel despite mounting crimes

WASHINGTON, DC -- Calling the Siege of Gaza an international emergency, the Green Party is urging Congress to reject President Bush's FY2009 budget request for $2.55 billion in Foreign Military Financing for Israel, and reiterated the call for a cut-off of all US military aid to Israel.

"The Siege of Gaza is an ongoing atrocity, with mounting civilian casualties, especially children, killed and maimed by Israeli Defense Forces," said Holly Hart, secretary of the Green Party of the United States and member of People for Justice in Palestine, responding to the mass killing of Palestinians during the past weekend. "Greens are demanding an end to the siege and to the occupation of Palestinian lands, to Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians, and to targeted assassinations, all of which violate international law."

Greens noted that the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces has doubled since the Annapolis peace talks sponsored by the US in November 2007. In some areas of the West Bank, home invasions by IDF since January 1 have resulted in the kidnapping and detention without charges of nearly 400 civilians, including children. 1.5 million Gazans, mostly refugees from Israel in 1948, live in an open-air prison, unable to exit, and with electricity, fuel, and water under Israeli control.

"Peace talks are a sham as long as Israel refuses to discuss the construction of new housing units for Jewish settlers throughout occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank," said David J. Kalbfleisch, a Green congressional candidate in Illinois' 10th district . "Israel must meet its obligations under U.N. security council resolution 242."

The Green Party has already called for an economic boycott and divestment of Israel until the occupation is ended and full human rights and equality are realized throughout historic Palestine, including Israel , and recognition of the right of return.

Green leaders, emphasizing the need for popular pressure on the US government similar to the campaign against South African apartheid two decades ago, have supported the efforts of Palestinian and Israeli peace groups to seek negotiation and a halt to violence, and are urging participation in the Palestine BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) Campaign .

The President's FY2009 request would enact a 9% increase over 2007 spending, and would be the first installment of a ten-year agreement between the US and Israel, signed in August 2007, to increase military aid by 25%, totaling $30 billion by FY2018.

The arms purchased through Foreign Military Financing are being used to enforce Israel's 40-year military occupation and siege of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and for violation of human rights in the Occupied Territories and against civilians in Lebanon. Such use of weapons purchased with US money violates of the Arms Export Control Act and Foreign Assistance Act.

"The Green Party has repeatedly called for an end to Israel's illegal occupation, for enforcement of human rights laws consistently violated by Israel, and for an end to all attacks against unarmed civilians by either side," said Justine McCabe, co-chair of the party's International Committee.

"Under the influence of AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbies, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have bent over backwards to support the Israel government and avoid criticism -- even as Israel warns that it may invade and Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatens Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with a 'holocaust.' If the national debate on the Middle East is restricted to Democratic and Republican positions in 2008, the crisis and the atrocities will continue regardless of who wins the White House," Dr. McCabe added.

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193

Video of Green presidential candidates
http://www.gp.org/2008-elections/presidential-videos.php

Green candidate database for 2007 and other campaign information:
http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml

Green Party News Center
http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml

Green Party Speakers Bureau
http://www.gp.org/speakers

Green Party ballot access page
http://www.gp.org/2008-elections

2008 Green National Convention: Live Green, Vote Green
http://www.gp.org/2008-elections/index.shtml

Media credentialing
http://www.gp.org/committees/media/kit.shtml

Green Party International Committee
http://www.gp.org/committees/intl/

Green Party Peace Action Committee (GPAX)
http://www.gp.org/committees/peace/

Wheels of Justice Tour: Nonviolent education and action against war and occupation in Iraq and Palestine for justice and universal human rights
http://justicewheels.org

"Israeli minister threatens "holocaust" as public demand ceasefire talks"
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, February 29, 2008
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9354.shtml

Palestinian deaths double since Annapolis
By Mel Frykberg, Middle East Times, January 16, 2008
http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/01/16/palestinian_deaths_double_since_annapolis/9342/

~ END ~
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2008-03-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

Subject: The Observer: Five years on, Corrie's diaries are being released Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 22:33:44 +0000

She was a girl from small-town America with dreams of being a poet or a dancer. So how, at just 23, did Rachel Corrie become a Palestinian martyr?
Five years on, her diaries are being released
Louise France
The Observer,
Sunday March 2 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/02/israelandthepalestinians

Peace activist Rachel Corrie is shown at the Burning Man festival in a photo from September 2002, in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP
It is impossible to underestimate quite how much life for Rachel Corrie's family has changed since she was killed by an Israeli army Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003. As Rachel's elder sister Sarah puts it: 'What was normal doesn't exist for us now.'
'After Rachel was killed.' When I meet the Corries, it swiftly becomes clear that there is a great deal they want to speak out about, but it is these four words, heavy with loss, that they have repeated most over the past five years.
Before Rachel was killed trying to prevent a Palestinian home in Rafah from being demolished, they were a pretty ordinary West Coast American family. It has been said in the past that she came from a left-leaning, alternative background, but this is not strictly accurate. Craig Corrie is an insurance executive, who has spent 24 years of his career working for the same firm. Cindy Corrie is a musician and teacher. Since the mid-Seventies they have mostly lived in the same slate-grey house in Olympia, a small town with many coffee shops an hour's drive out of Seattle, and it was here that they raised their three children, Chris, Sarah and Rachel. True, the Corries liked to debate politics around the kitchen table. They also liked to talk about the cats and the chickens, going skiing at the weekend, the vegetable plot, the family holiday cottage in Minnesota. Whenever the conversation did turn towards the Palestinian issue, Craig and Cindy's sympathies would instinctively fall on the Israeli side.
After Rachel was killed, life changed abruptly. Over the past five years they've had to deal with the loss of their youngest daughter, at the age of 23. Cindy, a quietly spoken woman not given to over-statement or, indeed, self-pity, describes a period of mourning that will never really end.
Rachel's parents and sister have not returned to their jobs, although their schedule is relentless. Last week Craig and Cindy were in Vancouver. Next week they're heading to Alabama. As part of their work for the Rachel Corrie Foundation, an organisation they set up after their daughter died, to promote peace and justice in the Middle East, there are school talks and early-morning radio interviews about the human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, lobbying to have her death properly investigated and campaign meetings supporting their bid to fulfil Rachel's ambition to establish a sister city project between Rafah and Olympia. Twice they have visited the contentious 40km by 10km strip of land where Rachel died. Before Rachel was killed, Cindy had never been to Europe, let alone the chaotic, squalid, potentially dangerous refugee camp that is Rafah.
The routine of day-to-day life has been cast aside. Their two-acre garden, from where you can see the creek where the children used to swim in the summer and the rushes in which they'd play hide-and-seek, has an elegiac, abandoned feel. They're away so often the family cat now lives with Sarah. Even if Cindy had the time to cook dinner, she'd have nowhere to serve it up. Every surface of the house is smothered with paperwork.
Rachel had been a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent pro-Palestinian activist group. Within days of her death, the eloquent and vivid emails that she had sent from Gaza were published, with the consent of the Corries, in the Guardian. In 2005 they became the inspiration for an acclaimed play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, based on Rachel's writing. Following two sell-out runs in London and a controversial last-minute cancellation in New York, the dramatic monologue, which follows Rachel's life from messy teenage bedroom through to Palestinian refugee camp, has been performed across America and Canada. Later this month, on the fifth anniversary of Rachel's death, it will be staged in Israel and the Corries will be there to watch the first performance in Arabic. This is a typically frenetic month. Next week sees the publication of Let Me Stand Alone, a collection of Rachel's writing and drawings from the ages of 10 to 23, the final piece written four days before she was killed.
Craig and Cindy Corrie have become well known in Olympia. This modest middle-aged couple with silver hair and sensible waterproof anoraks - in the winter it rains so much in this part of the world that umbrellas are pointless - are stopped in the street. Teenage girls in skinny jeans hover, wanting to say hello to the parents of Rachel Corrie. Cindy, in particular, lights up, as though caught in the glow from a torch beam. I ask Sarah if her mother and father are often approached.
'All the time,' she says. 'I've got used to it.'
'In the first hour after Rachel was killed,' Cindy recalls, 'I remember saying: we have to get her words out.'
I'm sitting with Cindy and Sarah in one of Olympia's oldest coffee shops, a place where the Corries used to come as a family when the children were growing up. One by one they piece together the events of 16 March 2003. It was a humdrum Sunday. Sarah, not long married to her husband, Kelly, was living in the family home while her parents were based temporarily in North Carolina, where Craig was working.
'I caught the end of a message on the answer machine, someone saying, "I just heard the sad news,"' says Sarah, 'and it dawned on me. It was something to do with Rachel.' She found out her sister had died by reading the ticker tape along the bottom of the television screen: 'Olympia woman killed in Gaza.'
'My first thought was that maybe it wasn't Rachel. My next was that Mom and Dad didn't know. I started trying to dial and I remember looking at the handset and thinking, "I don't know how to punch in the numbers."'
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Craig was doing the laundry when the phone rang. Cindy picked it up. It was her son-in-law, Kelly.
'I could hear that there was something wrong in his voice,' recalls Cindy. 'I could hear Sarah crying hysterically in the background. She came onto the phone and said, "It's Rachel." And I said, "Is she dead?" I just knew I had to ask about the very worst possibility so that maybe that option would go away.'
While she took the phone to her husband, the news was confirmed on the television screen back in Olympia. 'It says her name,' Sarah told her mother. 'It says her name.'
It would be days before they had a chance to mourn in private. First they flew to Washington DC to be with their son, Chris - 'He was the only one who could function,' recalls Craig - from where they began the logistical nightmare of organising the return of their daughter's body. Craig was in such a hurry to pack he slung a pillowcase into his overnight bag mistaking it for a shirt. A journalist pitched up on their driveway in Olympia. There were more in Washington. A congressman suggested they hold a press conference. The death of an American citizen in Gaza was front page news - all this at a time when the atmosphere in America was already intense. The Iraq war would begin four days after Rachel was killed.
Craig recalls how, at one point, he picked up the telephone to learn that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was on the line. 'He told me: "She is your daughter but she is also the daughter of all Palestinians. She is ours too now."'
'If someone had told me 10 years ago that this was going to happen to us,' says Cindy, 'I'd never have predicted any of the things that we have done. I would have said, "You're crazy. If anything happened to a child of mine I would not draw another breath." But, amazingly, you do take the next step.'
For Cindy, as for the rest of the family, that next step seemed to be exploring the words Rachel had written. 'Immediately I was drawn to the writing,' she says. 'Because the writing was what we had, and what we still have, of Rachel. Nobody was thinking of a book back then but, even early on, when we were in such searing pain, we were drawn to what Rachel had written. As a comfort, as a connection.'
Most of Rachel's words had been kept in plastic tubs in the garage, or the attic. Journals, email printouts, poems, letters, assignments for creative writing classes, scraps written on paper napkins. Sarah, who has painstakingly edited the book over the past year, recites one of the first lines she read after Rachel died: 'There is something that I'm supposed to do. I know there is something big that I am supposed to do. I just don't know what it is yet.'
In the early pages of Let Me Stand Alone there is the sense of someone comfortable with the notion of revealing her inner world on the page: the style is uninhibited, experimental, confident. While it's clear this is a dreamy little girl who likes to dance and to visit her grandmother, she also has an easy relationship with words. Her parents don't describe themselves as writers but they remember their daughter sitting on the floor with pens and crayons before she went to nursery.
What emerges is someone who could be variously idealistic, knowing, self-deprecating, earnest, quirky, pretentious, fanciful, melodramatic, obsessive, flip and wise. Some of the pieces are uneven - whose private musings wouldn't be? - but at its best Let Me Stand Alone is a window into the private preoccupations of a singular girl growing up in middle-class America in the Eighties and Nineties, a girl discovering her own lucid and original voice. Some of the passages, particularly her accounts of her intense love affair with a young man called Colin, are breathtakingly vivid and personal.
It is impossible to read about how Rachel lived without thinking about how she died. There are times when her words are chillingly prescient as she describes dreams about falling, fears of tumbling, being out of control. 'Death smells like homemade apple sauce as it cooks on the stove. It is not the strangling sense of illness. It is not fear. It is freedom,' she writes on 19 May 1993. Aged just 14.
Early on there is a surprising empathy for outsiders and I realise that in a media obsessed with the Paris Hiltons of this world, we don't often get to hear about young, politicised American women. 'Maybe,' writes Rachel, aged 11, 'if people stopped thinking of themselves, and started thinking of the other sides of things, people wouldn't hurt each other.' But there is a healthy streak of self-obsession too, and a wicked sense of humour. She grows up into a chain-smoking Pat Benatar fan. Some of the most poignant moments are Rachel's 'to do' wish lists. A teenager who imagines there are years and years ahead of her.
A trip to a remote part of Russia as a teenager, just after the fall of Communism, is clearly a catalyst. So are stints staffing telephone crisis lines and volunteering for mental health organisations. 'I know I scare you,' she writes to her mother when she's 19. 'But being on a tightrope, with a safety net and a costume, doesn't work for me... I have to do things that scare you. I'm sorry I scare you. I hope I'm not ugly in your eyes. But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll's house, the flower world I grew up in?'
She is a student at Evergreen State College, a famously liberal university with a tradition of activism, when the two planes fly into the Twin Towers. Rachel Corrie, blonde, skinny, high cheek-boned, carelessly beautiful, is already looking beyond the claustrophobic confines of Olympia and into the world beyond.However, when it emerges that she is saving up to go to Gaza in order to volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) the rest of the family are dead against the idea. Her sister remembers the tension: 'I didn't want her to go. It was extremely stressful; I couldn't talk to her about it.'
Her mother adds: 'I think all of us hoped that Rachel would not quite get her act together to go.'
Her father: 'I was concerned. Why not work in a soup kitchen or something like that, I said to her. But if that is what she really wanted to do, you can't ask your child to do less.' This quietly thoughtful man, a former Vietnam veteran who masks his sadness with a droll sense of humour, pauses. 'I was concerned. But not really, really frightened. To be honest, it wasn't until she got there that I got really, really frightened.'
The writing from Rafah, Gaza, steps up a gear. Her emails home are passionate, articulate and forensic. She's been criticised for being naive about the dangers. I suspect many people, even seasoned war reporters, might admit to being blindsided by the situation on the ground in Gaza. She researched the region before she got there and attended an ISM training session, but the shock of being in the midst of chaos is immediately apparent. A day after arriving she's helping someone move the body of a child. She describes a colleague with shrapnel in her shoes.
Gradually Rachel seems to adapt to this new level of anxiety. She makes friends with Palestinian families, looks after their children, learns bits of Arabic. Television footage of Rachel from this time shows her draped in the traditional black and white kaffiyeh, looking drawn. A tank rumbles by in the background. She sounds resolute: 'I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive,' she tells the reporter. 'It takes a while to get what's happening here. Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realise there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I'm having dinner with.'
I wonder if the family understood that, along with other ISM volunteers, she was acting as a human shield - or 'a bulldozer cowgirl' as she puts it. Cindy says: 'We knew what she was doing. We knew she was staying at different houses.' Initially Craig believed that the worst that might happen was that she would be arrested. 'But then when she started reporting back, I realised that this was a military out of control, where there was no discipline. I said to her brother a week before she was killed: "She can't continue to do this sort of thing. Sooner or later it's not going to work."' Cindy adds, 'You were just holding your breath.'
It sounds agonising for the family left behind. Sarah agrees. 'You may not be talking about it every day, but you're thinking about it. She knew that was what we would be doing. I don't think it was an easy decision for her to be there knowing how worried we were going to be.' Has Sarah ever been angry with her sister? 'People ask that,' she replies. 'I never feel angry about Rachel because she didn't intend to die. There was no part of her that intended to die. I can't be mad at Rachel for something she didn't intend to happen. So, no.'
This kind of bereavement, premature and violent, is hard to imagine. Now add the fact that Rachel swiftly became both a worldwide news story and a debating point and it's difficult to comprehend the amount of stress the family must have been under. Within a few hours, Cindy's email account had crashed. Absurdly, in the first hours of mourning they were trying to work out how to set up a new computer inbox. They received 10,000 emails in the first fortnight alone. In one of what must have been many dream-like moments, Craig recalls a candlelit vigil held three days after his daughter died: a stranger carried a huge poster-sized picture of Rachel, a photograph he hadn't even seen before.
Overnight in Rafah there was graffiti dedicated to the young woman who believed there would be a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state in her lifetime - 'Rachel was a US citizen with Palestinian blood.' She had become a victim of their intifada, a heroine who had stood up to the mighty Israeli army. New mothers christened their daughters Rachel. A kindergarten was named after her. Palestinians living in America would approach the Corries crying, barely able to speak. 'It should have been me,' they told them.
Elsewhere the response was more mixed. The death of a young blonde female American in the Middle East aroused extreme reactions. Angry messages to pro-Israel websites suggested 'she should burn in hell for an eternity'. Critics of the Palestinian cause suggested that the houses in Rafah hid tunnels which supplied arms. A picture of Rachel burning a makeshift American flag in front of Gaza schoolchildren was circulated. There was heated debate on the campus at Evergreen. Sarah and her brother Chris began filtering out some of the hate mail that arrived.
'I don't think people understand how divisive this issue is, and how much people care,' says Craig. 'I don't think we did.'
Rachel Corrie was both lionised and demonised. 'In some ways,' says Cindy, 'both reactions are threatening. Because Rachel was a very human person. I used to worry about the adulation - what happens when they find out that the real person was as flawed as we all are? On the other hand, I know she has given a lot of people hope and something to aspire to. I think it is important to people to have figures in their lives that provide that for them.'
The Corries take me around Olympia in their car, past the places where Rachel grew up. While Craig drives he recalls descriptive passages from her journals and tries to retrace his daughter's steps in his mind's eye. Even on a winter's day you can see how beautiful it is: noble Douglas firs, a glint of water, secluded wooden houses with verandas.
Two years ago some of the Nasrallah family visited Olympia. They were the owners of the concrete house, pockmarked with tank shell holes, that Rachel had died defending. The two families were invited on a speaking tour to talk about the situation in the Middle East. When Khaled Nasrallah saw where Rachel had grown up he turned to her parents and said, wide-eyed: 'She gave up this paradise, for us?'
In turn, the Corries have twice visited Gaza since Rachel was killed. 'My feeling,' says Craig, 'was that she wrote about those people with warmth. Going to Gaza was a real need to see who Rachel wrote about and to thank them for the care they took of her while she was there.' They negotiated the same checkpoints, the same rubble-strewn streets as their daughter had done. Armed men in watchtowers looked down on them. At night they slept through the sound of tracer fire. I imagine how proud, and perhaps astonished, their daughter would have been (on occasion she'd railed against her father for having 'his head in the sand' politically). The Corries' instinct is to play down the danger they were in: gunfire whistled past Craig and, one evening, dinner with the Nasrallah family was interrupted by the menacing sound of a bulldozer outside the window. On their second visit in 2006 they were woken in the middle of the night by men with Kalashnikovs. Craig and Cindy Corrie would be valuable bargaining tools in an area that has become even more desperate since Rachel was killed. As it was, the Nasrallahs managed to persuade the men to go on their way. It was said that they killed two security guards on the Egyptian border instead.
In one of her final emails home Rachel said, 'This has to stop! I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop.' It's clear that her parents have taken her at her word. Sarah says, 'She wanted them to go there. In her writing she says you need to meet these people. Now our lives are intertwined with what goes on in Rafah and Gaza and Israel and Palestine.' Meanwhile, in the five years since Rachel was killed, the humanitarian situation in Gaza - effectively imprisoned by Israel, with limited fuel, electricity and medical supplies - has grown worse, not better.
The family is still seeking information about what happened to Rachel and to have her death accounted for. According to former US secretary of state Colin Powell's chief of staff, the Israeli government's report was not 'thorough, credible or transparent', yet there is no sign that the US government plans to take any further action. Four months ago Sarah discovered distressing reports that Rachel's autopsy was not carried out according to their stipulations. The Corries, along with four Palestinian families, are waiting for court action against Caterpillar Inc, the American company that makes the bulldozer that killed Rachel, to be reheard.
Sarah recalls, three weeks after Rachel died, her mother meeting the family of Amy Biehl, an American anti-apartheid campaigner killed in South Africa in 1993. 'I remember Mom asking Amy's mother, "Do you ever get the normal back?" She paused for a long while and in the end she said, "No, not really." I knew then that this is what was going to happen to our family. First you have to mourn Rachel. Then you have to mourn the loss of your family and the life that you had.'

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

2008-03-03T06:46:00.000-08:00

Print - Close Window
Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:07:56 -0500
To: "ADC Updates"
From: "Nabil Mohamad"
Subject: Israeli Minister Says Palestinians Bringing Holocaust Upon Themselves
ADC Press Release:

Israeli Minister Says Palestinians Bringing Holocaust Upon Themselves

Washington, DC | February 29, 2008 | www.adc.org | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) strongly condemns the deplorable comments made by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai. Speaking on Israel's army radio yesterday, Vilnai said: "They (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." ADC calls on the US and Israeli governments to take immediate action and publicly condemn, reject, and repudiate the Holocaust comment made by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai.

Vilnai’s comments were reported in numerous international media sources, see below:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/israel-warns-of-palestinian-holocaust-as-violence-in-gaza-worsens/2008/02/29/1204226991566.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSL296121231

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/29/headlines

ADC National Executive Director Kareem Shora said, “The Holocaust represents the darkest moment in human history. It included the systematic detainment, torture, and extermination of approximately six million European Jews by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. The statement made by Vilnai echoes the darkest of eras and should be immediately rejected.” Shora added, ”During this horrible time in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it is shameful for an Israeli Government official to say the Palestinians are bringing a Holocaust upon themselves. Israel should be working to end its 41-year occupation of the Palestinian territories.”

According to reports, in the three months since the peace talks at Annapolis, Maryland more than 205 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians and children; and five Israelis have been killed. Additionally, Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which has been in effect since January 12, has left the Gaza Strip without supplies essential to purify water, increasing the risk of contamination and disease. Residents in Gaza are being urged to boil all drinking water to avoid the spread of disease because more than one-third of Gaza's water supply is now untreated. United Nations officials have warned the situation could lead to a health disaster for Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. Now, media reports indicate Israel is believed to be preparing a major military ground operation in Gaza.
###

NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non sectarian and non partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980, by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide, including chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states.

The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs.

______________________________________________________________

***********************************************************************************
SAVE THE DATE: 2008 ADC Annual National Convention - Washington, DC June 12 to 15.
TO CONTRIBUTE AND/OR BECOME A MEMBER, CLICK HERE: https://www.adc.org/membership/
***********************************************************************************
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Organizing Department
1732 Wisconsin Ave NW.
Washington, DC. 20007, U.S.A.
Tel: (202) 244-2990
E-mail: organizing@adc.org
Web : http://www.adc.org

2008-02-29T11:40:00.000-08:00

Subject: JTA: Obama: Don't equate 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Likud' Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:07:06 +0000
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/107170.html
Obama: Don't equate 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Likud'
Published: 02/24/2008
Barack Obama faulted elements in the pro-Israel community that he says equate being pro-Israel with being pro-Likud.
'I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel,' the Illinois senator and contender for the Democratic presidential nominee told a group of Jewish leaders in Cleveland on Sunday. 'If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress.'

The Likud Party, in the Israeli opposition, advocates minimal territorial concessions to the Palestinians and promotes settlement in the West Bank .

Obama was addressing a series of attacks, most from Republicans, that suggest that he has surrounded himself with anti-Israel advisers. He noted that he did not take the advice of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Carter administration national security adviser named in some of the attack e-mails.

Obama explained that he accepted Brzezinski's endorsement, based on shared views on ending the Iraq war, but did not share Brzezinski's critical views of Israel . Nonetheless, he cautioned against marginalizing those with different views.

'Frankly some of the commentary that I've seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn't talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we're going to have problems moving forward,' he said.

Obama also said he encountered more nuanced views among Israelis than Americans.
'There was a very honest, thoughtful debate taking place inside Israel ,' he said. 'All of you, I'm sure, have experienced this when you travel there. Understandably, because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation. But all I'm saying though is that actually ultimately should be our goal, to have that same clear eyed view about how we approach these issues.'

The meeting, taking place as the campaigns of Obama and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) blitz the state ahead of a March 4 primary, was off the record, but a rough transcript was later made available.

2008-02-29T11:36:00.000-08:00

Subject: An Invention Called 'the Jewish People' by Tom Segev

Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:54:26 +0000
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

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Last update - 17:30 28/02/2008
An invention called 'the Jewish people'
By Tom Segev

Israel's Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.

According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of those exiled was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered by the Arabs, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among the conquerors. It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others.

If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them reached almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own volition or, if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there because they chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion tried to induce members of other faiths to become Jews, which explains how there came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the Book of Esther, for example, notes, 'And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.'

Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel but shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs who became Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the Christians, and from European-born individuals who had also become Jews.

The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel and did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it was not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection between the offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East, some of them as merchants.

We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel.

Prof. Zand teaches at Tel Aviv University. His book, 'When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?' (published by Resling in Hebrew), is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a 'state of all its citizens' - Jews, Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a 'Jewish and democratic' state. Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters are well-written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time.

The mosquito from Kiryat Yam

On March 27, 1948, a meeting was held in Hiafa concerning the fate of the Bedouin of Arab al-Ghawarina in the Haifa area. 'They must be removed from there, so that they, too, will not add to our troubles,' Yosef Weitz, of the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), wrote in his personal diary. Two months later, Weitz reported to the organization's director, 'Our Haifa Bay has been evacuated completely and there is hardly a remnant of those who encroached our border.' They were probably expelled to Jordan; some were allowed to remain in the village of Jisr al-Zarqa. The fate of the Arab al-Ghawarina Bedouin has recently made the headlines thanks to Shmuel Sisso, mayor of the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Yam. He has filed a complaint with the police against Google. The reason is the addition that one of the site's surfers, a resident of Nablus, attached to the center of Kiryat Yam in the world satellite photo, stating that the city is built on the ruins of a village that was destroyed in 1948, Arab al-Ghawarina. Sisso's complaint says that this is slanderous.

The facts are as follows: The lands of the Zevulun Valley were purchased in the 1920s by the JNF and by various construction companies, among them one called Gav Yam. The Zionist Archives have the plan for the establishment of Kiryat Yam, dated 1938, and a letter from 1945 states that there were already 100 homes there. Government maps from the British Mandate period identify the territory on which Kiryat Yam was built by two names: Zevulun Valley and Ghawarina. Thus it appears that this was not a settlement but an area in which Bedouin resided.

The Web site of the Israeli organization Zochrot (Remembering) states that there were 720 people at the site in 1948 and that the area was divided among three kibbutzim: Ein Hamifratz, Kfar Masaryk and Ein Hayam, today Ein Carmel.

This story has been making the rounds on the Internet and drawing responses, which can be summed up as follows: 'If Sisso is suing Google because they stated that he is living on a destroyed Arab village, the implication is that he thinks this is something bad.' Sisso, a lawyer of 57 who is identified with Likud and was formerly Israeli consul general in New York, says, 'I don't think there is anything bad about it, but other people might think it is bad, especially people abroad, and that is liable to hurt Kiryat Yam, because people will not want to invest here. Since we are not sitting on a Palestinian village, why should we have to suffer for no reason?'

Moroccan-born, Sisso arrived in Israel in 1955. 'I wandered around the whole region and I saw no trace of anyone's having been here before us and supposedly expelled.' He asked an American law professor how, if at all, Google could be sued for slander or for damages. This, he says, is the contribution of Kiryat Yam to the struggle against the right of return (of the Palestinian refugees).

It could turn out to be the most riveting trial since Ariel Sharon sued Time magazine, but mayor Sisso has no illusions: 'Me against Google is like a mosquito against an elephant,' he said this week.

Who America belongs to

Two professors, Gabi Shefer and Avi Ben-Zvi, were guests this week on Yitzhak Noy's 'International Hour' current events program on Israel Radio. The anchor, sounding slightly concerned, asked whether the achievements of Barack Obama show that the United States no longer belongs to the white man. Prof. Shefer confirmed this: Obama is an immigrant, he said. Prof. Ben-Zvi asked to add a remark: Gabi Shefer is right, he said. They are both wrong. If Obama were an immigrant, he would not be eligible to be elected president. He was born in Honolulu, some two years after Hawaii became the 50th state of the union.

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/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=959229

2008-02-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

Events of Interest in Bethlehem

The Organizing Department of ADC is forwarding this announcement on behalf of the Holy Land Trust, a nonprofit organization based in Bethlehem, Palestine.

5th Annual Palestine Summer Encounter 2008
Palestine Summer Encounter 2008
Holy Land Trust in partnership with Middle East Fellowship invites you to participate in the fifth annual Palestine Summer Encounter, a one to three month Arabic-training and volunteer program, starting on May 22nd, 2008.
The purpose of the program is to create a dialogue between Palestinians and members of the global community. During the program, participants will learn beginner or intermediate conversational Arabic through language immersion and class and partner with Palestinian non-profit organizations as a volunteer and will have the chance to meet Palestinian and Israeli Peace Activists, and tour Palestine and Israel , Participants will also have the Chance to learn (Dabkeh) Palestinian dance and would learn how to cook some Palestinian dishes. See the links for more detailed information: www.palestinesummer.org

2nd Annual Home Rebuilding Camp in Bethlehem
Holy Land Trust in Partnership with The Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD)
1st of August 2008 – 14th of August 2008
· Dedicate two weeks this summer to help rebuild a demolished home...
· Give hope back to a family whose house has been destroyed...
· Work hand in hand with Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals for justice.
For more information on the camp please visit http://travel.holylandtrust.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=90 or a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbwaE2uedRI

Fall Olive Harvest Pilgrimage
October 2008
Join us on a journey in the Holy Land and take part in the olive harvest which is an integral part of the very fabric of life in Palestine and Israel. When the olive harvesting season begins, the hillsides of Palestine crawl with families and bring the hills alive with people working to gather their precious crop. Family members, to this day, make an effort to travel to one another from all over the country to help in the olive harvest. We will pick olives in lands that have been separated from the farmers and Olives are picked by hand as they have been for thousands of years. We will also discover the ancient church as we take an historical pilgrimage in the footsteps of Jesus, learning to respond as He would to the needs of the people and build relationships of encouragement and support. Meeting with Jewish and Palestinian organizations that are working for peace, we will consider the current situation and the role of the Church today and seek ways of building bridges of peace through interfaith dialogue. This will be a rich cultural experience as we meet with many organizations, stay with local families in their homes, taste fabulous Middle Eastern delicacies and receive their incredible hospitality.
Information about this program would be posted to the website soon. http://travel.holylandtrust.org

Birthright Palestine Tour
December 2008
Holy Land Trust invites Palestinians immigrants around the world to re-discover Palestine today through a Palestinian Roots tour. This unique program shines a new light on the Palestine you hear about in the news, and allows you to discover the beauty and pride of Palestine amidst the hardships of the current conflict. You will have an opportunity to visit important cities from Palestinian history, learn about traditional Palestinian culture, discover the dynamics of the current conflict, and return to your historical village to re-connect with your roots.

For more information:

Log onto: www.birthrightpalestine.com

E-mail: info@birthrightpalestine.com

***********************************************************************************
SAVE THE DATE: 2008 ADC Annual National Convention - Washington, DC June 12 to 15. For more information: http://www.adc.org/Conv08/home.html
TO CONTRIBUTE AND/OR BECOME A MEMBER, CLICK HERE: https://www.adc.org/membership/
***********************************************************************************
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Organizing Department
1732 Wisconsin Ave NW.
Washington, DC. 20007, U.S.A.
Tel: (202) 244-2990
E-mail: organizing@adc.org
Web : http://www.adc.org

2008-02-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:16:07 -0800 (PST)
From: "WRITE! Action Alert"
Subject: Letters Needed: 1120 more homes to be built in Occupied Territories by Israel

To: actionalertwt@yahoo.com
WRITE! For Justice, Human Rights and International Law in Palestine.

The US Media needs to cover the following news story already reported by the BBC that Israel is now planning an additional 1,120 homes in the illegal settlements on Palestinian occupied land in additional to the 350 already announced which were internationally denounced as undercutting President Bush's peace efforts in Palestine. This new announcement is a direct slap in the face of President Bush, and shows Israel's true intentions in Palestine - true ambitions for Palestinian territory, which are aggressive and illegal.

This is especially telling when viewed next to the almost complete denial by the Israeli government of building permits to Palestinians in the same area, and especially in East Jerusalem - which is their ancestral homeland. This further demonstrates the unpeaceful attitude of the Israeli's toward the native Palestinians. This policy is described in a recent report by an Israeli peace group, Peace Now. Its report can be read at:

"Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats - February 2008", by Hagit Oren, published by Peace Now, (February, 2008).
http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

Please write to your local newspaper, or one of the major newspapers listed below, or many of them, and ask them to publicize this story because the American people need to know what is really going on in the Middle East - what their "ally" is really up to, and what they apparently think of us."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution - letters@ajc.com, mlupo@ajc.com (Michael Lupo)
Boston Globe - letter@globe.com
Chicago Tribune - ctc-tribletter@tribune.com
Christian Science Monitor - newcomba@csps.com (Amelia Newcomb)
Los Angeles Times - letters@latimes.com,
Miami Herald - HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com
New York Times - letters@nytimes.com, nytnews@nytimes.com
Philadelphia Inquirer - Inquirer.Letters@phillynews.com
San Francisco Chronicle - letters@sfchronicle.com.
Washington Post - letters@washpost.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7240557.stm

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Tuesday, 12 February 2008, 10:42 GMT

Israel plans new settlement homes

Palestinians say settlements cut the West Bank from East Jerusalem
Israeli housing minister Zeev Boim says tenders will soon be issued for construction of more than 1,000 new homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.
Israel annexed the area in 1967 and has continued settlement activity despite a recent freeze on settlements on other occupied territory in the West Bank.
The international community regards such building as illegal. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital.
Mr Boim said building continued within all Jerusalem's municipal boundaries.
He added that what had been portrayed as delays in construction in East Jerusalem "are in fact final stages of coordination" with the municipal authorities.
Israel announced two months ago that it would build 350 new flats in the Har Homa settlement, a move that soured fresh efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before the two sides had even met.
Mr Boim said there would be an additional 370 new residences in Har Homa, known as Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arabic, and that bids would be issued for 750 more in Pisgat Zeev.
"We condemn these Israeli declarations, and once again we ask the Israeli government to give peace a chance by stopping all settlement activity," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

******************************************************************************************

Thank you,

The WRITE! Team

====================================
WRITE! TO SUPPORT JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND
INTERNATIONAL LAW IN PALESTINE-ISRAEL

Visit us at www.writetruth.org

Thank you,

The WRITE! Team

====================================
WRITE! TO SUPPORT JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND
INTERNATIONAL LAW IN PALESTINE-ISRAEL

Visit us at www.writetruth.org

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.

2008-02-20T11:36:00.000-08:00

Please read and marke you calendar if interested.
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:15:05 -0500
To: organizing@adc.org
From: "Nabil Mohamad"
Subject: Fw: [siraj-center] The Palestinian Summer Celebration 2008 and more
The Organizing Department of ADC is sending this message on behalf of Siraj Center in Bethlehem, Palestine.

The Palestinian Summer Celebration 2008
15 June 2008 – 17 August 2008June 15th – July 13th 2008 (first month)
July 14th – August 17th 2008 (second month)

Come and celebrate Palestine, learn Arabic, study history, know the people and their culture, share some time with local families and volunteer with a local community organization.

http://www.sirajcenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=1

Everything is optional

The Palestinian summer celebration is a unique annual program that gives people from all over the world the chance to encounter the life and culture in Palestine in addition to donating some of their time to a local community organization through voluntary work and internships. The Palestinian summer celebration 2008 will take place in the Bethlehem area in Palestine, between June 15th and August 17th 2008. The annual celebration is organized by Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies www.sirajcenter.org in partnership with Bethlehem University www.bethlehem.edu and the US based Society for Biblical Studies, www.sbsedu.org.

Participants will also have the opportunity to listen and question high level speakers of various positions and expertise.

The 2007 participants developed videos explaining their time and experience during the 2007 Summer Celebration:

4- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQ-PsklS04

3- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ5jzZHqvnY

2- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0PHXE1-TYg

1-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1MMve_qHK0

They have written about their time: http://www.sirajcenter.org/s-blogs.htm

The program includes, studying Arabic, History and Theology at Bethlehem University, living with local families, volunteering with local community organizations in addition for touring Palestine and enjoy its beauty and culture and have a firsthand experience of the political situation.

Participants will have the chance to have Palestinian Cooking classes, Palestinian Debkeh Dancing training, and during the program, eight films will be screened in the Siraj office.

For more information regarding registration and cost:

http://www.sirajcenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=1
2- Christmas Pilgrimage for Peace
December 28th 2008- January 10th 2009
he Christmas Pilgrimage for Peace is an annual program that gives people from all over the world the opportunity to experience oriental Christmas in Bethlehem celebrated with local families. Moreover, gives participants that chance to more educated about the pledge for Justice and Peace. The Christmas Pilgrimage for Peace, will enrich its participants with the culture of the land, through living and sharing the lives of the people of the land.

for more information: http://www.sirajcenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=1
George S. Rishmawi
Coordinator,
Siraj, Center For Holy Land Studies
Beit Sahour, Schoold Street
P.O.Box 48
Palestine
Email: george@sirajcenter.org
abusaliba@yahoo.com
abusaliba@gmail.com
abusalib@p-ol.com
Website: http://www.sirajcenter.org
http://www.wusul.com/wusul/CommunityHomePage.faces
http://www.mepeace.org/profile/GeorgeSRishmawi
Tel: +972 2 274 8590
Fax: +972 2 274 8774
Mobile: 0599 180 872
USA number: 1 425 906 5084

***********************************************************************************
SAVE THE DATE: 2008 ADC Annual National Convention - Washington, DC June 12 to 15.
TO CONTRIBUTE AND/OR BECOME A MEMBER, CLICK HERE: https://www.adc.org/membership/
***********************************************************************************
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Organizing Department
1732 Wisconsin Ave NW.
Washington, DC. 20007, U.S.A.
Tel: (202) 244-2990
E-mail: organizing@adc.org
Web : http://www.adc.org

2008-02-20T07:19:00.000-08:00

Can you imagine being separated from your children for almost half a year? Can you imagine how four children aged 4 to 16 feel being kept away from their parents?

These horrors are real in Palestine… a nation that is split in two…. so are families. All this thanks to Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas… the dynamic duo of the region. Thanks also to Uncle Sam for allowing this to happen.

And you wonder why these kids grow up with hatred and resentment? There is a very simple way to prevent that from happening… a very obvious way, PALESTINE MUST BE UNITED AND FREE! THE SIEGE OF GAZA MUST END IMMEDIATELY

But and past the following to read the details:

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/divided-families-within-a-divided-palestine/

2008-02-15T07:09:00.001-08:00

Zionist: Counterpunch.com: Talking to a Wall
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:03:55 +0000
February 14, 2008

Talking to a Wall
Palestine in the Mind of America

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON

You would think that showing maps clearly delineating the truncated, obviously non-viable area available for a possible Palestinian state and showing pictures that define Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories would have some kind of impact on an audience of astute but, on this issue, generally uninformed Americans. We recently spoke to a small foreign affairs discussion group and devoted much of our presentation to these images of oppression -- images that never appear in the U.S. media -- in the probably naïve hope of making some kind of dent in the impassive American attitude toward Israel's 40-year occupation of Palestinian territory.
But our expectations that these people would listen and perhaps learn something were sadly misplaced. Few among the elite seminar-style discussion group seemed concerned about, or even particularly interested in, what is happening on the ground in Palestine-Israel, and the event stands as starkly emblematic of American apathy about the oppressive Israeli regime in the occupied territories that the United States is enabling and in many instances actively encouraging.
The maps that we displayed of the West Bank, prepared by the UN and by Israeli human rights groups, clearly depicted the segmented, disconnected scatter of territorial pieces that would make up the Palestinian state even in the most optimistic of scenarios -- Palestinian areas broken up by the separation wall cutting deep into the West Bank; by large Israeli settlements scattered throughout and taking up something like 10 percent of the territory; by the network of roads connecting the settlements, all accessible only to Israeli drivers; and by the Jordan Valley, currently barred to any Palestinian not already living there, making up fully one-quarter of the West Bank, and ultimately destined for annexation by Israel.
The maps make it clear that even the most generous Israeli plan would leave a Palestinian state with only 50-60 percent of the West Bank (constituting 11-12 percent of original Palestine), broken into multiple separated segments and including no part of Jerusalem. The photographs, taken during our several trips to Palestine in recent years, depicted the separation wall, checkpoints and terminals in the wall resembling cages, Palestinian homes demolished and official buildings destroyed, vast Israeli settlements built on confiscated Palestinian land, destroyed Palestinian olive groves, commerce in Palestinian cities shut down because of marauding Israeli settlers or soldiers.
We have shown maps and pictures like these myriad times before, but have never been received with quite such disinterest. Here was a group of mostly retired U.S. government officials, academics, journalists, and business executives, as well as a few still-working professionals -- all ranging in political orientation from center right to center left, the cream of informed, educated America, the exemplar of elite mainstream opinion in the United States. Their lack of concern about what Israel and, because of its enabling role, the U.S. are doing to destroy an entire people and their national aspirations could not have been more evident.
The first person to comment when our presentation concluded, identifying herself as Jewish, said she had 'never heard a more one-sided presentation' and labeled us 'beyond anti-Semitic' -- which presumably is somewhat worse than plain-and-simple anti-Semitic. This is always a somewhat upsetting charge, although it is so common and so expected as to be of little note anymore. What was more noteworthy was the reaction, or lack of it, among the rest of the assembled, who never disputed her charge but spent most of the discussion period either disputing our presentation or trying to find ways to accommodate 'Jewish pain.'
Our brief conversation with this woman progressed in an interesting fashion. We tried to engage her in a discussion about what exactly was one-sided in our depiction of the situation on the ground and what she would have liked to see to make it 'two-sided.' She did not answer but indicated that she thought whatever Israel did must be justified by Palestinian actions. 'Someone had to have started it,' she said. We laid out a little history for her, noting that the first action, the 'who-started-it' part, could be traced back to Britain 's Balfour Declaration pledge in 1917 to promote the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine , at a time when Jews made up no more than 10 percent of the population of Palestine . Then we came up to the 1947 UN partition resolution, which allotted 55 percent of Palestine for a Jewish state at a time when Jews owned only seven percent of the land and made up slightly less than one-third of the population.
Her answer was, 'Well, but it wasn't Jews who did this.' We disabused her of this and briefly detailed the deliberate Zionist program of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian population conducted during 1947-48 war, as described by several Israeli historians, including particularly Ilan Pappe, whose The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is based on Israeli military archives. Her eyes actually began to bulge, but she held her tongue. Apparently deciding that she had no way of refuting these facts, she finally decided that going back in history was of no utility -- a common Zionist dodge -- and that Israel had not been established in any case to be a democracy but was a haven for persecuted Jews and as such has every right to organize itself in any way it sees fit. The moderator finally called on others who wanted to speak, and the discussion moved on.
But not very far. The talk now circled, for over an hour, around what passed for profound discussion: around someone's curious remarks about Zeitgeist, someone else's equally curious insistence that there was 'something out there that no one would talk about' that was influencing the situation, a few remarks about Palestinians as terrorists and how even if Israel made peace with the Palestinians Hamas would still try to destroy it, a lot of talk about how to accommodate Jewish pain and, taking off from this, a psychologist's attempt to draw an analogy between Jews who live in fear of persecution and the rape victims she counsels who live in constant fear that they will be raped again or worse.
A few people did ask interested questions about the situation on the ground and about various aspects of Israeli policy. After the discussion had centered for quite a while on Jewish pain, one person pointed out that Palestinians too feel pain and live in fear, but no one else picked up on this. No one challenged the first speaker's personal charge of anti-Semitism against us, and in the end there was almost no mention of the destructive Israeli practices that had been the subject of our presentation.
We had occasion to email several of the participants the next day. In one message, we lodged a mild complaint with the three group organizers about the fact that the charge of anti-Semitism was allowed not only to stand but to set the tone for much of the discussion, with no refutation of the substance of the charge by anyone except us. In another message, sent to a man who had expressed puzzlement over why the Jewish vote was thought to be important in U.S. elections, we forwarded without comment an article from Mother Jones about Barack Obama's difficulties with the Jewish community and his concerted effort to demonstrate his bona fides by pledging fealty to Israel and justifying Israel's siege of Gaza.
Finally, to the psychologist, we wrote a comment on her analogy between Jews and rape victims, observing that as a psychologist she undoubtedly did not encourage her rape victim clients to perpetuate their fear or adopt an aggressive attitude toward other people, but most likely gave them tools to help them regain trust and move beyond fears for their personal safety. This kind of restorative therapy for Jews has never been employed, we noted, but on the contrary Israeli leaders and American Jewish leaders have encouraged Jewish fears, along with an aggressive, militaristic Israeli policy toward its neighbors.
These were all gratuitous overtures by us, but they were not inappropriate or uncivil. Yet not one of these people saw fit to answer our missives or even acknowledge their receipt -- indicating, we can only assume, the general level of unconcern among Americans about the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, including the siege and starvation imposed on Gazans. Then, too, the lack of response probably reflects feelings on the part of most attendees that we are somehow responsible for having involved them in a discussion that turned out to be fairly unpleasant for them.
Why is this interesting to anyone but us? Because this in-depth discussion with a small but representative group of intelligent, thinking Americans is indicative of a broad range of U.S. public opinion on foreign policy issues, and their level of disinterest in the consequences of U.S. policies is quite disturbing. The self-absorption evident during this meeting, the general 'don't-rock-the-boat' posture, the overwhelming lack of concern for the victims of Israeli and U.S. power amount to a license to kill for the U.S. and its allies. The same unconcern allowed the United States to get away with killing millions of Vietnamese decades ago; it gives license to mass U.S. killing in Iraq and Afghanistan ; it is the reason Democrats still, after seven years of Bush administration torture and killing around the world, cannot fully separate themselves from Republican militarism. It gives Israel license to kill and ethnically cleanse the entire nation of Palestine .
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. She can be reached at kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net.
Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis.
They can be reached at kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net.

2008-02-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

From: "Jamal Najjab" Add Mobile Alert
Subject: If at possible, please buy this book, it is wonderful.
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 21:48:08 +0000

Jan – Feb issue 2008.
Music & Arts
Raff Ellis Presents Kisses From a Distance
Jamal Najjab

Raff Ellis describes how his book Kisses From a Distance came to be (Staff photo J. Najjab).

INSTEAD OF DOING a traditional reading of his new book Kisses From a Distance at his Nov. 13 appearance at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC, author Raff Ellis delighted his audience with a detailed explanation of how the book came to be. “First of all there were my mother’s letters,” Ellis said, “over 200 of them, written between 1925 and 1990.” After marrying Ellis’ father and settling in Carthage, New York, Ellis’ mother corresponded with her family back in Lebanon. Many of the saved letters began with the phase: “Kisses from a distance.” When Ellis’ mother died, her children found the letters in her locked sandouq, or trunk. Ellis’ brother had the letters translated in Lebanon, bound them in a book, and gave a copy to each of his siblings. Each time he read them, Ellis found the letters more and more fascinating. “I came to believe there was a story hidden within these letters,” he said. He knew they were a true historical find, a treasure trove that needed to be shared with the world. First Ellis decided to find answers to key questions, such as was his mother’s family as great as she had made them out to be in her vivid stories that he heard all through his childhood? Were the mountains of Lebanon as beautiful as she said? Ellis also had to ponder what it meant to be Lebanese. He remembered the words of Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi: “They leave the mountains, but the mountains don’t leave them.” Growing up, Ellis said, he didn’t want to be what he called “ethnic”; instead he wanted to just blend in with the other kids in school and be American. “Show me that melting pot,” he said. “I want to jump in.” However, as he experienced bouts of discrimination, Ellis said, he came to realize that the pot may not have wanted him. He cited the example of a barber in Carthage who refused to cut his hair, because he was a “Black Syrian.” Ellis discovered the importance of his heritage when he left home for military service. When he was homesick, he recalled, “I would search out Lebanese restaurants wherever I was stationed. My care packages from home...My ethnicity became my anchor.”In order to complete his research for the book, Ellis traveled to Lebanon several times. It seems he found the answer to many of his questions, but Ellis teased his listeners by telling them they would discover all when they read the book. If they do decide to pick it up, they will be in good company. According to Sam Hazo, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist, the book “is not an exercise in nostalgia, this is a serious historical study.” And journalist and author Helen Thomas had nothing but praise for the book. “Raff Ellis’ book Kisses from a Distance brought tears to my eyes,” she wrote. “It is beautifully written and the story of every family whose members courageously left their homes and families in the Middle East before and at the turn of the 20th century, as did my parents.” Thomas went on to say, “I wish there would be less demonization of the Arab world today and more understanding of its great people. I know Ellis’ book will help that bridge.”Ellis concluded his remarks by reading the dedication from the book: “To whose intrepid immigrants who braved the perilous journey to reach America’s shores, while forsaking the familiar for the promise of the unknown, and whose contributions to the enrichment of the land they embraced has made this country what it is.” Kisses from a Distance is available from the AET Book Club.

2008-02-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

Subject: The Nation: Book reviews by Adina Hoffman

Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 14:36:28 +0000

Click here to return to the browser-optimized version of this page.
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/hoffman

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Lives on the Groundby ADINA HOFFMAN
[from the February 18, 2008 issue]
Six decades since the birth of Israel and the demise of Palestine, fifteen years after Oslo, seven past the start of the second intifada, just months beyond Annapolis, and the mere mention of Holy Land politics will, more likely than not, cause even the sharpest of eyes to glaze over. The arguments for and against this particular peace plan or that interim solution have by now become so predictable that a macabre kind of repetition compulsion has set in, with all the parties behaving a bit like Karen, the doomed heroine of Hans Christian Andersen's 'Red Shoes,' who finds she can't take off her weirdly possessed slippers and so dances herself to death.
Which isn't to say that one should stop caring or paying attention. And here I speak not as an observer from afar but as someone who lives in Jerusalem and who continues--with a Karen-like helplessness I can't deny--to start each day with a blast of bad news from the local newspaper and the tired rhetoric that inevitably attends the discussion of crumbling Knesset coalitions and Gaza power plays. The stories of individual people who live and breathe the sweeping political choices made by prime ministers and presidents are, however, another matter, especially when such eyewitnesses reflect on their lives in print. Memoirs of this sort offer readers the chance not to escape politics but to grasp the flesh-and-blood implications of all those generalizing gestures made on high.
Read side by side, two of the most celebrated recent autobiographical books from this beleaguered patch of land emphasize just how distinct two adjoining Middle Eastern microcosms can be. A Tale of Love and Darkness, by Israeli novelist Amos Oz, and Once Upon a Country, by Palestinian philosophy professor and Al-Quds University president Sari Nusseibeh (with Anthony David), offer drastically different views of Israel/Palestine and more specifically of the Jerusalem where both men grew up.
Since his third book, the darkly psychosexual and historically charged My Michael, appeared in 1968, Oz has filled the role of one of Israel's most respected and 'representative' novelists. Over the years, though, his high-profile public persona--ruggedly handsome, casually dressed, calmly articulate moral spokesman for the Ashkenazi center-left (he was one of the founders of Peace Now and has remained an unwavering advocate of a two-state solution)--has, in a sense, overshadowed his fiction writing. His allies and enemies alike tend to know his craggy visage and political positions better than the contents of his recent novels, and it is only half in jest that he is often called the chief rabbi of the state's secular liberals. That said, Oz's twenty-third title, an account of his humble beginnings in the Jewish Jerusalem of the 1940s, has become something else altogether--a 'cult book,' as it has been described, snatched up by more than 100,000 Israelis during just the first two years following its publication in 2002. (Nicholas de Lange's lucid English translation appeared in 2004.) It is one of Israel's bestselling books of all time. Clearly, many identify deeply with both the personal and national story Oz tells; Israeli critics have compared his epic to those by Proust and Mann, and some local readers have even labeled it a kind of contemporary Israeli bible.
Hardly holy writ, A Tale of Love and Darkness is, in fact, an intimate exfoliation of the life of the author's immigrant family--at the center of which rests the awful fact of his mother's suicide when he was 12 years old. The book succeeds powerfully as an affectionate depiction of the hothouse atmosphere of this particular home and the wider (though still ingrown) community of prestate Jerusalem's Jewish oddballs, nudniks and voracious readers. These were European refugees who embodied at the same time the most cosmopolitan sort of learning and the most profound sort of provincialism. Oz's librarian father, Arieh Klausner, was a frustrated scholar who 'could read sixteen or seventeen languages and could speak eleven (all with a Russian accent).' He was also a man who, together with his dreamy wife, Fania, and precocious son, Amos, would spend months making arrangements and preparing mentally for the most solemn ritual of walking five minutes to the local pharmacy to telephone relatives in far-off Tel Aviv.
The peculiarly truncated sense of scale that Oz conveys--in which the entire known universe appears to exist within a few bedraggled blocks--is a perfect encapsulation of both a coddled child's perspective and the true Jerusalem syndrome, familiar from those medieval maps that turned the town into the omphalos, the hub around which the rest of creation revolves. Libraries loom large in this cramped cityscape--so much so that Oz announces at one point, 'When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book.' The line is amusing, though Oz's aspiration to bookishness is also an indication of what ails his memoir, which despite its various charms is often oppressively literary.
A kind of horror vacui dominates, with Oz pumping his pages full of superfluous descriptions, similes, metaphors and words, words, words; his favorite mode is the rambling list. The book is too long by at least 200 pages, and the author repeats himself shamelessly. Every time borscht is served, for instance, there is an 'iceberg of sour cream floating in it,' so that the epithet comes to seem downright Homeric. The same jokes are trotted out several times, as are the same grim anecdotes about European anti-Semitism. On one page, as part of a 101-word sentence (102 in Hebrew, a language known for its compaction), he describes the

opposite Jerusalem, the Jerusalem I hardly knew, the Abyssinian, Arab, pilgrim, Ottoman, missionary, German, Greek, brooding, Armenian, American, monastic, Italian, Russian Jerusalem, thick with pine trees, menacing yet fascinating...

Then, less than twenty pages later, and without any apparent self-awareness or memory of the lexical glut he has so recently unleashed, Oz sets out to account for the

other Jerusalem...the alien, aloof, shrouded Jerusalem, the Abyssinian, Muslim, pilgrim, Ottoman city, the strange missionary city of crusaders and Templars, the Greek, Armenian, Italian, brooding, Anglican...

He drones on this time for a full 134 words.
Oz's tendency toward verbal excess--why use two words when twelve will do?--reflects self-indulgence of a fundamental sort. A deep-seated narcissism runs through the heart of this ultimately rather preening book, and it all too often blocks Oz's view of the rich human scene he sets out to portray. More than a tribute to the lost world of Jerusalem's refugee intellectuals, A Tale of Love and Darkness is really the author's song--or opera--of himself. Which is not to say that larger political or social concerns are absent from the book. If anything, they're inextricably bound to Oz's sense of himself as shining representative of the Jewish state and its put-upon Eastern European founders.
To judge from the book's runaway commercial and critical success, this is precisely the role that many readers want him to play: chief rabbi indeed--and maybe also poster boy for a kind of noble victimhood that many twenty-first-century Israelis cling to as a frantic form of self-justification. As Oz made explicit in various interviews published at the time of the book's publication, he feels his parents' class of impecunious, decidedly non-elite Ashkenazim, together with the entire Zionist project, has gotten a bum rap in recent years; his memoir is his attempt to set the record straight--and perhaps to assure his devoted local audience that they are not the bad guys, they are not to blame. The 1948 war was one 'the Arabs started,' he writes. His parents and their neighbors were good but desperate people, with threadbare clothes and no other refuge from Hitler's Europe but Palestine. A few days after the UN partition plan was announced, 'hundreds of armed Arabs came out of the Old City, singing bloodthirsty songs, roaring verses from the Qur'an, howling 'idbah al-Yahud' (butcher the Jews), and firing volleys in the air.' Pity me, pity us--Oz cries out: we suffered too. Like so many tales told in this part of the world, it is all about me and we. They still barely exist.
If Oz is interested in forging a myth of his own origins as well as of his country, Sari Nusseibeh prefers to debunk. While he, too, was raised in a hothouse, as the privileged son of one of Jerusalem's most distinguished and ancient Muslim families (since the seventh century they have held the literal key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre), he has perhaps a bit less to prove and never once casts himself as the victim. On the other hand, as a Palestinian--and a Palestinian writing in English, for a foreign audience--he starts out as something of an underdog, and he and co-writer Anthony David have clearly set out to make a subtle political point or two to a readership that is probably much more familiar with Israel's saga than Palestine's. But the book is not a polemic. It's very much the story of Nusseibeh's political and intellectual growth, told in a mild and good-naturedly self-deprecating tone and cast against the backdrop of his people's troubled history.
Once Upon a Country was inspired, he says, by Oz's memoir, which, in the generous terms typical of Nusseibeh, he calls a 'masterpiece.' Although he grew up 'no more than a hundred feet away from where Oz lived out his childhood,' he was struck by the fact that 'there were hardly any Arabs in [Oz's] story, and not a hint of the world I knew as a child.' (Born in 1949, Nusseibeh is ten years Oz's junior.) His book attempts to tell something of what went on across the road while also offering a cleareyed reckoning of the state of the Palestinian national movement. There are no heroes here, even though Nusseibeh himself might reasonably be viewed by readers as one: he could easily live a much more carefree life elsewhere but has chosen to stay in Jerusalem and work not just for his people's independence but also for what might be called, without condescension, their education. With admirable humility and a pair of mismatched socks, he goes about the business of helping shape a university (Al-Quds), a state, a civil society.
Nusseibeh is an unpretentious and endearing character whose seeming contradictions may in fact be his greatest strength. A product of the old aristocracy, he's a forward-thinking democrat who weeps when he reads Thomas Jefferson. He's at once an idealist and a pragmatist, a bluejeans-wearing graduate of Oxford and Harvard who admits that the 'thought of being burrowed for days in library stacks or chain-smoking...over a pile of notes in a café has always been far more alluring to me than jockeying for position and power.' Yet time and again he finds himself at the eye of the political storm. An almost accidental activist, he risks his hide to write and circulate political leaflets during the first intifada; he also serves as a central figure in various behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts, at one point becoming the PLO's man in Jerusalem and later founding, with former Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon, the People's Choice, a grassroots Palestinian-Israeli peace movement. Imprisoned by the Israelis on trumped-up charges, his family menaced by the authorities, his university campus threatened with Israel's decision to run its 'security wall' right down the middle of the school's soccer field, he continues somehow to maintain his sense of humor and purpose.
Nusseibeh is also a Palestinian patriot with a genuine admiration for what he calls the 'dynamic energy' of Israeli culture. His first encounter with actual (and not bogy-man) Israelis takes almost comic form when he disembarks from an El Al plane in Tel Aviv, just after the 1967 war, and finds himself faced with the ragtag demeanor of the purportedly all-mighty enemy. He wonders, 'How could such a badly dressed, ill-mannered people, who couldn't even stand in line for a cab, defeat all the Arab armies in the same number of days it took God to create the cosmos?' He suspects he may be in the presence of fellow Beatles fans. 'They were normal people like us,' he decides.
Sometimes, however, one admires Nusseibeh more than his book. The initial historical sections--which bounce along from the Caliph Omar's seventh-century conquest of Jerusalem through the early twentieth-century emergence of the Young Turks, and on through Nusseibeh's birth--are riddled with basic errors, names scrambled and the stories of important events told incorrectly. To take but one example: the Islamist militant Sheikh Izz a-Din al-Qassam's name keeps changing from Qassam to Cassam; he is repeatedly called 'a simple village cleric,' which he wasn't (he was a highly learned religious scholar who studied at Al-Azhar in Cairo and was a major figure in the 1921 Syrian revolt against the French in that country); and the famous circumstances of his death are completely garbled. Inspired by Qassam, the entire 1936-39 revolt of the Palestinian Arabs against British rule and Zionist settlement is treated breezily and as a kind of joke--'something straight out of the Three Stooges'--which, when one reads in any depth the history of Palestine, one learns it was not. Even if one considers this gross mischaracterization in the context of Nusseibeh's patrician background and the class tensions that marked the revolt (the urban aristocrats felt threatened by the rebels, who came mostly from the poor peasantry), it seems tonally bizarre for a man who has spent much of his life involved in grassroots Palestinian politics to dismiss with such casual cynicism the twentieth century's first Palestinian uprising. Whether this is a product of Nusseibeh's attitudes or his co-writer's sloppiness is impossible to know. The footnotes very oddly cite just a single source for almost all of the pre-'48 material: a historical survey written by an English journalist.
Equally strange is the book's almost entirely Western cultural orientation. Aside from his devotion to medieval Arabic philosophy and contemporary Palestinian politics, Nusseibeh seems indifferent to the rest of Arab, and specifically Palestinian, culture: references to Lewis Carroll, Bertrand Russell, Hegel, Auden, Walden and Monty Python abound, but when he mentions a novelist, it's C.S. Lewis (or Amos Oz!) and not Palestinians Ghassan Kanafani or Emile Habiby; Handel and Hendrix are both here, but not a single oud. And when an occasional Palestinian artist or thinker is mentioned, there are jarring mistakes or misplaced emphases--such as the description of the Arab nationalist, educational reformer and eloquent diarist Khalil Sakakini as 'a poet.' (An important figure in other respects and one of Palestine's finest prose writers, Sakakini composed a handful of conventional poems but certainly was no poet.)
Nusseibeh is entitled to his literary and musical tastes, of course, and he is not alone in being a Palestinian grandee whose education was so very European. But it seems peculiar, to say the least, that an intellectual who has given his life to Palestine wouldn't evince more interest in its living culture. It's not a matter of Nusseibeh's being cosmopolitan and bigger, somehow, than national boundaries--but of the fact that he maintains a studied distance from his own culture. This is a culture that, it should be said, has long woven protest into its poetry and poetry into its protest, and I cannot think of a single significant Palestinian writer who isn't somehow engaged with the various ways that the local landscape and lore are bound to history and politics. Not so for Sari Nusseibeh, whose real audience for this flawed yet moving book lives, it seems, not on the West Bank but on the Upper West Side. If Oz is too obsessed with us, Nusseibeh seems overly concerned with them.
A memoir is not just a record of what is remembered; it is also an account of what is seen. Nusseibeh was struck not by the fact that Oz had excised Palestinian Arabs from his childhood memories but that he'd hardly noticed their presence in the first place. As two other new memoirs make clear, such seeing (all seeing?) is a matter of choice. Raja Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks (forthcoming in the United States from Scribner) and David Shulman's Dark Hope have received much less press than the aforementioned volumes, yet both deserve serious attention. Each is a vivid and quietly devastating testament to the necessity of looking hard--and owning up to whatever one sees.
On the gradually expanding shelf of Palestinian memoirs, Shehadeh's books deserve a special place. Since his first collection of diary entries, The Third Way, was published in 1982, he has been charting his people's plight more steadily and honestly than almost anyone. Taken together, that first collection, along with The Sealed Room, Strangers in the House, When the Birds Stopped Singing and the volume at hand are almost like chapters in the same, ongoing saga. For Shehadeh's frank, persistent and deeply grounded writing is part and parcel of a basic philosophy of staying put and bearing nonviolent witness to the difficult dailiness of Palestinian existence on the occupied West Bank. The notion of being samid, or steadfast, and remaining on the land no matter what hardships that entails is one that runs throughout all his books, becoming ever more fraught with time, as the political horizons narrow and the wall closes in. Like Nusseibeh, Shehadeh--a lawyer and human rights activist who writes in English and has both a Western degree and a foreign wife--could enjoy a much simpler life elsewhere, and many of his Palestinian colleagues, friends and relatives have made the choice to leave. But Shehadeh is a man of real principle, one who clearly believes he does the most good by enduring with dignity in the land of his birth.
Such dogged holding-on isn't a given, and part of the sober force of Shehadeh's approach comes from his willingness to admit his own uncertainty and even weakness. 'In the uneasy first years of the millennium,' his new book begins, 'I felt that my days in Palestine were numbered. But whether Palestine or myself would slip away first was an open question.' Palestinian Walks is a modest, often raw, book, conceived around a series of six rambles on which the writer, a lifelong hiker, set out over the course of several decades. Each leads him into a landscape at once tangible and imaginative. 'A man going on a sarha,' he explains, using the Palestinian term for the sort of walks he likes to take, 'wanders aimlessly, not restricted by time and place, going where his spirit takes him to nourish his soul and rejuvenate himself.'
That may sound like, well, a walk in the park--but as quickly becomes clear, a modern-day stroll through the Ramallah hills is hardly a form of escape, and Shehadeh is no mincing flâneur. While he writes in loving detail about the rock rose, the iris and the cyclamen, and lets his mind and prose meander over the stories of family and friends who have passed through these wadis and ridges over the years, his book is in large part the chronicle of a demolition job: the settlements and the wall are gobbling up his beloved land at a frightening pace. Even the thistle has been politicized. As he explains in one typically startling passage, the fact that Palestinian peasants use the poterium thorn, or natsh, for all sorts of practical purposes--as a broom or a mattress--matters little to the Israeli authorities, who have taken to using its prickly ubiquity on certain tracts of land as evidence that these plots are 'uncultivated' and may therefore be appropriated for settlements. The book is full of such microcosmic atrocities, and though the small patches of flower and green that do remain seem still to lift Shehadeh's spirits, his walks also force him to contemplate the near-hopelessness brought about by the infamous 'facts on the ground' that lie at the heart of the Middle East conflict. Readers more accustomed to grayish newspaper generalities about the 'situation' would do well to reckon with the painful particulars of Shehadeh's account, which is at once gentle and angry, resolute and realistic.
The same could be said for Shulman's brave and often searing book, which tells another, parallel story of sumud, steadfastness. The Iowa-born Israeli Jewish professor--a world-renowned Sanskrit scholar, translator from Tamil and Telugu, husband, father, grandfather, former medic in the Israeli army and 1987 MacArthur fellow--is not, by his own account, a natural activist. He is someone who made the choice as a young man to live in Israel because he had 'fallen in love with the Hebrew language.' Yet after the 1977 electoral victory of Menachem Begin's Likud Party, he found himself watching 'in horror as Israel rapidly transformed itself into a paranoid, smug, and rather violent ghetto.' Things have gotten much worse since, and at a certain stage, Shulman felt he could no longer stand off to the side--for the sake of the Palestinians and for that of Israel, Judaism and maybe even humanity itself. ('Hell is realizing that one did not help when one could have,' reads the book's epigraph.)
Dark Hope is a diary of his work, from 2002 to 2006, with Ta'ayush, the Palestinian-Israeli group that has taken up the most difficult and dangerous hands-on work of peacemaking: it brings convoys of medicine and food into the West Bank and helps Palestinian farmers harvest their wheat and olives, its members often placing themselves physically between groups of wild-eyed gun-toting settlers and Palestinian peasants simply trying to sow their fields. Like Shehadeh's book, Shulman's offers the record of a thousand piercing particulars, indignities too 'small' to make the headlines but when taken together point directly to a systematic policy of injustice of the largest and most appalling dimensions. It is, indeed, this sense of skewed scale--the activists' humble gestures pitted against a huge military-ideological machine--that makes the book so wrenching. (Reading Nusseibeh's and Shulman's books back to back, one is left with little doubt that the Israeli government and army consider nonviolent activists much more threatening than terrorists.)
In patient and often heartbreaking detail, Shulman charts the brutal police assault that the activists must endure on the cold winter day when they commit the high crime of attempting to deliver blankets to the Palestinian cave dwellers south of Hebron; the grotesquely symbolic morning they spend trying to gather up the vast quantities of rat poison pellets that settlers have deliberately spread throughout Palestinian fields (sheep and deer have begun to die, and the poison may already be present in the milk the peasants drink); a vicious physical attack by settlers on a Ta'ayush group that has come to the village of Twaneh to help the peasants plow. In this instance, an enraged settler wearing a skullcap and ritual fringe hurls Shulman to the ground and punches him 'before moving on to his next target.' Shulman writes:

I feel pain, surprise, fear, rage. What is worse, I have seen their faces up close, and it is perhaps the most unsettling vision I have ever taken in, one I will later try to blot out, for these are not the faces of the usual human mix of good and evil, of confusion and clarity, of love and hate; the eyes are mad, killers' eyes--it is like looking at something utterly demonic, something from the world of myth. We are staring not into an abyss--for all is here on the surface, present, evident, and horrible--but into a volatile vortex of pure hate. I have no doubt they will kill us if they can. They seem to hate us, the leftist traitors, even more than they hate their Palestinian victims.

This is vintage Shulman: at once focused keenly on the situation (dramatic, moral, sensory) in which he finds himself yet also attuned with a kind of fierce precision to his inner shifts and starts. And the author is just as likely to question himself and his own motivation as he is to doubt the wisdom of the Israeli High Court.
Beautifully written and emphatic in its calm insistence on the need to take both responsibility and action, Dark Hope is notable not just for the bleak picture it paints of the nightmare that the settlers and their sponsors, the Israeli government, have brought to millions of Palestinians but also, as its title suggests, for the faith it places in a basic human decency and in the belief that there must be another way. It is essential reading for anyone who wants--or hopes, however darkly--to grasp the lay of this punished land.

2008-02-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Subject: American Jews have no understanding of the Arab World, this proves it.
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:02:01 +0000
Rejecting the ‘Arab Jew’
On Language

By Philologos
Wed. Jan 30, 2008

‘A senior Saudi royal has offered Israel a vision of broad cooperation with the Arab world if it signs a peace treaty and withdraws from all occupied Arab territories,” a Reuters dispatch reported last week, citing an interview with former Saudi ambassador to the United States Prince Turki al-Faisal. In the course of this interview, the prince was quoted as saying, “We will start thinking of Israelis as Arab Jews rather than simply as Israelis.”
Some vision of cooperation!
Needless to say, Prince Turki’s use of the term “Arab Jews” reflects either a comically naive misunderstanding on his part of who Israelis are, or the more sinister hope that they will one day cease to be who they are. In the best case, the prince’s remarks are ignorant and patronizing, and they reveal how even many supposedly sophisticated Arabs haven’t a clue that Israelis, although they live in the middle of an Arab expanse, are a people with a unique language, culture, history and identity of their own. If Prince Turki thinks that once peace is declared, Israelis will cheerfully agree to become another ethnic minority in the Arab Middle East, he is living in a cloud of nargileh smoke.
On the whole, however, one doesn’t come across the term “Arab Jews” in this context. Rather, it is used — mostly by Arabs but also by some anti-Israel and anti-Zionist intellectuals in the West — for the close to 1 million Jews who lived in Arab lands prior to the establishment of Israel, after which they left or were expelled from their native countries and immigrated to Israel or elsewhere. Thus, for instance, Ella Habiba Shohat, a professor of cultural and women’s studies at New York ’s City University , writes of herself in an essay titled “Reflections by an Arab Jew”:
“I am an Arab Jew. Or, more specifically, an Iraqi Israeli woman living, writing and teaching in the U.S…. To be a European or American Jew has hardly been perceived as a contradiction, but to be an Arab Jew has been seen as a kind of logical paradox, even an ontological subversion [leading to] a profound and visceral schizophrenia, since for the first time in our history Arabness and Jewishness have been imposed as antonyms…. The same historical process [that is, the establishment of Israel] that dispossessed Palestinians of their property, lands and national-political rights was linked to the dispossession of Middle Eastern and North African Jews of their property, lands, and rootedness in Muslim countries….”
There is, of course, a cynical absurdity in blaming Israel for the wholesale plunder of Jewish property by Arab regimes in Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and other countries that forbade Jews to take money or possessions with them when they emigrated from or were thrown out of these places. But apart from this, what is it that makes one wince at the term “Arab Jews”? After all, don’t Ms. Shohat and others like her have a point? If a Jew living in America is an American Jew, and a Jew living in Europe is a European Jew, why isn’t a Jew living in an Arab country an Arab Jew? Is not the objection to calling him that a form of Arabaphobia?
I think not. Anti-Arab prejudice has nothing to do with it. Historically speaking, Ms. Shohat is simply dead wrong.
It’s true that Jews lived for hundreds and even thousands of years throughout the Middle East, and that after the Arabization of the region that started with the spread of Islam in the seventh century, they became linguistically and culturally Arabized, just as Jews in America have become linguistically and culturally Americanized. But it’s also true that, in the course of these centuries, no Middle Eastern Jew, if asked whether he was an Arab, would have said yes, no matter how at home he felt in his environment. And for that matter, no Arab would have called his Jewish neighbor an Arab either. Jewishness and Arabness were perceived as antonyms in the sense of denoting two mutually exclusive ethnic identities, just as “Jew” and “goy” were antonyms in Eastern Europe . It was only in the 20th century that small numbers of Jews — most of them communists or on the Anti-Zionist political left — in cosmopolitan Arab cities like Cairo and Baghdad began to argue on behalf of an “Arab Jewish” identity as a way of repudiating Jewish nationalism and justifying their participation in Arab revolutionary politics.
One speaks of “American Jews” and “European Jews” rather than of “Jews living in America ” or “Jews living in Europe ,” because Jews in these places think of themselves as Americans and Europeans. But traditionally, Jews living in Arab lands never thought of themselves as anything but Jews living in Arab lands, and I challenge Ms. Shohat to produce a single pre-20th-century text that suggests otherwise. To refer to these communities as “Arab Jews” is not only to imply that Zionism tore them away from their true homelands for the false lure of a Jewish state; it is to demean them by denying them their own sense of themselves. It’s a term that justly deserves to be rejected.
Questions for Philologos can be sent to philologos@forward.com.

2008-01-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

From: A Fellow Quaker
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:29:33 +0000
Subject: [langleyhill] FW: Letter to the president

Dear Friends,

A few weeks ago Najwa told me in an e-mail that she really appreciated the freedom of the press to be found in Abu Dhabi. I am forwarding on a letter that demonstrates the sort of gloves off reporting (or in this case editorializing) that she was referring to. To me it raises the very important question of how bought and paid for our papers really are. I certainly couldn't imagine finding this sort of letter on the front page of the Washington Post.

A Friend

Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 14:49:20 +0400From: najladrooby@ gmail.comSubject: Letter to the president

I thought you might be interested in this article which was in the front page of the Gulf News www.gulfnews. com , a leading newspaper in the area. It appeared a day before the President landed in Abu Dhabi

Dear Mr. President;
On the occasion of your first official trip to this vital region, it is only appropriate to raise a few points which might also be raised by the leaders you meet. Unfortunately, you landed here with prejudice and pre-formed opinions. By describing Israel, moments after you arrived, as 'the land of freedom' and 'justice', you have shown total ignorance of the political situation in the Middle East and the issue you claim to want to solve in the remaining 12 months of your presidency. Israel, Mr.President, continues to defy every UN resolution, exercise unprecedented oppression on the occupied Palestinian people and persecute its Muslim and Christian population. We realize that containing Iran, selling more weapons and securing cheap oil supplies are the main issues on your mind as you tour the region. But you need to look beyond the neocon rhetoric and speak directly to the people who have been unjustly thrown out of their land, victimized for decades by your "strong ally" Israel. As for other matters, such as the promise of democracy and human rights, which you are expected to raise in your official talks in the region, we really don't take them seriously. Your dreadful record on both gives you no moral right to lecture others.
Lest you forget. Invasion of Iraq. Thousands of dead. Looting the National Museum. Disbanding the Iraqi army. Donald Rumsfeld. Shock and Awe. Jay Garner. Paul Bremer. Inciting sectarianism. Abu Ghraib. Thousands of detainees without charges. Torture. Oil. Ghost WMDs. The Niger connection. Halliburton. Blackwater. Deadly security contractors. Mercenaries. Fallujah. Haditha massacre. Blind support of Israel. Instigating the suffering of Gaza. Ignoring the expansion of illegal colonies. Defying United Nations resolutions. Securing "a Jewish State". Allowing Israelis to extend the destruction of Lebanon in the 2oo6 war. Providing Israel with new Bunker Buster bombs to attack Lebanese towns. The War on Terror. "The Crusade". Clash of civilisations. Where is Osama Bin Laden? Afghanistan. Bagram massacre. Bombing media offices. Guantanamo Bay. Kangaroo courts. Indefinite detention. Presidential orders to ignore Geneva Conventions. "Unlawful enemy combatants". Illegal National Security Agency wiretapping. Fingerprinting visitors. Black prisons. Kidnapping foreign citizens on foreign lands. Khalid Al Masri. Abu Omar. Maher Arar. Central Intelligence Agency. "Aggressive interrogation techniques". Destroying the torture tapes. Iran tension. Isolating Syria. Embracing Syrian opposition Iraq style. The Chavez coup. Denial of global warming. Rejecting Kyoto Protocol. Marginalisation of the United Nations. John Bolton. Paul Wolfowitz and the World Bank. Carl Rove. Alberto Gonzales. Firing attorneys. Nepotism. False democracy promises. Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney and Dick Cheney.
Mr President;
The list goes on. You might not be able to recall some of it. But the people around you, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice especially, would. And they realise that on the subject of human rights, your administration has had the worst record of all, surpassing most Third World countries. The tension and the misery in parts of this region can very well testify to this.
Mr President;
In a famous speech in 2003 you announced an "historic" shift in US foreign policy. You pledged to support democracy and liberty while declaring "victory" in Iraq. More than four years later, Iraq is in chaos. It has virtually disintegrated and "the surge" did little to stop the killing or ease the sectarian tension. At the same time, you gave up on your freedom-for- all prophecy. We are all back to the old ways of doing business - arms and oil. The agenda of your current tour is evident.
Mr President;
This is your first official trip to a land you long claimed has a very special place in your heart. The land of the Prophets. However, you started out wrong. By maintaining your support of an Israeli "Jewish State", you are flouting your own ideals upon which your great country was founded more than two centuries ago. So much for the promise of democracy. What you advocate in fact is the creation of states on religious and racial lines, thereby justifying the atrocious actions of terrorists who hate and seek to eliminate the followers of other religions: The same terrorists you like to blame for every ill on earth and every failure of yours.
Mr President;
It has been reported that you are here to "lecture" us on democracy and human rights. But with a record like yours, you will not be very convincing. The people you are addressing have greater respect for human rights and dignity.
You also said that your current tour aims to realise the long neglected peace in the Middle East. Regional peace, Mr President, will not be achieved by escalating tension and threatening to change regimes. And most importantly, it will not be achieved by supporting Israel, which continues to defy international law, occupy Arab lands, oppress the Palestinians and rebuff peace initiatives.
Mr President;
We hope you have enjoyed the trip so far. The scenery is great. The food is exotic. As for the more "serious" things, it is unlikely you will make any difference.

____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _

2008-01-30T08:47:00.000-08:00

Subject: Clinton receives new endorsements
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:32:40 +0000
THE DERSHOWITZ/BERMAN PRIMARY...Barack Obama picked up the endorsement of Ted Kennedy today. Hillary Clinton got Alan Dershowitz and Paul Berman in the pages of The New Republic.
Need I say more?
Dershowitz has devoted his life in recent years to discrediting the careers and reputations of critics of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, slavishly defending Israel against any and all comers, no matter the validity of their point.
Berman (no relation) was the intellectual architect behind the liberal hawks case for war in Iraq, which he described as a 'Lincolnian war, a war for the liberation of others.' TNR asked fourteen authors/intellectual to endorse candidates. Dershowitz and Berman, given their hawkish worldviews, were the ones who immediately jumped out. Their words aren't likely to boost Clinton's standing in progressive political circles.
'I favor the nomination of a centrist Democrat, one who is capable of attracting independents, moderates, and the growing number of anti-Bush Republicans,' Dershowitz writes. 'Hillary Clinton understands this and has not pandered to the extreme left of her party.'
Berman also likes the idea of Clinton in the war room. 'A candidate like Hillary, who participated in the decisions that toppled Slobodan Milosevic, is nicely situated to argue that, on the topic of military stand-offs and far-away dictators, she possesses a superior understanding.'
Berman also offers Clinton a rather counterproductive piece of advice: 'I think it wouldn't do her any harm to acknowledge that, now and then, John McCain has been right.'
These are the types of endorsements one wishes the candidate would decline. Unless, of course, she agrees with them.

Posted by Ari Berman at 01/28/2008 @ 4:15pm |

2008-01-30T07:38:00.000-08:00

Subject: Obama's Letter
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:43:10 +0000
THE UN SAYS:

• Israel is allowing only 41% of Gaza's food requirements
• Israel grants only 1 in 7 patients access to urgent treatment outside Gaza
• Israel denies medication and hospital supplies to Gaza

• Israel is not allowing enough fuel to treat and pump clean water in Gaza
• Israel's cruelty has caused more than 70 deaths of untreated Gaza patients since June

BARACK OBAMA SAYS:

• 'We have to understand why Israel is forced (sic) to do this'

PLEASE CALL THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN TO SAY YOU ARE OUTRAGED!

(866) 675-2008

TALKING POINTS:

• Denying food to 1.5 million civilians is a crime! It is irresponsible for Obama to encourage it.
• Denying medicine to sick and dying people is a crime. It is NOT self defense.
• Israel's actions are collective punishment. Why does Obama not condemn it?
• Denying food, medicine and other essential supplies does nothing to harm fighters or the Hamas government in Gaza. It only harms civilians, one half of whom are children. Does Obama consider them disposable?

Obama's callous defense of Israel's cruelty deserves your action.
Presidential candidates are sensitive to criticism. Your calls have the potential
to make Palestinian rights an issue. Now is the time.

Following is the text of Obama's letter to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad. A photocopy of the signed letter is at http://jewishstandard.net//content_images/ObamaLetterbig.jpg

1.23.2008

Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I understand that today the U.N. Security Council met regarding the situation in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order.

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in Southern Israel for over two years.

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this. Gaza is governed by Hamas, which is a terrorist organization sworn to Israel's destruction, and Israeli civilians are being bombarded by rockets on an almost daily basis. That is unacceptable and Israel has a right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.

The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks against Israel, and should make clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against such actions. If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama
United States Senator __

2008-01-28T13:31:00.000-08:00

Print - Close Window
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:56:50 -0500
To: organizing@ADC.org
From: "Nabil Mohamad"
Subject: Ending the stranglehold on Gaza by Eyad Sarraj and Sara Roy

Thought members of this list would be interested in reading this excellent op-ed by Eyad Sarraj and Sara Roy in the Boston Globe.
__________________________________________________________

EYAD AL-SARRAJ AND SARA ROY
Ending the stranglehold on Gaza

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/26/ending_the_stranglehold_on_gaza/

By Eyad al-Sarraj and Sara Roy | January 26, 2008

AN ISRAELI convoy of goods and peace activists will go today to Erez,
Israel's border with Gaza, and many Palestinians will be on the other
side waiting. They will not see one another, but Palestinians will
know there are Jews who condemn the siege inflicted on the tiny
territory by Israel's military establishment and want to see an end to
the 40-year-old occupation.

Israel's minister of justice, Haim Ramon, had pushed for cutting off
Gaza's "infrastructural oxygen" - water, electricity, and fuel - as a
response to the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel. Last Sunday,
Ramon's wish came true: Israel's blockade forced Gaza's only power
plant to shut down, plunging 800,000 people into darkness. Food and
humanitarian aid were also denied entry. Although international
pressure forced Israel to let in some supplies two days later, and the
situation further eased when Palestinians breached the border wall
with Egypt, the worst may be yet to come.

The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, agrees with Ramon's
strategy, saying that it is "inconceivable that life in Gaza continues
to be normal." The rapid and deepening desperation of Gaza's sick and
hungry is of no moral concern to her. For Livni, like Ramon, the siege
is a tactical measure, a human experiment to stop the rockets and
bring down a duly elected government.

The siege on Gaza and the West Bank began after Hamas's 2006 electoral
victory with an international diplomatic and financial boycott of the
new Hamas-led government. Development assistance was severely reduced
with the improbable aim of bringing about a popular uprising against
the very government just elected to power. Instead, this collective
punishment resulted in a steady deterioration of Palestinian life, in
growing lawlessness, and a violent confrontation between Fatah and
Hamas, which escalated into a Hamas military takeover of Gaza in June
2007.

Since then, the siege has been tightened to an unprecedented level.
Over 80 percent of the population of 1.5 million (compared to 63
percent in 2006) is dependent on international food assistance, which
itself has been dramatically reduced.

In 2007, 87 percent of Gazans lived below the poverty line, more than
a tripling of the percentage in 2000. In a November 2007 report, the
Red Cross stated about the food allowed into Gaza that people are
getting "enough to survive, not enough to live."

Why is this acceptable?

The reduction in fuel supplies that the Israeli government first
approved in October not only threatens the provision of health and
medical services but the stock of medicines, which is rapidly being
depleted. This has forced the critically ill to seek treatment outside
the Gaza Strip.

However, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, many
patients are being denied permission to leave, because of new
bureaucratic restrictions imposed on top of an already inefficient and
arbitrary system. The organization has also accused the Israeli
intelligence service of forcing some patients to inform on others in
order to be granted passage.

Since June, Israel has limited its exports to Gaza to nine basic
materials. Out of 9,000 commodities (including foodstuffs) that were
entering Gaza before the siege began two years ago, only 20
commodities have been permitted entry since. Although Gaza daily
requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut
this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
Not surprisingly, there has been a sharp increase in the prices of
foodstuffs.

Gaza also suffers from the ongoing destruction of its agriculture and
physical infrastructure. Between June and November 2006, $74.7 million
in damage was inflicted by the Israeli military on top of the nearly
$2 billion already incurred by Palestinians between 2002 and 2005.
Over half the damage was to agricultural land flattened by bulldozers,
with the remainder to homes, public buildings, roads, water and sewage
pipes, electricity infrastructure, and phone lines.

The psychological damage of living in a war zone may surpass the
physical. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem,
between Sept. 1, 2005, and July 25, 2007, 668 Palestinians were killed
in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli security forces. Over half were
noncombatants and 126 were children. During the same period, Qassam
rockets and mortar shells killed eight Israelis, half of them civilians.

Gaza is no longer approaching economic collapse. It has collapsed.
Given the intensity of repression Gaza is facing, can the collapse of
its society - family, neighborhood, and community structure - be far
behind? If that happens, we shall all suffer the consequences for
generations to come.

Eyad al-Sarraj is founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.
Sara Roy is senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

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to unsubscribe from this list, please send a message to: organizing@adc.org

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***********************************************************************************
SAVE THE DATE: 2008 ADC Annual National Convention - Washington, DC June 12 to 15.
TO CONTRIBUTE AND/OR BECOME A MEMBER, CLICK HERE: https://www.adc.org/membership/
***********************************************************************************
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
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Washington, DC. 20007, U.S.A.
Tel: (202) 244-2990
E-mail: organizing@adc.org
Web : http://www.adc.org

Print - Close Window
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:04:37 -0500
To: organizing@ADC.org
From: "Nabil Mohamad"
Subject: Washington Post Editorial Distorts the Facts About Gaza; Washington DC Prayer and Vigil
ADC Action Alert:

Washington Post Editorial Distorts the Facts About Gaza

Washington, DC | January 25, 2008 | www.adc.org | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is deeply disturbed by the Jan 24 Editorial
by the Washington Post about the situation in Gaza. ADC encourages you to write to the Washington Post about their distorted editorial. Below you will find a
letter sent to the Post by ADC, you can send your letters to letters@washpost.com

LETTER FROM ADC TO THE WASHINGTON POST

The author(s) of Jan 24 editorial by the Washington Post claim that "no one is starving in Gaza." Apparently, the Post did not consult the latest reports by
the World Food Programme and the UN Relief and Works Agency which call for immediate aid to be sent to the impoverished Gaza Strip to "urgently prevent a
humanitarian crisis."

Basic research by the Washington Post would have also found that 79 percent of the 1.5 million Gazans live in poverty and approximately 70 percent of the
Gazans live on less than 250 dollars a month and food purchases account for 60 percent of household expenditures (World Food Programme, Jan 11, 2008).

The Post also fails to mention that despite Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel continues to have complete control over Gaza's
land, sea, and air borders; utilities; tax revenue; and internal economy, making it an occupying power.

The editorial goes on to call for Egypt to close the border and to turn back the Gazans. Under humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, Gazans must be
allowed access to humanitarian aid and supplies. Gazans should not be forced to go without food or medicine nor be forced to live under constant collective
punishment. An end to the misery inflicted by the ongoing Israeli occupation should be the goal for all, however, the Washington Post seems to favor halting
the peace process instead. Shame on the Post.

_________________________________

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL, JAN 24

Breach in Gaza
As thousands stream across the border to Egypt, Hamas blockades the peace process.

Thursday, January 24, 2008; A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012303327_pf.html

THE HAMAS movement provided a dramatic illustration yesterday of its ability to disrupt any movement toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians. As tens of
thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip surged across the border into Egypt, Hamas security forces directed traffic; earlier, they stood by as organized
groups of militants blew up the fence along the previously sealed border. As Hamas no doubt expected, the government of Egypt greeted this illegal invasion
with a quick surrender: President Hosni Mubarak announced that Gazans would be allowed to shop in Egypt because they "are starving due to the Israeli siege."

In fact, as Mr. Mubarak well knows, no one is starving in Gaza -- though food, fuel and cigarettes are much cheaper across the border. Israel closed its border
with the territory and disrupted power supplies over the weekend in response to a massive escalation of Palestinian rocket launches from Gaza at nearby Israeli
towns -- between Tuesday and Saturday last week, some 225 rockets were aimed at the town of Sderot, where more than 20,000 Israelis have been relentlessly
terrorized. Hamas took advantage of the blockade first by arranging for sympathetic Arab media to document the "humanitarian crisis," then by daring
Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians portrayed as Israel's victims. Its ultimate goal, stated publicly yesterday by Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshal, is to force Egypt to permanently reopen the border in cooperation with Hamas; that would greatly diminish Israel's ability to respond to rocket attacks with economic sanctions, and it would undermine the rival Palestinian leadership
of Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert committed themselves to reaching a peace accord in 2008 during President Bush's visit this month. Yet
since then, political attention in the region has been focused on the rocket attacks, Israel's retaliatory strikes against militants in Gaza and the
subsequent blockade, and yesterday's dramatic breach of the border. Naturally it is impossible for the peace negotiations to make progress in these conditions.
So those who say their priority is an Israeli-Palestinian settlement ought to be trying to stop Hamas's disruptions.

That obligation doesn't just fall on Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert -- though Israel may have a lesson to learn from the way Hamas exploited its temporary shutdown
of fuel supplies. Mr. Mubarak and other Arab leaders have to resist the urge to roll over every time they are challenged by Hamas and al-Jazeera television.
Would Mr. Mubarak allow tens of thousands of Darfur refugees to illegally enter Egypt from Sudan, where a real humanitarian crisis is underway? Surely not.
Egypt's obligation as a law-abiding state is to restore order on the border and prevent the ongoing and massive smuggling of armaments into Gaza. That would go
a long way toward stopping the rockets.

The Bush administration and European governments should act to stop the ongoing farce at the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. Human Rights Council, which have
ignored months of daily rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians but now rush to condemn a partial, three-day disruption of Gaza's power supplies. Hamas, and
the people of Gaza, should get a consistent message that relief lies not in blowing up international borders but in ending attacks on Israel and allowing a
peace process to go forward.

######################################################################################################################

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Event on January 27, 2008

Contact: Paul Verduin (301) 495-7891 - paulverduin@starpower.net
or Nabil Mohamad (202) 244-2990 - nmohamad@adc.org

Jan 27 Interfaith Prayer Service and Vigil for Palestinians

Washington, DC | January 24, 2008 | www.adc.org | Deeply concerned by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, people of all faiths in the Washington area will gather Sunday afternoon at a church on Wisconsin Avenue to pray--and later, outside the Israeli Embassy, to hold vigil--in gestures of solidarity with Israelis and Palestinians rallying this weekend on the Israel-Gaza border to demand an end to the Israeli blockade.

The paired Jan. 27 interfaith events, sponsored by the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace, Sharing Jerusalem, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), will begin at St. Alban's Episcopal Church, 3001 Wisconsin Ave., NW, at 2 p.m. The church is located just north of Massachusetts Avenue, immediately adjacent to the National Cathedral.

Led by a Christian minister, a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim imam, the 2 PM prayer service at St. Alban's will provide an opportunity for people of all faiths to give voice to their distress for the safety and well-being of the 1.5 million people of Gaza suffering since Thursday from a cut-off by Israel of such basic human necessities as food, medicine, and the fuel required to operate the territory's sole operating power plant. Following the prayer service, those attending are invited to drive or otherwise make their way to the Israeli Embassy for an outdoor vigil at the embassy entrance demanding an end to the blockade. The Israeli Embassy is located at 3514 International Drive, N.W, near Van Ness Street a block west of Connecticut Avenue.

The prayer service at the church and the vigil at the embassy will give expression to demands for a termination of the Israeli blockade of Gaza and an end to violence committed by both sides of the struggle. According to news reports, water supplies in Gaza are polluted due to the shutdown of sewage treatment facilities stemming from disruptions in the electrical power grid caused by the blockade. Safe drinking water is reported to be in short supply, according to the media accounts. On Wednesday, Gazans destroyed and breached the seven-mile-long barrier along the border with Egypt, streaming over the barricade to buy food, fuel and other provisions.

For more information on the ongoing crisis see:
http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=3255

For more information on the sponsoring organizations see:

WASHINGTON INTERFAITH ALLIANCE FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE
http://www.wiamep.org

SHARING JERUSALEM
http://www.sharingjerusalem.org

AMERICAN-ARAB ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE
http://www.adc.org

##############

NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non sectarian and non partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980, by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide with chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states.

The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include: research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs.

To Unsubscribe from this list, please send a message to ORGANIZING@ADC.ORG

***********************************************************************************
SAVE THE DATE: 2008 ADC Annual National Convention - Washington, DC June 12 to 15.
TO CONTRIBUTE AND/OR BECOME A MEMBER, CLICK HERE: https://www.adc.org/membership/
***********************************************************************************
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Organizing Department
1732 Wisconsin Ave NW.
Washington, DC. 20007, U.S.A.
Tel: (202) 244-2990
E-mail: organizing@adc.org
Web : http://www.adc.org

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SAVE THE DATE: 2008 ADC Annual National Convention - Washington, DC June 12 to 15.
TO CONTRIBUTE AND/OR BECOME A MEMBER, CLICK HERE: https://www.adc.org/membership/
***********************************************************************************
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Organizing Department
1732 Wisconsin Ave NW.
Washington, DC. 20007, U.S.A.
Tel: (202) 244-2990
E-mail: organizing@adc.org
Web : http://www.adc.org

2008-01-26T12:24:00.000-08:00

From: Rashid
Subject: Deborah Orr: The tragic truth about collective punishment
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:06:22 +0000
Independent.co.uk
Deborah Orr: The tragic truth about collective punishment
Those Palestinians unfortunate enough to live in camps in Lebanon, for example, are not utterly deprived of rights, and dependent on UN aid, because of Israeli policy alone. Pan-Arab policy also dictates that the Palestinians should live in absolute hardship, lest they decide to play into the hands of Israel, by abandoning the struggle and quietly assimilating and getting on with their lives.
It is easy to condemn Israel when it minimises the plain fact of a humanitarian crisis, and claims that in Gaza, the Islamists of Hamas are "making things appear worse". But it is more sensible simply to concede that Israel may, on this occasion, have a case, because it is clearly in the interests of Hamas to do so.
It is the policy of Hamas to highlight and to emphasise the oppression wrought on Palestinians by Israel. It would be far more mystifying if Hamas, as the eyes of the world treat Gaza to one of their sporadic glances, sought to understate matters as much as possible, rather than overplaying them. Hamas, in common with most other Islamist groups, thrives on promulgating the idea of Muslim victimhood, after all.
Hamas embraces this victimhood, engineers it and promotes it. Hamas does not condemn the firing of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel that forms the official and wearily accepted justification for every Israeli incursion into Gaza and every blockade on the Strip. On the contrary, Hamas insists that the firing of the rockets is "symbolic", a feeble and almost metaphysical expression of the Palestinian right to express its hostility to the humiliation and degradation that has been visited on its people.
In this respect, Hamas too colludes in the unleashing of collective punishment. It sees the suffering of Gazans as a tool in the fight for international attention, and a necessary component of the only war it can really afford to wage – the propaganda war. This war, it fights on two fronts – against Israel, of course, but also against Fatah, the secularist group that has become, by default, for now, the acceptable representative of the Palestinian struggle for nationhood.
In an unusual break-out of multilateral agreement, Israel, Fatah, the European Union and the United States all share a desire to isolate Hamas within Gaza, even though all consider themselves to be champions of the democratic cause, and even though Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary election. Never mind that Fatah was until recently the most evil embodiment imaginable of Arab anti-Zionism. Fatah, for all its many faults, was not an Islamist group.
Now, under the ancient rule whereby one's enemy's enemy is one's friend, Israel emphasises whenever it can how much it is itching to get back over to the West Bank and cut a peace deal with Fatah, and how only the agitations of Hamas are stopping this – suddenly easily attainable – situation from coming about.
Yet Fatah is still active in Gaza, even though its attempts to regain power by force have failed. Like Hamas, Fatah has never been above deploying a little sneaky collective punishment against the Palestinians in pursuit of its aims. Fatah, too, has long fetishised Palestinian victimhood, again because it was the only instrument of warfare available. It does not hesitate in augmenting that victimhood, or even question its moral justification for doing so, in the cause of its own political gain.
European funding for the Palestinian Authority, for example, suspended when Hamas won the election, has for a while been back on stream, with Fatah, not Hamas, controlling the portion of it that goes directly into Palestinian hands. Fatah pays the wages of public servants in Gaza, including doctors and nurses. But it has been accused of operating an unofficial policy whereby it requests that all those workers who support Fatah should stay at home if they wish to be paid. It does this in pursuit of the same policy that Israel accuses Hamas of, that of "making things appear worse", this time to the detriment of Hamas.
The saddest, most ironic, thing is that it was just this sort of Fatah realpolitik that allowed Hamas to usurp its political leadership in the first place. Hamas appealed to ordinary Palestinians not by proselytising Islam, but by offering the social support that the Palestinian Authority could have prioritised itself, had it not considered such basic governmental duties to have been strategically counter-productive. The extent to which ordinary Palestinians have been used as political capital in the Palestine-Israeli region is vast and horrible. But it is by no means correct to claim that the Israelis are alone in stooping to this.
The consequences of such manipulation are plain. It is far from outlandish to suggest that the promotion of suicide bombers is merely the most basic expression of the idea that individual Palestinian lives are nothing more or less than weapons of war. Yet there are many other ways in which such attitudes make matters worse for the Palestinians, politically as well as personally.
For many of those who sympathise with the Palestinian cause, it is difficult to understand how Israel can maintain its own collective inability to see the Palestinians as people who are stateless and suffering, just as the Jewish people itself so recently was. Yet the eagerness of the rest of the Arab world, and of the home-grown factions who claim to represent the Palestinians, to treat ordinary people as a malleable, expendable, collective mass, bolsters this attitude rather than challenging it.
At root, in order to maintain its own creation myth, Israel needs to believe that prior to the establishment of Israel there was no Palestine, and that even if there was a Palestine, it was a poor sort of place, let down by its own leaders, rather than obliterated by charter.
The continued Arab belief that it is politically wise to persist in portraying the Palestinians as passive recipients of aid, unable to help themselves or sustain themselves, hugely assists Israel in its ravenous desire to maintain this myth. It helps, in fact, just a little, in the ongoing project of making it an unchallengeable reality.
d.orr@independent.co.uk

2008-01-19T10:29:00.000-08:00

GazSubject: The Forward: Reckless in Gaza Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:24:24 +0000
Reckless in Gaza

The Forward
Editorial

Fri. Jan 18, 2008

Ehud Olmert, Israel ’s perpetually embattled prime minister, probably thought he was performing a daring display of political balancing this week. First he saw off the visiting President Bush with grand words of peace. Then he announced that he opposed any major ground incursion into lawless Gaza . The next day, his troops opened up the bloodiest day of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in more than a year.
It was a classic Olmert juggling act: playing to every side in turn, hoping to give all involved just enough to keep them on board, but managing instead to leave everyone fuming. His advocacy of a negotiated deal with the Palestinians, blunter than any Israeli prime minister before him, has thoroughly alienated his traditional allies on the right. But his clumsy military forays, ostensibly meant to quell rocket fire from Gaza , probably sabotaged the very negotiations on which he has spent so much political capital.
As for the rocket fire, it only grew in intensity.
Israel certainly has a right to act to defend itself against the steady bombardment of its civilian towns near Gaza . The rockets disrupt ordinary life in Sderot and nearby villages, terrify the residents and cause real damage. Three people have been killed by rockets in the past year. This week’s barrage, unleashed in the wake of the Israeli incursion, was one of the most intense yet. It left nine people injured — five with cuts, four treated for shock, including two small children. Along with the rockets, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on Israeli farmers near the border fence, killing an Ecuadorian kibbutz volunteer.
On the Palestinian side, the day’s fighting left 19 dead, of whom 15 or 16 were rocketeers, terrorists and combatants. The rest were civilians. It was the highest Palestinian civilian toll in weeks.
Israel does not deliberately target civilians. The same cannot be said of the Palestinians. If Palestinian civilian deaths are the inevitable price of Israel ’s self-defense, there can be little argument.
But Israel ’s actions provide it no defense. It strikes again and again, killing Palestinian fighters and not a few civilians, yet more gunmen spring up and attacks on Israel continue.
In the past two years, Israeli forces killed 810 Palestinians in Gaza , as the director of the Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, told a Cabinet meeting last week. Of the total, about 200 were not clearly linked to terrorist organizations — that is, bystanders. A separate study by the Ha’aretz newspaper found that the civilian toll was actually higher, totaling about 360, of whom 152 were under age 18, including 48 children under age 14.
Israel ’s death toll from terrorism in 2007, reported this month by the human rights group B’Tselem and confirmed by the military, totaled 13, including seven civilians. That was the lowest toll since 1999. The toll that year, the last full year that the Oslo accords were in effect, was zero.
For all that, the Palestinian war against Israel “is not being checked, but is actually intensifying,” the internal security minister, Avi Dichter, reported at the same Cabinet meeting. Dichter, a former Shin Bet chief, estimated that there are some 20,000 Palestinian fighters in Gaza , of whom Israel has killed about 5%. He said the army should shift gears and step up its efforts. It wasn’t clear how much killing he thought would suffice.
Israeli political and military leaders argue that by targeting Palestinian gunmen and their handlers, they will eventually force Hamas to knuckle under, recognize Israel and swear off terrorism — or collapse and be replaced by the more moderate Fatah. Israel has vowed repeatedly that it will not discuss anything with Hamas, directly or indirectly, until Hamas agrees to those terms.
But Israel has been doing exactly that: negotiating indirectly with Hamas about a prisoner exchange and an open-ended cease-fire, including a halt to all attacks on Israelis. The talks’ lynchpin, from the Israeli viewpoint, is the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas gunmen in June 2006. Hamas has been pushing for months for the multi-part deal, especially the cease-fire. Israel won’t admit it’s interested, but Palestinian officials have been saying that the deal is almost done.
Now, however, the whole deal may be off, including Shalit’s freedom. Among the dead in the Gaza incursion was the 24-year-old son of Muhammad Zahar, a leader of the hawkish wing (yes, there is one) of Hamas. Zahar is now gaining stature along with sympathy, strengthening Hamas opponents of cease-fire and accommodation.
The Gaza killings have also raised the ire of Fatah leaders in the West Bank , including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is supposed to be Olmert’s partner in broader peace talks. President Bush has a great deal riding on those talks, presumably his last chance to leave a legacy. Olmert, too, wants the talks to work. Whoever replaces Bush in the White House in a year will be much less likely to tilt the scales in Israel ’s favor.
Whatever Bush and Olmert were hoping, the chances of those talks going anywhere were slim already. Now they’re much worse.
But that’s not the only thing Olmert has done of late to undermine his — and Bush’s — dream of peace. Just before Christmas, Olmert’s government announced 300 new apartments going up for sale in East Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood, annexed by Israel in 1967. Olmert’s aides indicated that he had been sandbagged by bureaucrats in his own housing ministry, and the prime minister promised Abbas in a meeting days later not to do anything “that will hurt our ability to arrive at final status negotiations with the Palestinians.” Immediately afterward, however, spokesmen indicated that Olmert would not block the new construction. His government also put $50 million in next year’s budget to subsidize the flats.
The news brought sharp protests from the Bush administration. Two weeks later, on the very eve of Bush’s Israel visit, Jerusalem city hall approved construction on 60 new apartments in an even more controversial East Jerusalem development, Ras al-Amud.
Palestinians claim the two developments, Har Homa and Ras al-Amud, effectively shut off the last potential corridors between the West Bank and their future capital in East Jerusalem . Olmert doesn’t want to negotiate the topic, and seems to hope the buildings will end the discussion without hurting his “ability to reach final status negotiations.”
It is, by any standard, a risky game of chicken. The stakes are nothing less than the peace negotiations that Olmert repeatedly says are crucial to Israel ’s survival. If he believes what he says, his actions are inexplicable. It may be that Olmert simply can’t control the actions — military forays, construction permits — of his own government. He may actually be helpless. Or he may simply be reckless.

2008-01-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

Barghouthi: Rate of killing doubled since Annapolis
Maan News

Jan 10, 2008

The rate of Israeli attacks on, and killings of, Palestinians has
doubled since the US-sponsored Annapolis peace summit, former
Palestinian information minister and head of the Palestinian
National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouthi, announced on Wednesday.

As US President George W. Bush's visited the Palestinian Territories,
Dr Barghouthi exposed the extent of Israel's aggression against the
Palestinian people in 2007, a year characterised by the highest ever
ratio of Palestinian to Israeli killings, and unabated settlement
expansion.

Dr Barghouthi presented data showing that Israeli military
killings of, and attacks against, Palestinians have soared by 100%
since Annapolis, confirming an intensification of Israeli military
violence against the Palestinian people even after the meeting on
27 November 2007.

He highlighted that the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in
2007 had risen to 40:1, up from 30:1 in 2006 and 4:1 from 2000-2005.

"We do not want anyone to die, Israeli or Palestinian, but this ratio
is alarming. It is unacceptable to justify such large-scale killings
under the pretext of security," Barghouthi said, adding that five of
the Israelis killed in 2007 were soldiers who died whilst carrying out
attacks inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

"Israel uses security as a pretext to step up its aggression against
Palestinians and to evade any commitments to peace," he went on.

"The question here is about security for everyone, not only Israelis,
and about equality and the equal rights of all peoples to life. The
facts on the ground show very clearly that the Israeli government and
Palestinians," he added.

Barghouthi also focused on Israeli settlement expansion and their
refusal to dismantle any existing settlements, saying that this was
a further indication of Israel's sense of absolute impunity with
regard to international law and United Nations resolutions. He
described the lack of international censure at such Israeli
practices as "alarming."

He warned that while there is much talk about Israel's 105 illegal
outposts, with a combined population of 3,000 settlers, it also
maintains 133 settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem)
which have population of 447,500, and which are equally illegal
under international law. Moreover, Israel continues to build in
88 of these
settlements.

Barghouthi stressed that settlement expansion is being facilitated
by Israel's 'Roads and Tunnels' Plan. Israel is also constructing
a separate highway network to link settlements on both sides of the
Apartheid Wall with
Israel and to each other.

"Tell me of any other case in the world where roads are segregated
on the basis of ethnicity? This is a practical manifestation of
Apartheid to an extent never before witnessed, not even at the
height of the Apartheid regime in South Africa" he said.

He concluded that only a peace process based on adherence to
international law, and which respected Palestinian national
rights, the rights of refugees and the right to freedom from
Apartheid could yield a just and lasting peace.

:: Article nr. 40008 sent on 11-jan-2008 08:08 ECT

2008-01-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

Sibel Edmonds case: Front page of the (UK) papers (finally) IMPORTANT UPDATE
by lukery
Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 08:24:13 AM PST
There's a remarkable article For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets on the front page of the British Times today.
A WHISTLEBLOWER (Sibel Edmonds) has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
[...]
Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
IMPORTANT UPDATE- see bottom of post

lukery's diary :: ::
(Please note that the Times article is long, and I've tried to stay within the parameters of Fair Use. Please go read the whole thing)

From the article:

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
The article doesn't name the official, but he is Marc Grossman, former #3 at the State Department, former ambassador to Turkey, and current Vice President at The Cohen Group, the lobbying company run by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

(Sibel) claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

"If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials," she said.
Those household names include Richard Perle and Douglas Feith and possibly Paul Wolfowitz. Less familiar names include Eric Edelman, Feith's replacement at the Pentagon, and former Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz.

(Sibel's) story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.
I'd quibble with this a little, Sibel has repeatedly said that her case involves criminal infiltration, not state-based espionage. As I wrote back in 2006:

"Sibel's case is about the systematic, long-term, for-profit, looting of US nuclear secrets (and who knows what else) by criminal organizations who then sell the nuclear technology to the highest bidder(s) - including terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

To make matters worse, this has been taking place with the full knowledge of the US government."
Back to The Times:

The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.
Again, I'd quibble with the purported reason for why the investigations were shut down. It may be true that diplomatic relations were at stake, but it's also true that the people at the Pentagon and the State Dept who repeatedly shut down the investigations were also personally profiting from the whole enterprise, which may have (ahem) coloured their decision making process.

Here Sibel describes how investigations were shut down, despite the protestations of FBI agents (she also names Grossman here)

It's also important to note that they haven't specified which 'diplomatic relations' are at stake here. It's not just Pakistan. As Sibel said:

We don’t know what diplomatic relations they are referring to. They must be ashamed of it! They don’t want to mention it. So we have certain diplomatic relations that prevent criminals being prosecuted here. And I am talking about criminals in the United States of America.
The Times article then describes an FBI investigation into "links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets":

The Turks and Israelis had planted "moles" in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. "The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States," she said.

They were helped, she says, by (Marc Grossman) who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.
[...]
The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion...
The article goes on to describe how the head of the ISI, General Mahmoud Ahmad, is a supporter of al-Qaeda, including partly financing the 911 terrorist attacks, and is also good friends with AQ Khan. Obviously the nuclear secrets stolen from the US fed directly into Pakistan's nuclear program, and also into Khan's proliferation network. The so-called 'AQ Khan network' provided the nuclear programs of Iran, North Korea, Libya, and possibly up to a dozen other countries. Not only that, immediately prior to 911, Osama Bin Laden met with people in Khan's network with the aim of al-Qaeda acquiring nukes.

The article also describes how the ISI 'penetrated' the FBI translation unit in DC where Sibel worked, in much the same way that the Turkish network had placed moles there - enabling them to block important translations, steal incriminating documents, and recruit others to conduct espionage within the translation unit. Remarkably, this 'penetration' was not the result of remarkable sneakiness and superior spy-craft by the ISI and the Turkish networks - all evidence in both cases indicates that the penetration was condoned & enabled by senior people within the US government. Former FBI counterintelligence veteran John Cole (and others, including Sibel) describes the placement, despite his objections, of ISI operatives in the translation unit here.

The Times article then notes something that I reported 18 months ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected of being involved with the attacks - including four associates of key targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Marc Grossman: "We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans." Grossman duly facilitated their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country without further investigation or interrogation.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: The #3 guy at the State Dept facilitated the immediate release of 911 suspects at the request of targets of the FBI's investigation.

Back to The Times:

Edmonds also claims that a number of senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents.

"The people provided lists of potential moles from Pentagon-related institutions who had access to databases concerning this information," she said.

"The handlers, who were part of the diplomatic community, would then try to recruit those people to become moles for the network. The lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to."
The article notes that Larry Franklin was one of those implicated in the scheme. However, Sibel has previously noted that Franklin was essentially a pawn in the system. More significant is the fact that high-level Pentagon officials were maintaining 'dossiers' on the sexual and financial proclivities of their underlings in order to be able to blackmail them.

I know that many of you have been (rightly) concerned about FISA, and many of you have (rightly) been confused by the inexplicable behaviour of Democrats in Congress, and wonder why they behave as though they are being blackmailed.

Now you know.

If any American journalists/media wants to step up, please remember that the nuclear black market story covered by The Times is just one element of Sibel's case.

Bradblog has more

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Sibel has publishedon her site, without comment, photos of 18 people. This is clearly her way of getting around the gag orders and 'naming names' - the guilty parties - without naming them! I've posted the names and photos at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

I'll try to have more tomorrow when I can post a new diary.

Cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

(Email meif you want to be added to my Sibel email list. Subject: 'Sibel email list')

Tags: Sibel Edmonds, AQ Khan, Nuclear Proliferation, Marc Grossman, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Pakistan, Recommended (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

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Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

by lukery on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 08:24:33 AM PST

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by statesecrets on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 08:32:51 AM PST

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You say:

"Sibel's case is about the systematic, long-term, for-profit, looting of US nuclear secrets (and who knows what else) by criminal organizations who then sell the nuclear technology to the highest bidder(s) - including terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

To make matters worse, this has been taking place with the full knowledge of the US government."

2008-01-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 18:29:32 -0800 (PST)
From: "WRITE! Action Alert"
Subject: Action Alert for articles in LA Times and Washington Post To: actionalertwt@yahoo.com
WRITE! For Justice, Human Rights and International Law
in Palestine.

Greetings Everyone:

This action alert includes two articles to respond to
- a positive one from the LA Times, and an inadequate
article from the Washington Post. Of course you have
a choice to respond to both or one of them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We need to send support to the Los Angeles Times for
publishing the following op-ed by John Mearsheimer and
Stephen Walt because we know that the Zionists are
blasting the Times for their attempts to allow all the
different views to express themselves. Mearsheimer
and Walt are the authors of a recent very powerful
book about the disproportionate and often corrupt
influence of the Israel lobby in American politics.

The most important thing about this article is that it
expresses the importance of overcoming the stigma
against criticizing Israel, and whether you are for a
one or a two state solution, supporting the open right
to criticize Israel in the American press is a goal we
can all join together in support of, and is a
necessary first step in the struggle to get the US to
stop its unconditional support of Israel, and to begin
to use its power to force Israel to change its illegal
and immoral policies toward the Palestinian people.

Please send your letter of support to
letters@latimes.com. Please include your full name,
mailing address and daytime phone number (your number
will not be published), but not attachments.

http://www.latimes.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=mearsheimer&target=blendedsearch&first-page-size=5

=========================================================
Israel's false friends
U.S. presidential candidates aren't doing the Jewish
state any favors by offering unconditional support.
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
Los Angeles Times Op-Ed
January 6, 2008
Once again, as the presidential campaign season gets
underway, the leading candidates are going to enormous
lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the state of
Israel and their steadfast commitment to its "special
relationship" with the United States.

Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving
Israel extraordinary material and diplomatic support
-- continuing the more than $3 billion in foreign aid
each year to a country whose per capita income is now
29th in the world. They also believe that this aid
should be given unconditionally. None of them
criticizes Israel's conduct, even when its actions
threaten U.S. interests, are at odds with American
values or even when they are harmful to Israel itself.
In short, the candidates believe that the U.S. should
support Israel no matter what it does.

Such pandering is hardly surprising, because
contenders for high office routinely court special
interest groups, and Israel's staunchest supporters --
the Israel lobby, as we have termed it -- expect it.
Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or
"Christian Zionists," two groups that are deeply
engaged in the political process. Candidates fear,
with some justification, that even well-intentioned
criticism of Israel's policies may lead these groups
to turn against them and back their opponents instead.

If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts.
Israel's friends in the media would take aim at the
candidate, and campaign contributions from pro-Israel
individuals and political action committees would go
elsewhere. Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states
with many electoral votes, which increases their
weight in close elections (remember Florida in 2000?),
and a candidate seen as insufficiently committed to
Israel would lose some of their support. And no
Republican would want to alienate the pro-Israel
subset of the Christian evangelical movement, which is
a significant part of the GOP base.

Indeed, even suggesting that the U.S. adopt a more
impartial stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict can get a candidate into serious trouble.
When Howard Dean proposed during the 2004 campaign
that the United States take a more "evenhanded" role
in the peace process, he was severely criticized by
prominent Democrats, and a rival for the nomination,
Sen. Joe Lieberman, accused him of "selling Israel
down the river" and said Dean's comments were
"irresponsible."

Word quickly spread in the American Jewish community
that Dean was hostile to Israel, even though his
campaign co-chair was a former president of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Dean had
been strongly pro-Israel throughout his career. The
candidates in the 2008 election surely want to avoid
Dean's fate, so they are all trying to prove that they
are Israel's best friend.

These candidates, however, are no friends of Israel.
They are facilitating its pursuit of self-destructive
policies that no true friend would favor.

The key issue here is the future of Gaza and the West
Bank, which Israel conquered in 1967 and still
controls. Israel faces a stark choice regarding these
territories, which are home to roughly 3.8 million
Palestinians. It can opt for a two-state solution,
turning over almost all of the West Bank and Gaza to
the Palestinians and allowing them to create a viable
state on those lands in return for a comprehensive
peace agreement designed to allow Israel to live
securely within its pre-1967 borders (with some minor
modifications). Or it can retain control of the
territories it occupies or surrounds, building more
settlements and bypass roads and confining the
Palestinians to a handful of impoverished enclaves in
Gaza and the West Bank. Israel would control the
borders around those enclaves and the air above them,
thus severely restricting the Palestinians' freedom of
movement.

But if Israel chooses this second option, it will lead
to an apartheid state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said
as much when he recently proclaimed that if "the
two-state solution collapses," Israel will "face a
South African-style struggle." He went so far as to
argue that "as soon as that happens, the state of
Israel is finished." Similarly, Israel's deputy prime
minister, Haim Ramon, said earlier this month that
"the occupation is a threat to the existence of the
state of Israel." Other Israelis, as well as Jimmy
Carter and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have
warned that continuing the occupation will turn Israel
into an apartheid state. Nevertheless, Israel
continues to expand its settlements on the West Bank
while the plight of the Palestinians worsens.

Given this grim situation, one would expect the
presidential candidates, who claim to care deeply
about Israel, to be sounding the alarm and
energetically championing a two-state solution. One
would expect them to have encouraged President Bush to
put significant pressure on both the Israelis and the
Palestinians at the recent Annapolis conference and to
keep the pressure on when he visits the region this
week. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently
observed, settling this conflict is also in America's
interest, not to mention the Palestinians'.

One would certainly expect Hillary Clinton to be
leading the charge here. After all, she wisely and
bravely called for establishing a Palestinian state
"that is on the same footing as other states" in 1998,
when it was still politically incorrect to use the
words "Palestinian state" openly. Moreover, her
husband not only championed a two-state solution as
president but he laid out the famous "Clinton
parameters" in December 2000, which outline the only
realistic deal for ending the conflict.

But what is Clinton saying now that she is a
candidate? She said hardly anything about pushing the
peace process forward at Annapolis, and remained
silent when Rice criticized Israel's subsequent
announcement that it planned to build more than 300
new housing units in East Jerusalem. More important,
both she and GOP aspirant Rudy Giuliani recently
proclaimed that Jerusalem must remain undivided, a
position that is at odds with the Clinton parameters
and virtually guarantees that there will be no
Palestinian state.

Sen. Clinton's behavior is hardly unusual among the
candidates for president. Barack Obama, who expressed
some sympathy for the Palestinians before he set his
sights on the White House, now has little to say about
their plight, and he too said little about what should
have been done at Annapolis to facilitate peace. The
other major contenders are ardent in their
declarations of support for Israel, and none of them
apparently sees a two-state solution as so urgent that
they should press both sides to reach an agreement. As
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security
advisor and now a senior advisor to Obama, noted, "The
presidential candidates don't see any payoff in
addressing the Israel-Palestinian issue." But they do
see a significant political payoff in backing Israel
to the hilt, even when it is pursuing a policy --
colonizing the West Bank -- that is morally and
strategically bankrupt.

In short, the presidential candidates are no friends
of Israel. They are like most U.S. politicians, who
reflexively mouth pro-Israel platitudes while
continuing to endorse and subsidize policies that are
in fact harmful to the Jewish state. A genuine friend
would tell Israel that it was acting foolishly, and
would do whatever he or she could to get Israel to
change its misguided behavior. And that will require
challenging the special interest groups whose
hard-line views have been obstacles to peace for many
years.

As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami
argued in 2006, the American presidents who have made
the greatest contribution to peace -- Carter and
George H.W. Bush -- succeeded because they were "ready
to confront Israel head-on and overlook the
sensibilities of her friends in America." If the
Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends
of Israel, they would be warning it about the danger
of becoming an apartheid state, just as Carter did.

Moreover, they would be calling for an end to the
occupation and the creation of a viable Palestinian
state. And they would be calling for the United States
to act as an honest broker between Israel and the
Palestinians so that Washington could pressure both
sides to accept a solution based on the Clinton
parameters. Implementing a final-status agreement will
be difficult and take a number of years, but it is
imperative that the two sides formally agree on the
solution and then implement it in ways that protect
each side.

But Israel's false friends cannot say any of these
things, or even discuss the issue honestly. Why?
Because they fear that speaking the truth would incur
the wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main
organizations in the Israel lobby. So Israel will end
up controlling Gaza and the West Bank for the
foreseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid
state in the process. And all of this will be done
with the backing of its so-called friends, including
the current presidential candidates. With friends like
them, who needs enemies?

John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political
science at the University of Chicago. Stephen M. Walt
is a professor of international affairs at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government. They are the authors of
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," published
last year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

==============================================

The article copied below from the Washington Post by
Steve Gutkin appears to try to be balanced, but misses
major points on the Palestinian side.

It fails to mention the following points which are
important to remind the Washington Post about so that
they print the whole truth about the Israel/Palestine
conflict:

1. The article says Israel should give up some of the
settlements, but in fact all the Israeli settlements
are illegal, occupy stolen Palestinian lands and now
cut the West Bank in half making a Palestinian State
realistically impossible - why should Israel have the
right to keep any of them;

2. The article mentions that Palestinian refugees
should only be able to return to the areas of the
Palestinian State, but in fact it is a basic right by
international law and morality that the refugees of
1948 have complete right to return to their homes
within what is now Israel as per many UN resolutions -
that without this basic justice being fulfilled
realistically can there ever be true peace in the
region? Also, excluding the Palestinians is a way for
the Israelis to keep the true native majority out of
the country and thus from having a say in how to
govern their own homeland - that qualifies as a form
of ethnic cleansing, and is not the sign of a true
democracy. And how can the Israelis claim a right of
return after 1800 years and then deny it to another
people after only 60 years;

3. The article points out that the Palestinians will
soon be a majority in historic Palestine, when in fact
they have always been the majority in the region (as
per census counts by the British Mandate prior to
statehood), and are still today if you include the
Palestinian refugees stuck in refugee camps throughout
the region waiting to return to their homes (as per UN
counts afterwards), and thus the Israeli democracy has
always been dependent on keeping out the native
majority;

4. That the idea of a Jewish State is a formula for
discrimination by religion which has manifested as
law-based discrimination in Israel today that fulfills
the 6-part legal definition of apartheid as per
international law, and is dependent on exclusion of
the true native majority in the region.

A true democracy involves a non-secular government
that is responsive to all its citizens equally, led by
the majority, while maintaining minority protections
and rights, including the right to assemble and
organize, and Israel violates this ideal practically
at every point.

The international community has struggled to defeat
colonialism and racism and secularism, and promote and
protect human rights and equality through first the
League of Nations and then the United Nations for over
one-hundred years, and the question for the Washington
Post is why does it support this intentional and
well-organized long-term violation of that effort
which polarizes the world, spreads anti-Semitism and
anti-Western feelings, stimulates terrorism, and
undermines international law and order and cooperation
with its biased reporting?

Justice and our democracy and we the public are
dependent on our press reporting all the facts in an
unbiased way if we are to make informed decisions, and
the Washington Post is failing us in this
responsibility, and this hurts us all.

Please write to letters@washpost.com. Letters should
be 200 words or less and include your name, address,
and a day and evening telephone number (for
identification purposes only).

And please don't send email attachments because they
don't read them.

Thanks again.

==================================
Israel, Palestinians Seek Elusive Peace

By STEVEN GUTKIN

Washington Post
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 30, 2007; 8:04 AM

JERUSALEM -- In the afterglow of a high-profile peace
conference, Israeli and Palestinian leaders will try
in the coming year to resolve issues that have defied
solutions for decades.

For peace to work, Israel will have to give up most of
the West Bank, Palestinians must agree to resettle
refugees inside their own state and the two sides must
share the holy city of Jerusalem. None of that will
come easily _ and prospects for peace are hurt by the
growing power of extremists and the weakness of
leaders on both sides.

Weighing heavily on the Middle East is fear about the
influence of Iran and the ascendancy of Hamas
militants in the Gaza Strip. After Hamas violently
routed the more moderate Fatah movement in Gaza in
June, the big question now is whether the West Bank
will go the same way.

Israel fretted through a year of angst about Iran's
nuclear program only to be told in a new U.S.
intelligence report that Iran stopped it four years
ago. Israel isn't buying the claim, and is scrambling
to convince its allies that Iran remains a major
threat to the West.

Hamas' takeover of Gaza paradoxically opened the door
to peace talks between Israel and the moderate
Palestinian leadership now in charge of the West Bank.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders both say they hope to
sign a peace deal by the end of 2008.

On Nov. 27, the two sides got together in Annapolis,
Md., in the presence of some 45 nations _ including
leading Arab states _ to relaunch peace talks that had
been stalled during the past seven years of
Israeli-Palestinian violence.

All the main players have good reason to go for a
deal: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wants to undo
the damage done by his inconclusive 2006 war in
Lebanon, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas needs a
boost in his showdown with Hamas, President Bush would
like to offset his difficulties in Iraq, and moderate
Arab states need to counter Iranian-supported
extremism.

Working against this new hope is weakness at the top:
a Palestinian president who only controls half his
territory and struggles to impose order in the part he
does control, and an Israeli leader who has done
little to confront domestic hawks intent on expanding
West Bank settlements and torpedoing any progress
toward peace.

While the contours of a peace deal have largely been
worked out in past talks _ a Palestinian state in the
West Bank and Gaza, shared control of Jerusalem and a
recognition the need to settle the Palestinian
refugees _ every issue calls for excruciating
compromises.

Negotiators will have to figure out how to share
Jerusalem, a task that must address key Israeli
security concerns and religious sensitivities on both
sides; and find a just solution for the Palestinian
refugees displaced in Israel's 1948 war of
independence without destroying the Jewish character
of Israel.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have a growing sense
that time is running out.

There will soon be more Muslims than Jews in the lands
comprising historic Palestine, and Israel will have to
make a deal if it hopes to remain both Jewish and
democratic. And without peace, moderate Palestinians
will likely lose their life-or-death struggle against
the extremists.

"If things don't work out it means that the voices
that are not in favor of ... a peaceful resolution of
the conflict will feel vindicated and they will be
strengthened and empowered," said independent West
Bank lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi.

Israeli Cabinet Minister Ami Ayalon went further,
saying that if peace talks fail "we shall see Hamas
controlling the West Bank and the right wing will
control Israel."

Israel might sign some sort of a peace treaty in the
coming year. But it's highly unlikely the deal would
be implemented unless Israel is assured that the lands
it evacuates won't be used as launching grounds for
attacks _ as happened after Israel withdrew from the
Gaza Strip in 2005.

In hopes of bolstering Abbas' forces in the West Bank,
the international community is expected to pledge
almost $2 billion a year in aid for the next three
years to help rebuild the Palestinian economy and
security forces.

There are no clear plans for Hamas-ruled Gaza, which
is internationally boycotted and can expect to remain
almost completely isolated and slide deeper into
poverty as long as the Islamic militants remain in
power.

If the U.S. change of assessment on Iran was one
year-end surprise, Syria is another.

The country has long been under U.S. pressure over its
role in Lebanon and Iraq, and in September Israeli
warplanes struck a site in Syria that some believe was
a nascent secret nuclear site, an accusation denied by
Damascus.

But Syria improved ties with the U.S. by attending the
Annapolis conference, a thaw that U.S. officials hope
will dilute Iran's influence in the region. Damascus,
in turn, is hoping the next year will see a resumption
of stalled negotiations with Israel over the disputed
Golan Heights.

___

Steven Gutkin is The Associated Press' bureau chief
for Israel and the Palestinian territories.

© 2007 The Associated Press
====================================================================
Thank you,

The WRITE! Team

====================================
WRITE! TO SUPPORT JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND
INTERNATIONAL LAW IN PALESTINE-ISRAEL

Visit us at www.writetruth.org

Thank you,

====================================
WRITE! TO SUPPORT JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND
INTERNATIONAL LAW IN PALESTINE-ISRAELVisit us at www.writetruth.org

____________________________________________________________________________________
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2007-12-23T12:04:00.000-08:00

Scapegoats in an Unwelcoming Land
By Nir Rosen
Sunday, December 16, 2007; B02

Last Wednesday, a car-bomb blast on a crowded Beirut street killed Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj, one of Lebanon's top generals. The capital began buzzing with speculation that Hajj had been assassinated in retaliation for his role as the operational commander of the army's bloody three-month battle with an armed Islamic group last summer. In May, Fatah al-Islam -- a foreign jihadist group inspired by al-Qaeda, led by veterans of the struggle in Iraq and made up mostly of Saudis, Syrians and even some Lebanese -- ensconced itself on the outskirts of Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, and massacred Lebanese troops at an army checkpoint. Hajj's forces responded by indiscriminately bombarding the camp in the name of the war on terror, and the Lebanese public rallied 'round.

Palestinians had once again become Lebanon's scapegoats, victims of a land in which they have long faced slaughter and discrimination. Attacking them may be personally risky, but it's also often good politics; the assassinated general's boss, army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman, is poised to become Lebanon's next president. Suleiman isn't the first army commander to punish the Palestinians, and he won't be the first president to do so, either. Between 1958 and 1964, President Fuad Shehab created an elaborate, ruthless secret-service network to monitor the Palestinian camps. During his 1970-76 reign, President Suleiman Franjieh clashed militarily with Palestinian factions, even using the air force to bomb a neighborhood thought to be pro-Palestinian. I've heard followers of assassinated president-elect Bashir Gemayel, whose Maronite Christian militia massacred Palestinians in 1976, brag that he was stopped at a checkpoint in the early years of the country's 1975-90 civil war with a trunk full of the skulls of dead Palestinians. Even today, the Lebanese opposition's preferred candidate for president is Michel Aoun, a Christian retired general who also participated in the 1976 killings.

The rights of the Palestinian refugees have been ignored for six decades by a world that has wished them away. But the Middle East will never know peace or stability until they are granted justice. In 1948-49, around the conflict that Israelis refer to as their War of Independence and that Palestinians call the Catastrophe, some 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed to make way for the creation of the Jewish state. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, 400,000 Palestinians were expelled by the Israeli military, according to Amnesty International.

A series of subsequent peace processes has ignored the refugees, offered no compensation for their suffering and lost property, or refused to recognize their right to return to their homes in their homeland. It's not just the Israelis who have brutalized them; Palestinian refugees have been massacred in Jordan and Lebanon. Small numbers have become so radicalized that they have gone on to fight the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In Lebanon -- a small, weak state with a delicate sectarian balance and turbulent political system where, according to Refugees International, about 382,000 Palestinians have registered with a U.N. refugee-relief agency -- the refugee problem has never really left center stage.

Last summer, I witnessed yet another chapter in the book of the refugees' misery. By late June, most of the Palestinians from Nahr al-Bared had fled to Badawi, another refugee camp nearby. In a schoolyard there, I was stopped by a man named Abu Hadi, born in Haifa in 1946. "I am a person without an address," he told me. "I wish I was a donkey or a horse so I would have doctors and lawyers for my rights." He showed me a plastic bag with a sponge and a towel. "My bathroom is in my hand," he said.

The term "refugee camp" summons up images of tents and squalor, but Nahr al-Bared, like many of its counterparts elsewhere in Lebanon, had been a thoroughly urban camp, with low-slung apartment buildings. It even had soothing views of the Mediterranean. The 40,000 Palestinians of Nahr al-Bared wound up housed in schools in the Badawi refugee camp and Tripoli, watching from afar as their homes were obliterated. According to aid workers and Palestinian nongovernmental organizations, at least 42 Palestinian civilians had been killed by Sept. 2, when the Lebanese army and media declared that Gen. Suleiman's forces had won a great victory.

Only in October did the army finally begin to allow a trickle of Palestinians back to their homes, and then only in the so-called new camp, a small area on the outskirts of the original camp that had housed 2,000 families and been safely under Lebanese army control throughout the clash.

When about 1,000 families finally passed through the checkpoints, to the jeers of soldiers and demonstrators, they found only destruction. Every single home, building, apartment and shop that I saw had been destroyed. Most buildings had been burned from the inside; the signs of the flammable liquids that the soldiers had used were scorched on the walls, and empty fuel canisters were strewn on the floors. Ceilings and walls were riddled with bullets, shot from inside, seemingly for sport. Most homes that I saw had been emptied of furniture, appliances, sinks, toilets, televisions and refrigerators. Most shockingly, soldiers had defecated in kitchens and bedrooms, on plates, bowls, pots and mattresses; they had urinated into olive-oil jars.

The media were not permitted in, and most Lebanese outlets ignored or denied the outrages. When I managed to slip inside, I was shocked by the scope of the damage. The buildings were crumpled, windows broken, electrical wiring yanked out, water pumps destroyed, generators stolen or shot up. All the gold jewelry had been stolen, as had been the cash that so many Palestinians had stored in their bedrooms. Insulting graffiti were scrawled on the charred walls, as were threats, signed by various Lebanese army units. Every car in the camp that I saw had been burned, shot or crushed by tanks or bulldozers. The ruination had been strikingly personal; I saw photo albums that had been torn to shreds. Palestinians told me that they had seen their belongings on sale in the main outdoor market in Tripoli.

Like all institutions in Lebanon, the army is sectarian, a fact that helps explain the devastation. Most of the soldiers fighting in Nahr al-Bared had been Sunnis from northern Lebanon; the Sunnis had once seen Palestinian militias as friendly, but now they blamed the Palestinians for the outsiders of Fatah al-Islam and unleashed their fury on the camp. By contrast, refugees told me, Shiite soldiers from the south had been far kinder and more supportive after the fighting.

The camp had once been woven into the area's economy and culture. Now the Palestinians were again unwanted and rejected. "It is our destiny," one man said emotionlessly in his blackened home in Nahr al-Bared, standing near feces that Lebanese soldiers had left on his kitchen floor.

I saw Palestinian children's art from this period that depicted the Lebanese soldiers and tanks that destroyed the camp as Israelis, equating their suffering at the hands of the Lebanese with the suffering of their brethren at the hands of the Israelis. I saw videos filmed by Lebanese soldiers on the Internet, showing army medical staff abusing corpses and beating prisoners. Hundreds of Palestinians had been abused or tortured in Lebanese detention, according to human rights groups, and refugees told me that some had died from medical neglect of treatable wounds.

The refugees still faced harassment and the occasional beating by Lebanese soldiers. Nobody is helping them, but rather than giving up, hundreds of Palestinians were at work emptying their homes of debris and trying to get on with their lives. One woman stood on her balcony, throwing rubble from inside her home out onto the broken street. She was lucky; most of the Palestinians still couldn't get to their homes and could only wonder what awaited them. On the roof of one of the taller buildings in the new camp, I found Farhan Said Mansur, a sanitation worker, standing with his wife. They were gazing silently across to their distant home, whose broken roof they could just make out, as if they were looking over the border toward Palestine, where he was born. "It is a calamity to all Palestinians," he said.

nirrosen@yahoo.com

Nir Rosen is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq."

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

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2007-12-22T05:48:00.000-08:00

For this time of year from Zatoun‏

From: Zatoun (info@zatoun.com)
Sent: Fri 12/21/07 8:50 PM
Reply-to: Zatoun (info@zatoun.com)
To: Bronwinpeel (bronwinpeel@hotmail.com)

Dear friends and supporters of Zatoun,

Were it as easy to unleash peace as
to open a bottle of olive oil.

We know that our efforts are not in vain but
are helping individual Palestinians cope with life
under occupation and to bring Palestine into
public consciousness in a positive way so that
one day it will become a political reality.

With God's grace and the goodwill of individuals
across North America justice and peace will one
day come to Palestine and its long-suffering people.

At this very special time, Zatoun extends thanks,
best wishes and blessings of peace and love.
~~~~~~~~~
Find out how you can participate in Trees for Life -
Planting Peace in Palestine - Zatoun's program
to plant 35,000 olive tree saplings in January.
--
ZATOUN
fair trade olive oil from PALESTINE

info@zatoun.com; www.zatoun.com

2007-12-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

The Forward: Insider Account of Peacemaking Details History of Misguided Diplomacy

Insider Account of Peacemaking Details History of Misguided Diplomacy

By Nathan Guttman
Wed. Dec 12, 2007

TOO LITTLE TOO LATE: A new study of American diplomacy in the Middle East says that when Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak met at Camp David it was a 'glaring failure.'

Washington - As negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians reached their peak at the Camp David summit of 2000, the Clinton administration was facing such a shortage of manpower that a translator who had no diplomatic experience was drafted to fulfill diplomatic missions in the most delicate moment of the negotiation process.
This insider account and others like it are detailed in a book, to be published in January 2008, on the past two decades of Middle East peacemaking efforts. The book, “Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East,” is being released by the United States Institute of Peace just as the Bush administration is throwing itself into new peace talks. “Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace” is meant to serve as a guide to current and future efforts.
The new book, written by former American ambassador to Israel and Egypt Daniel Kurtzer and U.S. Institute of Peace scholar Scott Lasensky, is an ambitious attempt to map all the failures and shortcomings of American administrations since the early 1990s. More than 100 leading policymakers were interviewed over the course of a year, including secretaries of state James Baker, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell; senior White House officials, and leaders from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Syria and other parties to the conflict.
The result is a scathing account of missed opportunities, mistaken decisions and bureaucratic blunders.
“Missteps in American diplomacy have been both strategic and tactical,” the book concludes, pointing to “an alarming pattern of misguided diplomacy.”
Reports like this one do not have a good track record with policymakers in recent years. Philip Wilcox, a former American consul general in Jerusalem who served for more than three decades in the Foreign Service, said that during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the State Department had a regular exchange of views with academics and experts, but recent administrations have been less interested in outside views.
“My impression is that this administration is immune to any kind of analysis and advice from people who are not part of it,” said Wilcox, who now heads the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a Washington group promoting Israeli-Arab peace.
He added that one of the reasons think tank studies rarely get the administration’ attention is the growing politicization of the research institutes.
The United States Institute of Peace has the advantage of its reputation for impartiality and bipartisanship. The institute was founded under a congressional mandate and was the main sponsor for the work of the Iraq Study Group.
The new study begins with the 1991 Madrid peace conference, which was arranged by George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker. The experts interviewed for the study give Bush and Baker “the highest marks for both performance and outcomes” but are much more critical of the two administrations that followed.
Bill Clinton is characterized as being less disciplined and lacking focus and follow-through. Kurtzer and Lasensky say that when the Camp David summit rolled around, the peace team was small and isolated from other government agencies, with a severe shortage of experts on the Arab world and its culture.
In one particularly telling anecdote, the authors describe the moment when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak suddenly agreed to discuss the future of Jerusalem during the Camp David summit. The American team was caught by surprise and sent out every available expert to figure out what the American policy on Jerusalem was.
“It was one of the most dysfunctional groups of people I’ve ever worked with and will ever work with,” an unnamed former State Department official says of the Clinton peace team in the book.
Kurtzer and Lasensky describe Camp David as “the most glaring failure” of the period.
George W. Bush’s policy toward the region “lacked both commitment and a sense of strategic purpose,” according to the authors. They say that Bush missed several opportunities to take on peacemaking, from a 2001 report by former senator George Mitchell to a 2002 Arab League initiative and on through the 2005 election of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The book argues that Bush’s brokering attempts were hampered by internal disputes between the State Department and National Security Council, with special envoys getting little or no backing from the president.
The study also takes a critical look at the relations of the three administrations with Israel and the Jewish community and finds that Clinton and George W. Bush tended to take the Israeli standpoint instead of insisting on the American view.
“Our conceptions were filtered far too much through what Israel needed and wanted and required,” a former senior official from the Clinton era told the authors.
According to the book, at the peak of talks between Israel and Syria in 2000, the United States “was reduced to delivering an Israeli proposal to Syria.”
The authors argue that the only president to stand up to Israel and the Jewish community was the senior Bush, who insisted that Israel freeze settlements before receiving loan guarantees. Even this, the authors write, was handled in a problematic way, since it “unnecessarily alienated” pro-Israel groups in the United States and caused Clinton and the junior Bush to “overcompensate in a way that created a different set of problems.”
The report concludes that “the challenge for the president is to engage in tough love with Israel.”
The authors set out not only to map the failures of the past but also to provide diplomats in the current peace process with a manual for effectively pursuing peace in the region.
Kurtzer stressed the need for the current administration to put in place an effective system that will supervise and ensure that both parties live up to their commitments. “Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. This is the key,” he told the Forward.
Kurtzer, who is currently a professor at Princeton University, says that many of his old colleagues will likely feel uncomfortable with the book’s sharp criticism of their conduct. But the authors and experts interviewed for the study see it as crucial to learn from past mistakes.

Wed. Dec 12, 2007

2007-12-20T06:57:00.000-08:00

Christians and Muslims Weep Together
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine

By SONJA KARKAR

As Christmas approaches this year, the thoughts of Christians all over the world will once again turn to Bethlehem, the holy town where Jesus was born over two millennia ago. Voices will be raised in joyful celebration and children everywhere will re-create the Christmas story to help us remember the circumstances in which the Christ child was born.
Such a momentous occasion in such humble surroundings heralded a new way of thinking about people's relationship with God and with each other. It shook the foundations of an unforgiving society presided over by an unforgiving God and proclaimed peace and goodwill on earth amongst all people. There was indeed much to hope for.
However, the tranquil pastoral scene so familiar to us is not at all evident in Bethlehem today. Bethlehem does not lie still, and peace on earth and goodwill towards all is as elusive as ever. The tyranny of Israel's occupation and its colonial expansionism is crippling the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike. Yet, many Christians will again ignore the misery suffered by the Palestinians in the Holy Land and will celebrate Christmas without remembering that it was amongst this people and in their land that Jesus was born. Priests will chant, masses will be said, carols will be sung and nativity scenes will be created, but it is unlikely that many sermons will urge Christian congregations to speak out against the crimes being committed in Palestine.
Only recently, a delegation of eminent Australian Church leaders returned from visiting the Holy Land and reported their distress at 'the suffering and fear experienced daily by large numbers of people.' [1] The report criticizes Israel's military occupation for the 'systematic harassment, physical and psychological oppression, widespread unemployment, poverty, and economic deprivation' [2] of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims. No doubt these church leaders will encourage their ministries to spread the word before the momentum is lost, but there are many forces working against justice for the Palestinians. Their statement has already been criticized by the Israeli ambassador and they are likely to face objections not only from Jews who support a Zionist state in Israel, but also from Christian quarters.
A dangerous Christian ideology which endorses the rhetoric of Zionism and the conquest of all Palestine for Israel is making its presence felt in Australia. This Christian fervour for Israel has found expression in a revitalised Christian Zionism that began back in the sixteenth century [3] and is directed today against Islam and Muslims. In America particularly, it has misconstrued the messianic and apocalyptic legacy of the Christian faith and has replaced the Jewish and communist Anti-Christ of Christian Zionism's earlier imaginings with an Islamic Anti-Christ. This Anti-Christ, it believes, will be defeated in Israel where all mankind will gather for the coming of the Messiah. That it should take place in Israel, given the numbers of the world's populations, is an absurd notion even amongst the most devout. That the dispossession, degradation and humiliation of the Palestinians who have lived in this land for millennia, can be condoned on such a pretext is even more abhorrent and preposterous.
Unfortunately, the influence of this Christian Zionism is growing rapidly and threatens the thinking of a whole generation of mainstream Christians regardless of their denominations, including Christians in the Holy Land. Father Rafiq Khoury of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, gives a very disturbing account of Christian Zionism's effect on religion and politics. [4] Where once Christians and Muslims shared common values and aspirations in Palestinian society, Christian Zionism has succeeded in fragmenting this already battered community as it struggles to withstand Israel's punishing occupation. Amongst certain sections of this society, Christians and Muslims are now viewing each other with suspicion, and Christians in Palestine, like those abroad, are beginning to see Islam as the enemy. Needless to say, this has been enormously detrimental to the Palestine liberation movement.
It would surprise many Christians in the West that Palestinian Christians and Muslims have prayed in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity for centuries. In fact, the Qur'an - the holy book of Islam - refers often, and with great reverence, to Jesus and Mary. Muhammad himself preserved an icon of Mary and the child Jesus after the conquest of Mecca and ordered that it remain within the Ka'ba to which Muslims make their obligatory pilgrimage from all over the world. [5]
Since 638 CE, Muslims have had the right to pray in the south aisle of the church when the Patriarch of Jerusalem handed over Palestine to Caliph Omar as he swept into Bethlehem with his Arab armies. [6] Muslims recognise Jesus as the Christ, the mightiest Messenger of God who was born miraculously of the Virgin Mary and who, through God, was able to perform miracles. However, Christians and Muslims part ways on Christ's divinity. Muslims believe that there has always been and continues to be one God only and that joining Christ and the Holy Spirit with God the Father in what is known as the Trinity a major tenet of Christianity compromises that singular divinity of God.
It has not though affected their recognition of, and reverence for, Jesus and Mary. The highly regarded theologian of the early Christian Church, St John of Damascus actually thought that Islam was merely another form of Christianity[7], and indeed today, St John would probably be more comfortable with the practices and beliefs of Muslims than he would with the form of Christianity that has developed in the West, particularly Christian Zionism.
So much of the fear and antagonism we see today against Muslims come from ignorance. In Palestine, Christian and Muslims have lived together in harmony for centuries, and particularly in Bethlehem, they have not only shared Christmas celebrations, but even the Muslim feasts Eid al-Fitr at the end of the Ramadan fast and Eid al-Adha. As one young Bethlehem tour guide commented in 2002:
'We know how to celebrate together, because we know how to weep together. We have suffered as one people under 35 years of occupation. The same week that Mary, a Muslim mother of seven was killed in Beit Jala, Johnny, a 17-year-old, died in Manger Square as he was coming out of the Church of the Nativity, both shot by Israeli snipers. We're all inmates together, Muslims and Christians, in the same miserable prison called Palestine. We have no freedom, no peace, no jobs, no money for winter heating, no travelling to Jerusalem or between towns and villages, no future.'
And that is the sum of what is so often forgotten in the search for peace and justice: the escalating inhuman situation suffered by the Palestinians Christians and Muslims.
Sing as we might this Christmas, the hopes and dreams of all the years is unlikely to be met in Bethlehem for those who live there. Nor are they likely to be met for the Palestinians barely hanging on to their miserable existence in Gaza, or the Palestinians in the other cities, towns and villages in the Holy Land and even less for the stateless Palestinians long deprived of hope in the refugee camps. Every chorister's hallelujah will just be a death knell for another generation of Palestinians and every Christmas reflection will become meaningless words of Christian faith, unless we are prepared to look beyond the tinsel and the feasting and really do something to stop Israel's crimes against both Christians and Muslims in Palestine.
Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. See www.womenforpalestine.com

2007-12-20T06:49:00.000-08:00

Print - Close Window
To: partnersforpeace@yahoogroups.com
From: "partnersforpeace"
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:53:20 -0000
Subject: [partnersforpeace] Op-ed from Jerusalem Women Speak 14 participant, Wejdan Jaber
Metal Detectors: My Biggest Fear
It's not the dentist or public speaking that I am afraid of. It is
the metal detector that is my biggest fear.

Every time I approach a metal detector gate, I get this strange fear
knowing that my ability to proceed to where I am going will be decided
by the person operating detector. Most times, I succeed in explaining
the reason the bells and whistles go off when I walk through the metal
detector, but sometimes I am not even allowed the opportunity to
explain and get denied entry.

In 1968, I was born with bi-lateral hip dislocation. I went through
several painful surgical operations to fix it, but none of them
worked. I grew up with my disability and the immense physical and
psychological pain it caused, including several years of being bullied
and picked on in school. Thirty years later, I had garnered the
courage and the money to replace my dislocated hips with a brand new
pair of artificial hips. Little did I know that my new hips would add
a new level of complexity to my life.

In the West Bank where I currently live, there are 85 manned checkpoints, 460 physical
obstacles, and many other "flying" checkpoints that cut the roads between Palestinian
cities and villages in the West Bank (UN OCHA report, Aug. 30, 2007 - www.ochaopt. org).
Only a few of these checkpoints are on the 1967 "green line" between the West Bank and
Israel, restricting Palestinians from entering Israel. Several of these manned checkpoints
contain metal detectors.

In metal detector line, I often see women taking off their jewelry or
hair pins; men taking out coins from their pockets; and older people
leaving their metal canes to the side or putting them through an
X-ray machine before they go through. It is like a test, I feel,
where everybody is eager to be let through and to collect their
belongings after the gate. It is a standard procedure that everyone
has to go through. If you are a Palestinian with dark hair and
"Middle-Eastern" features, this procedure may be more than just
standard protocol for you. You are a walking suspect because "you
fit the profile", and then, when the metal detector sounds its bells
also, it is as if it is shouting, 'Here she is, catch the terrorist!'

On a cold morning in January 2004, a 22-year-old mother of two
children, Reem Riashi, was sent by Hamas with an explosive belt to
Erez checkpoint between Israel and the Gaza Strip. She managed to
go through the Israeli security checks by claiming that she was
disabled and that she had metal parts in her body. Once she made it
through, Reem set off the explosive device taking her own life and
killing four Israelis. Reem must have realized that her suicidal
mission would leave her two children motherless, but I do not think
she recognized how her action would effect the thousands of disabled
Palestinians with metal parts in their bodies, including those who
have been wounded during confrontations with the Israeli army and have
bullet remnants or shrapnel in their bodies. She left all of us
prisoners because we set the metal detector off wherever we go.

In June 2004 while I was working for the United Nations office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights. I was assigned to travel from
Gaza to Cairo to help with the work of the UN Special Committee that
investigates Israeli practices against Palestinian people under
occupation. The only way I could travel was through the
Israeli-controlled Rafah Crossing, south of Gaza. After waiting for
eight hours under the hot sun of a summer day in Rafah, I was ordered
to return to Gaza at once because the metal detector at the borders
went off. I tried to explain to the Israeli soldiers –whom I could
only see at a distance- my situation, but they would not come down
from their monitoring towers to check me personally. They kept on
saying through their loudspeakers "go back, go back or we will shoot".

And that's what I did. I went back through the metal detector gate
and I called the UN liaison office to see if they could help in
coordinating my passage as a UN employee, but they could do nothing.
Dismayed by knowing that I could face this every time I want to leave
the country, I headed home in tears. On my way back, I could not stop
thinking about the amount of anger, humiliation, and deprivation that
any human being can tolerate before he turns into a suicide bomber.
Of course, I didn't forget to stop by my office at the UN to hand in
the UN Passport that was issued to me especially for that mission.

Wejdan_jaber@ yahoo.com
www.filastiniyat. org

2007-12-20T06:27:00.000-08:00

Sealed Off by Israel, Gaza Reduced to Beggary
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 15, 2007; A01

GAZA CITY -- The batteries are the size of a button on a man's shirt, small silvery dots that power hearing aids for several hundred Palestinian students taught by the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City.

Now the batteries, marketed by Radio Shack, are all but used up. The few that are left are losing power, turning voices into unintelligible echoes in the ears of Hala Abu Saif's 20 first-grade students.

The Israeli government is increasingly restricting the import into the Gaza Strip of batteries, anesthesia drugs, antibiotics, tobacco, coffee, gasoline, diesel fuel and other basic items, including chocolate and compressed air to make soft drinks.

This punishing seal has reduced Gaza, a territory of almost 1.5 million people, to beggar status, unable to maintain an effective public health system, administer public schools or preserve the traditional pleasures of everyday life by the sea.

"Essentially, it's the ordinary people, caught up in the conflict, paying the price for this political failure," said John Ging, director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, which serves the majority refugee population. "The humanitarian situation is atrocious, and it is easy to understand why -- 1.2 million Gazans now relying on U.N. food aid, 80,000 people who have lost jobs and the dignity of work. And the list goes on."

Israeli military and political leaders say the restrictions are prompted by near-constant rocket and small-arms attacks and concerns over what uses Palestinian gunmen might have for some materials entering Gaza, particularly fuel and batteries.

The Israeli cordon tightened in June, when Hamas, a radical Islamic movement at war with Israel, seized control of Gaza. Israeli officials have insisted to the Bush administration that no humanitarian crisis would result from the sanctions imposed on the territory.

But for Gazans, caught between Israel's concrete gun towers and the Mediterranean, the sense of crisis is pervasive as they struggle to keep their homes intact, buy essential food from a shrinking and increasingly expensive stock, and educate their children.

"I hold every man, woman and child in Israel responsible for this," said Geraldine Shawa, 64, the Chicago-born director of the Atfaluna Society. A tall, imposing woman who has lived in Gaza for 36 years, Shawa has watched the fortunes of her pupils squeezed in recent months by what she calls Israel's practice of collective punishment.

Israeli military officials said last week that 2,000 rockets had been launched from Gaza toward Israel this year, killing two Israelis, wounding many others and instilling fear across the southern region. Since the U.S.-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md., last month, Israeli airstrikes and ground forces have killed 26 Hamas gunmen, the Islamic organization says, as well as at least four Palestinian civilians.

Hamas's military wing is not behind most of the rocket attacks, for which smaller armed groups generally assert responsibility. But Hamas leaders do little to stop the firing of the rockets and rarely, if ever, condemn them.

On Tuesday, Israeli tanks rolled into the central Gaza city of Khan Younis. Six armed Palestinians from the Popular Resistance Committees, a militant splinter group, and the radical Islamic Jihad organization were killed in fighting. Israeli officials labeled the operation "routine."

"I hold each of them responsible, just as they obviously seem to hold all of us responsible," Shawa said of the Israelis. "If the Israeli government really has the power and the desire to change, well, this is pushing me in exactly the opposite way -- over the edge."

An Isolated Collective

Moamen Ayash, a frail, 6-year-old Palestinian boy in navy blue slacks and a pressed dress shirt, walked to the whiteboard at the front of his tidy classroom to work through some simple sign phrases.

Moamen has not had a working hearing aid for three months. Israeli military officials said they had no idea the batteries were not being delivered.

The inability to hear even the faintest sounds, which hearing aids sometimes make possible for the deaf, hinders children such as Moamen from acquiring spoken language.

Because few of the estimated 20,000 Gazans suffering from hearing loss know even rudimentary sign language, the deaf here represent an isolated collective, dependent for funding largely on the kindness of strangers and the proceeds of their own crafts shop.

Their condition resembles in some ways the larger estrangement of Gaza, a fenced-in, chaotic jumble of squalid refugee camps set amid rubble-strewn dunes that might someday be perches for resort hotels overlooking the turquoise sea.

Work is rare. Food is scarce. Gasoline is so hard to come by that Mahmoud al-Khozendar, 49, has hung an effigy of a man in a suit above the empty gas pumps at his station. The sign pinned to the hanging man's chest reads: "The Man in Charge."

Israel delivers electricity to Gaza that provides roughly 60 percent of the territory's energy. An Israeli Supreme Court decision is expected any day on whether the supply can be reduced as punishment for the rocket fire from Gaza, which Israel evacuated in the fall of 2005 after nearly four decades of military occupation.

In the rank, crowded wards of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, the dispensary is out of 85 essential medicines and close to using up almost 150 others.

Dialysis treatment has been cut back from three to two times a week for even the most critically ill kidney patients, roughly 900 in all. A stack of nearly two dozen blood-cleaning machines gathers dust in a corner, awaiting spare parts that Palestinian doctors say have not been allowed through the border crossings between Gaza and Israel.

The minister of health, Bassem Naim, said in an interview last week that he is husbanding a two-week stock of anesthetic at a time when Israel is threatening to mount a broad military offensive into Gaza to end the rocket fire.

"They have turned Gaza into an animal farm -- we only are allowed to get what keeps us alive," he said.

Since June, Naim said, more than three dozen Palestinians seeking treatment for cancer and other critical illnesses at Israel's more advanced hospitals were rejected for passage by Israeli security agencies. The Israeli nonprofit group Physicians for Human Rights estimates the number of rejections "in the tens."

According to Naim, at least 29 patients have died since June, including 12-year-old Tamer al-Yazji, who Palestinian health officials said was denied entry into Israel after developing acute complications from encephalitis. Of the patients who approached Physicians for Human Rights for help, seven died before being granted passage to Israel, according to the organization.

"What do you call sending dozens of Gaza patients to a slow death because they are refused treatment?" Naim said. "That's not a humanitarian crisis. That's a war crime."

Maj. Peter Lerner, Israel's military liaison for international organizations working in Gaza, said 8,000 Gazans have been permitted to enter Israel for medical care since June.

It is not a risk-free venture for Israel. In 2004, a Palestinian woman detonated an explosives vest near the main Erez Crossing, killing four Israelis and herself. A year and a half later, a 21-year-old Palestinian woman passing through Erez for medical care at Soroka hospital in southern Israel was discovered smuggling a 20-pound bomb, which she unsuccessfully attempted to detonate.

"Hamas should be held accountable to the Palestinian people in Gaza," Lerner said. "They can't fire rockets in the morning and expect the crossings to be open for the sick in the afternoon."

Blackouts and Shortages

When Israel withdrew 8,500 Jewish settlers from Gaza along with the soldiers protecting them, Israeli leaders said the strip could become a prosperous proving ground for a future Palestinian state.

But since the rocket attacks from Gaza began -- killing a total of 13 Israeli citizens since the start of the most recent Palestinian uprising in September 2000 -- the frequent closure of crossings to Israel has choked the export-reliant Palestinian economy.

Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006, trounced the U.S.-backed Fatah movement in Gaza in June. The violent takeover, which Hamas swiftly consolidated politically and culturally, cemented the strip's isolation.

The political divide is widening between the West Bank, where the U.S.-backed administration of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah is in control, and Hamas-run Gaza. The two regions were once envisioned as the twin territories of a Palestinian state.

Now rolling blackouts have begun across the strip, partly because the Palestinian Authority refused for days last week to pay the Israeli company that supplies fuel to Gaza. The strip was receiving only about 24,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day, the lifeblood of the private-sector economy. Before June, the strip received nearly 80,000 gallons of diesel a day.

The Authority has paid its bills, but Israel has limited daily diesel deliveries to Gaza to about 50,000 gallons, some of which is used by the Hamas government and security forces. In addition, Israel sends 80,000 gallons a month directly to the U.N. agency for refugees to ensure that its operation continues.

Lerner, the Israeli military liaison, said this week that he would contact the International Committee of the Red Cross to make sure hearing-aid batteries would be allowed through the crossings.

A spokeswoman for the Atfaluna Society said none had been received so far.

The restrictions have also hampered the society's vocational programs, which use well-equipped wood shops, weaving looms and pottery studios. Thread for traditional Palestinian embroidery, wood for painted boxes and pottery glazes mostly remain on the far side of the backlogged Israeli border crossings.

"We may have enough for another month," said Mohamed al-Sharif, 36, who supervises the classes. "Then we will run out again."

Trucks carrying tobacco and coffee usually have low priority in the lines backed up at the crossings. Israeli military officials say they try to push 60 to 70 trucks through a day, despite frequent rocket and small-arms attacks.

In the meantime, Gazans improvise. "We've bought 20 tons of coffee from every store here we could find," said Riyadh Haigar, owner of the popular Delice Coffee Shop. "Maybe it'll last a month. Then we close the doors."
© 2007 The Washington Post Company

2007-12-20T06:21:00.000-08:00

From: A Friend
Subject: Ashrawi: The demographic argument is inherently racist
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:30:26 +0000
A PALESTINIAN VIEW
The demographic argument is inherently racist
an interview with Hanan Ashrawi bitterlemons: Israel's demand to be recognized as a 'Jewish state' at Annapolis caused an uproar among Palestinians. This doesn't seem like a new demand, so why the uproar?
Ashrawi: It is new in a sense. It is new as a prerequisite for negotiations. The demand has always been the recognition of Israel. Then Israel added the recognition of Israel's 'right to exist', and then the recognition of it's right to exist as a 'Jewish state'. But when the PLO recognized Israel in 1993 there was an assumption that that was it, in the context of a two-state solution and international law and UN General Assembly Resolution 181 and Security Council Resolution 242.

This issue of the Jewishness of the state came up recently mainly because of the so-called demographic issue--which to me is an inherently racist issue--which became the central motivation for the two-state solution among the Israeli right, including Ariel Sharon. The fear of the demographic balance, projections for the birthrate and so on, led people to this position, and now Israel wants to ensure that there is always a Jewish majority.

bitterlemons: Why is this position unacceptable to the Palestinians?

Ashrawi: Once you start raising this issue it means that you want to eliminate the Palestinian refugees' right of return because they happen not to be Jewish. Israel sees the return of Palestinian refugees as a demographic way of destroying the state of Israel. Hence it has become a main prerequisite for qualification for the 'good housekeeping seal': if you are a Palestinian who adheres to the right of return you are not qualified for negotiations or as an interlocutor because you want to destroy Israeli demographically.

It is also unacceptable to the Palestinian citizens of Israel. These are the people saying Israel should be a state for all its citizens. The irony is that this is seen as something entirely unacceptable by Israel. But every state should be a state for all its citizens. It cannot be a state for a select number of citizens depending on ethnicity or religious affiliation. So in a sense, Israel also wants the Palestinians to negate the right of Palestinian citizens of Israel and ensure that they remain second or third class citizens.

Finally, there is a question of principle. People recognize states. They do not recognize the right of any state to exist. The moment you recognize a state you recognize its right to exist. But you don't recognize the nature of the regime or form of governance. I don't only recognize the US as long as it is maintains a democratic, presidential system, France as long as it is a secular republic or Iran as long as it is an Islamic state. It is ironic that at a time when we as Palestinians are struggling to have a state that's pluralistic, democratic, open, inclusive and tolerant and are fighting internally against absolutist and exclusionary ideologies, we are asked by Israel to accept their form of exclusionary ideology.

bitterlemons: Israel claims that upholding the right of return would be the end of a two-state solution because two Palestinian states would essentially be created. Is this a fair position?

Ashrawi: A right is a right and it cannot be negotiated. You do not enter negotiations having relinquished a right and violated international law. You have to uphold international law, recognize rights and then negotiate their implementation.

It is Israel that is destroying the two-state solution with its settlements and by refusing to accept a viable democratic state on the 1967 borders. There are now voices increasingly calling for a one-state solution and democracy as the answer, with one voice and one vote.

To me, the demographic argument is by definition racist. I think Palestinians have the right to independence, statehood and self-determination as a legal and political imperative. It is not an issue that has to become a threat or that we formulate in response to somebody else's position.

bitterlemons: Israel says the idea of two states for two peoples is embodied by UNGA Resolution 181. Is this your interpretation?

Ashrawi: The language used was a 'Jewish state' and an 'Arab state'. If they want to accept 181, then let us take all of it. Then we go back to the whole partition plan. We have agreed to give them 78 percent of historic Palestine. If they want to use 181, then they can have 54 percent of Palestine and then they can say they have a 'Jewish state'.

bitterlemons: But is that your understanding of 181? Does it call for this kind of ethnic division?

Ashrawi: No it doesn't. But it describes the state as Jewish and that's why Israel wants to use it. 181 was a response to the Jewish Question. It was decided to give part of Palestine to Jews for as long as it would not endanger the rights of the indigenous Palestinian population. Now Jews have a state. But does this mean that this state can be exclusionary and discriminatory? Does it mean that this is the language that should be used in twenty-first century? If they want to use 181, let's take it in its totality.

bitterlemons: In view of the apparent US endorsement of the Israeli demand, what can Palestinians do?

Ashrawi: We don't have to accept the Israeli demand. If anyone came up and said the US should be legitimate only as a Christian state there would be an outcry. But the fact that the US took their cue from the Israelis and adopted Israeli language is not new. It doesn't mean we have to accept it.

bitterlemons: But how significant is it?

Ashrawi: It depends on how you pursue it. It's significant in the sense that the US adopted the Israeli position, but this is not new. But will it be translated into concrete steps when it comes to refugees, or the suggestion by some Israeli racists of a land swap based on demography? Would the US endorse such racist solutions? Would they accept the negation of the rights of Palestinians? That's the issue.

bitterlemons: Do the Americans understand that this is the issue?

Ashrawi: If they don't, they have no business mediating. The implications of these words are enormous. The Palestinians see this as a way of forcing them to accept the Israeli narrative and therefore negate the Palestinian narrative and Palestinian legitimacy. If you want a peace process you have to incorporate the legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative.- Published 17/12/2007 © bitterlemons.org

Hanan Ashrawi is a Palestinian legislator and a member of the Third Way party.

2007-12-20T06:16:00.000-08:00

From: My Son
Subject: Remembering Bethlehem this Christmas
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:45:54 +0000
Also, please read the National Geographic's amazing article on Bethlehem 2007 A.D.: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-12/bethlehem/finkel-text.html

Remembering Bethlehem this Christmas

2nd Annual
Christmas Procession for Bethlehem
Saturday, December 22, 2007

Begins with a worship service in the
Bethlehem Chapel of the National Cathedral
3101 Wisconsin Ave. N.W., Washington, DC
9:30 AM Gather
10:00 AM Worship Service
Planned joint service simulcast with the people of Bethlehem

Procession will follow service; starting at 10:30 AM on Woodley Road.

Mary and Joseph, with donkey, will lead the procession.

Bethlehem, the city of Jesus' birth, is under occupation. All its residents, including Palestinian Christians, are suffering.

Behind the wall that separates neighbor from neighbor, patient from hospital, student from school and farmer from land, Palestinian Christians will continue to bear witness to their faith this Christmas, as they have done for generations. Let us join our voices with theirs in seeking and offering hope for a better future.

Sponsored by the Ad Hoc Committee for Bethlehem,
the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace
and Sharing Jerusalem

For updates on location and details, go to www.wiamep.org
Or contact Samia Noursi at (703) 255-4150, samianoursi@cox.net

For directions and parking info. go to www.cathedral.

2007-12-08T10:03:00.000-08:00

From: Rashid
To: Bronwin
Subject: American Prospect: Ehud the Semi-Beliver
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2007 16:46:30 +0000
Ehud the Semi-Believer

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is trapped by his unwillingness
to acknowledge that Israel must leave the occupied territories
completely.

Gershom Gorenberg | December 4, 2007 |American Prospect web only

Ehud Olmert has begun to fascinate me. Don't misunderstand:
I am completely innocent of ever voting for him. I have no
intent of committing such an act in the future. Had fate not
put me in a country of which Olmert is prime minister at a
moment that might be seized by someone else, an actual leader,
to make peace, my interest in him would be purely as a
literary figure, a character. I don’t mean that he is a tragic
hero; precisely the point is that he lacks grandeur. He is
Willy Loman with a vision: a glad-handing hack politician who
was ambushed one day by a truth. Half of that truth scares him
so much that every time it calls, he tells his secretary to
tell it that he's in a meeting.

At the Annapolis peace conference last week, Olmert and
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas agreed to 'make every effort
to conclude an agreement' resolving all issues and resulting
in full peace 'before the end of 2008.' Their joint statement
was read out loud by George W. Bush, making a very rare cameo
in Mideast peace efforts. Let's leave aside Bush and Abbas for
now. Bush is a badly written character, shallow and one-
dimensional. Abbas, who inherited Yasser Arafat's job but not
a scrap of his popularity, deserves a treatment of his own.

Speaking at the summit, Olmert said that 'the reality created
in our region in 1967 will change significantly.' The 'reality'
created in 1967 is occupation and Israeli rule over the
Palestinians. If the point wasn't clear, he told the daily
Ha'aretz that without a two-state solution, Israel would face '
a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights' for
Palestinians in the occupied territories, and that Diaspora
Jews would turn against the Jewish state. This sounds like a
man eager to end the occupation.

Then he came home, convened the cabinet, and said that the
deadline of the end of next year is a mere hope. 'There is no
commitment to a specific timetable regarding these negotiations,'
he said (link to Hebrew text). In other words, talks could go on
forever; the process could replace arriving at an agreement.
Israel , he said, did not need to do anything until 'all of the
Roadmap commitments are met,' code words for the Palestinian
Authority enforcing a total end to attacks on Israel . Yes, the
2003 'roadmap' to peace also obligates Israel to remove illegal
settlement outposts. As I write, there is no indication that
Olmert is rushing to do that.

One more news item, absolutely Olmertesque, requires mention:
Just after he arrived home, the head of the national police's
fraud squad recommended closing an investigation of the prime
minister for trying to fix the sale of a state-owned bank so that
a friend could buy it. The State Prosecutor's Office has since
said the case remains open. There are two other criminal
investigations of Olmert at the moment -- one involving buying a
home at a discount that could have been a bribe from a developer;
the other involving political appointments when he was trade
minister. Olmert has been investigated several times before, even
if charged and tried only once. In 1996 he was indicted on
conspiracy and fraud charges connected to a campaign-financing
scandal. The next year he was acquitted, though censured by the
judge. Other cases have been closed for lack of evidence. For
years, he has been under suspicion. Living, so far, a millimeter
within the law, he reeks of the tawdriness of the zoning board and
the lobbyist's lunch.

Olmert was born into politics. His father, Mordechai Olmert,
supported the far-right Irgun underground before Israeli
independence and later served as a member of parliament for
Menachem Begin's Herut (Freedom) party, forerunner of the
right-wing Likud. In 1973, at age 28, Ehud Olmert was elected
to the Knesset on the Likud ticket. Afterward, he exploited
the young country's lack of conflict-of-interest laws, opened
a law practice while in parliament, and became wealthy. Though
always on the side of Israel politics that opposed giving up an
inch of occupied territory, he switched factions and mentors
shamelessly. His real ideology appeared to be Ehud Olmert.

When the Likud lost power to Yitzhak Rabin's Labor party
in 1993, Olmert switched to municipal politics, cut a deal
with Jerusalem 's ultra-Orthodox political bosses, and got
elected mayor. Streets got dirtier, young people left the
city, and the mayor incessantly flew around the world. When
he returned to national politics in 2003, he barely made it
into parliament. But by now he was a crony of Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, who appointed him vice prime minister. When
Sharon suffered his stroke in January 2006, the hack became p
rime minister.

By then, though, Olmert had been visited by an Idea. I suspect that he himself would have been less surprised if he had discovered he was pregnant. In newspaper interviews in late 2003, Olmert announced his vision: Israel needed to pull out of most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Otherwise Palestinians in occupied territory would demand the right to vote in Israeli elections. Since Palestinians were on the verge of becoming the majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, Israel would cease being a Jewish state. 'I shudder to think that liberal Jewish organizations that shouldered the burden of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa will lead the struggle against us,' Olmert said. This comment was a psychological gambit: He assigned to liberal Jews elsewhere the piece of the idea too terrible to say in his own name.

Admittedly, this wasn't a new idea. Founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion rejected conquering the West Bank in 1949 for this reason; Olmert even quoted him. Some Labor politicians made the same argument as soon as Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. Olmert was a very slow student, but once he caught on, he was convinced.

Well, sort of. An agreement with the Palestinians, he said in December 2003, was out of the question, because it would necessarily look something like the unofficial Geneva Accord, requiring a return virtually to the pre-1967 borders. The need for a negotiated peace was the part of his own big idea that Olmert did not want to face. His initial solution to that dilemma was a unilateral withdrawal to lines of Israel 's choosing, leaving the major settlements in Israeli hands.

Last summer's war erased all public support for that proposal, along with Olmert's popularity. A unilateral pullout would mean continued conflict, with Palestinian groups firing rockets into Israeli cities. Olmert began negotiating with Abbas. The pace picked up after Hamas seized control of Gaza and Abbas formed a new government in the West Bank .

In a world of Olmert's own design, Abbas would agree to peace based on a partial Israeli pullback, more or less to the 'security barrier' in the West Bank . Even with immense American pressure, Abbas will not agree to this. No Palestinian will. Olmert knows this, he said so four years ago, and does not want to know he knows this. Even if he was willing to agree to something resembling Geneva Accord, he does not have the political support to carry the deal in the public and parliament. Someone else, the kind of leader who leads, a Yitzhak Rabin perhaps, might trust his ability to speak and convince and have people follow him. So far in his long political career, Olmert has not been able to do this. He is caught between his idea and its consequences, between his idea and his abilities.

As a literary character, uncertain, unpredictable, he is fascinating. Unfortunately, he is prime minister. The next chapter of history depends at least partly on him. Living where I do, I consider pessimism a luxury, but I have a hard time believing that the chronicle of Ehud Olmert will have a happy ending. I would deeply like to be surprised.

Gershom Gorenberg is a senior correspondent for The Prospect. He is the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 and The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount.

2007-12-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

Muslim extremists insult the faith.
Read below for an excellent article on the toy bear named Muhammad.
You may have to cut and paste.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped1205teddydec05,0,1182095.story

2007-11-25T12:15:00.000-08:00

Friday, 23 November 2007

Military service haunts Israeli women

One posed for a photo as she scrubbed a Palestinian corpse. Another stripped a man to his underwear and then beat him. A third helped cover up the abuse of a young boy.

The six Israeli women who feature in the documentary, To See If I'm Smiling, each wrestle with memories of their compulsory military service that they would rather erase.

But after years of trying to bury the past, they have spoken out in a film that explores the darker side of Israel's 40-year-old occupation of the Palestinian territories and examines its impact on a generation of young men and women.

"It's easy to finish your military service and push it to the back of your mind," said director Tamar Yarom. "But these girls are telling their personal stories – which are not always very nice - to show people what is going on."

All but one of the women spent time as conscript soldiers in the Palestinian territories during the uprising that erupted in 2000. In the film, they recount their memories from that period, describing how they coped with military machismo and with the residual guilt about what they witnessed.

One girl who had wanted to save lives as a paramedic said she ended up scrubbing corpses to hide signs of abuse by Israeli soldiers. Visibly distressed, she looks for the first time in years at a photo of her and a dead Palestinian man.

"How in hell did I think I'd ever be able to forget?" she says, brushing away tears.

Although female soldiers are kept out of the front line, Israel is one of the only countries to enforce military service for women. Yarom aims to highlight the fragility of some girl soldiers – many still in their teens when they start their two year army stint – and the violence into which they are thrust.

"You expect women to be more sensitive to suffering and more empathetic to the other side. But the strength of the film is how it shows what happens to human beings in such a warped situation, and how women are not immune," Yarom said.

Yarom hopes the documentary will prompt soul-searching in the Jewish state, where military service is a core part of national identity, and encourage other traumatised ex-soldiers to talk about violence they may have inflicted or witnessed.

"This country is in a coma. With all the bombs and attacks, we are numb," she said.

"People feel we are in a war of survival and it's better not to criticise soldiers, because they are the ones protecting us."

Israel's army said in a statement that soldiers adhere to a strict ethical code and that in exceptional cases, where the code is violated, an investigation is launched. It said the number of ethical violations involving Palestinians had "consistently dropped" since the events described in the film.

Yarom expects the film will provoke criticism both from the Israeli left – because of her sympathetic portrayal of the soldiers - and from the right – which often balks at criticising the army.

Yarom said personal experience prompted her to make the film. As a support soldier during the earlier intifada of the 1980s, she was shown a Palestinian torture victim but failed to speak out.

Almost two decades later, she still cannot shake the image of the man, slumped over a generator, his neck bent to the side and his face covered in blood.

"It's the kind of picture that stays with you forever," she said. "During my service I detached myself. When you try to re-attach yourself afterwards it's painful."

2007-11-20T09:10:00.000-08:00

Subject: Modern Bethlehem
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:55:13 +0000
Readers, Please cut and paste the following email address onto your address box to view disturbing pictures of today's Bethlehem.
Bronwin

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-12/bethlehem/video-bethlehem.html?fs=www.nationalgeographic.com

2007-11-06T07:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071112/cohler-esses

The New McCarthyism

by LARRY COHLER-ESSES

[from the November 12, 2007 issue]

Meet Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj, a notorious Barnard College professor now up for tenure who:

o claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a 'pure political fabrication,'

o denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews,

o does not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise,

o is so ignorant of her topic that she quotes one archaeologist on how a dig might have damaged the ancient palaces of Solomon--oblivious to the fact that those palaces, if they existed, were far from the site in question.

None of these charges are true. You could look it up. I did, in El-Haj's book Facts on the Ground, about which these charges are made. The statements for which a network of right-wing critics assail her book are not there.

I asked Paula Stern, the Barnard alum who has organized an online petition demanding that El-Haj be denied tenure, how she squared her petition's charges with El-Haj's book. 'The petition takes pieces of criticisms from experts. It may not be quoted 100 percent accurate,' she admitted. Still, more than 2,500 people, including many Barnard and Columbia alumni, have signed on to its claims. Tellingly, Stern, who now lives in the West Bank, voiced astonishment at being asked to justify her charges in terms of what El-Haj's book actually says. 'I've spoken to many newspapers,' she said. 'No one has done what you've done.'

I looked that up, too. In the key media venues, at least, Stern was right; and not just with regard to her target. In case after case, a network of right-wing activists has started an online furor based on a mélange of distorted or provably false charges against someone involved in Middle East studies. They supported these charges with quotes yanked out of context or entirely made up and wielded a broad brush of guilt by association. Right-wing media megaphoned the charges, stoking the furor. And mainstream media ultimately noticed and responded, often focusing their stories on the furor rather than the facts.

Under pressure from these assaults, some academic institutions buckle and a professor's career is derailed; in other cases it is permanently stained. More insidious, even when tenure puts an academic beyond the reach of his or her assailants, more vulnerable junior faculty and grad students take note. 'There certainly is a sense among faculty and grad students that they're being watched, monitored,' said Zachary Lockman, president of the Middle East Studies Association. 'People are always looking over their shoulder, feeling that whatever they say--in accurate or, more likely, distorted form--can end up on a website. It definitely has a chilling effect.'

This is the modus operandi of the New McCarthyism. It targets a new enemy for our era: Muslims, Arabs and others in the Middle East field who are identified as stepping over an unstated line in criticizing Israel, as radical Islamists, as just plain radical or as in some way sympathetic to terrorists. Its purveyors include Campus Watch, run by Arab studies scholar Daniel Pipes; the David Project, supported by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation; and David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine (in October Horowitz organized an 'Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week' on campuses across the nation).

Their efforts often appear to be linked. As first noted by blogger Richard Silverstein, the earliest web attack on El-Haj's book was posted simultaneously by Campus Watch and FrontPage, in October 2005. Alexander Joffe, identified as a professor at SUNY, Purchase, published a harshly negative review of the book in The Journal of Near Eastern Studies that same month. The prestigious journal did not note--and was not informed--that he was then director of Campus Watch. Soon after, he became research director for the David Project. Less prominent researchers like Stern, the online PipeLine News and writers such as Beila Rabinowitz and William Mayer provide raw material to the more well-known portals, such as Pipes and Horowitz. Pipes's and Horowitz's material is, in turn, picked up by key conservative papers like the New York Post and New York Sun.

There is an undeniable security threat, but as in the 1950s the New McCarthyites use it as a base for demagogy. Their distinguishing feature is not concern about this threat but cynical indifference to the truth or decency of their charges. Take the case of Debbie Almontaser, the New York City public high school principal forced to resign in August as head of a new Arabic/English secondary school. The furor revolved around her attempt in an interview with the Post to explain the meaning of, rather than simply condemn, T-shirts bearing the words Intifada NYC. This provoked a firestorm. United Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, a key supporter of Almontaser's school, condemned her in a letter to the Post. The next day Almontaser resigned--a move publicly welcomed by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Almontaser has since stated she was told to resign or the school, which she founded, would be closed.

In its obscuring, anodyne postmortem on the affair, the New York Times vaguely described Almontaser as a victim of the city's 'treacherous ethnic and ideological political currents' rather than of specific charges that were demonstrably false--like Pipes's widely publicized claim, based on a truncated quotation, that she denied Muslims or Arabs were involved in the 9/11 attacks. The Times report on El-Haj adopted a similar hands-off stance, simply quoting supporters and attackers. It did not once compare the activists' charges with what El-Haj actually said in her book.

As it happens, Almontaser's forced resignation was the city Education Department's second dive in the face of pressure from the New McCarthyites. Three years ago it dismissed Professor Rashid Khalidi, the esteemed director of Columbia's Middle East Institute, from lecturing teachers enrolled in professional development courses. The dismissal came in response to a Sun article claiming Khalidi had denounced Israel as 'a 'racist' state with an 'apartheid system.'' Khalidi denied the quote fragments as they were used in the story. 'I do not think Zionism is racist,' he told the Forward. 'When we talk about some of the contemporary laws, there are policies that I consider racist and discriminatory.' Asked if the department had verified Khalidi's purported remarks before dismissing him, a department spokesman avoided answering Times columnist Joyce Purnick.

Khalidi still has his day job, as does--so far--a nontenured Columbia colleague, Joseph Massad, who according to a special school investigative committee was falsely accused several years ago of discriminating against Jewish and Israeli students. The same cannot be said for Norman Finkelstein, who was terminated at Chicago's DePaul University in September after the school's president--in a rare departure from standard procedure--rejected the overwhelming tenure approval Finkelstein had received at both the departmental and college levels. Finkelstein's scholarly work has accused Jewish groups of exploiting the Holocaust and Israel of egregious human rights violations. He had incurred the special wrath of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, whose book defending Israel Finkelstein had devoted an entire book to savaging. Dershowitz, in turn, tried unsuccessfully to prevent the University of California Press from publishing Finkelstein's book, and sent Finkelstein's tenure committees a dossier that he said documented his 'most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and distortions.' Clearly, the tenure committees were not impressed by Dershowitz's claims. DePaul president Dennis Holtschneider, for his part, denied that Dershowitz's intervention affected his decision.

Beshara Doumani, a University of California history professor, has mapped the systemic strategy of the New McCarthyism, highlighting that more than just its targets are new. First and foremost, private advocacy groups, not Congressional committees, are by and large today's means of pressuring academic administrations--at least, so far. These groups often retain important ties to government figures. But they are most focused on organizing alumni and students, with an eye toward generating public outrage and eventually government and donor pressure.

'I'm worried about untenured professors trying to get tenure,' said Doumani, co-chair of the Middle East Studies Association's Committee on Academic Freedom. 'I'm worried about entire departments saying, 'We need people in Middle East positions, but we're not going to hire certain kinds of people. It involves too much headache, too much risk.' How do you quantify that? You can't. But it's going around. I can tell you, it's a real issue.'