Adidas reconsiders sponsorship of Jerusalem marathon

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat decides to hold the first Jerusalem International Marathon in March 2011. He gets Adidas to sponsor the event. An Israeli runner registers and then discovers that the route runs through some of the most egregious examples of discrimination and dispossession in East Jerusalem: Sheikh Jarrah, Issawiya, the Shufat Refugee Camp, Jabel Mukaber and Sur Baher.

He approaches the Meretz representatives on the Jerusalem city council and they, with international human rights organizations, approach Adidas. Adidas smells a possible consumer boycott and gets cold feet. The company demands “clarifications” from the Jerusalem municipality. What does that mean? Time (and persistence) will tell. (lees verder op Coteret)

Wikileaks: Insights on Palestine from the Cables

New Left Project | By Asa Winstanley* | 24.12.10

One of the first things that struck me while reading the cables from the US embassy to Israel in Tel Aviv was how worried the Israeli government seems to be about the Goldstone Report into war crimes committed during Israel's 2008-2009 attack on the people of Gaza. In cable 09TELAVIV2777 of December 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to have named the report as one of three "principal threats" facing Israel - the other two being Iran's alleged nuclear programme and "missile proliferation".

Second, there are important insights into the high level of collaboration between Israel and forces that have been called the "Palestinian Contras" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Indeed, the first "cablegate" headline on Palestine was sourced from cable 09TELAVIV1177, in which Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is reported to have said he "had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas". In other words, Fateh leader Mahmoud Abbas (whose term as PA president expired in January 2009) knew the massive Israeli onslaught was coming but said nothing. This was widely suspected, but to read confirmation of it from a confidential US government source is something new.

There's more. Cable 07TELAVIV1732, which I like to call "War of the Puppets", was released this week. To my mind, it's the most interesting of the Palestine cables released so far. Written in June 2007 during Gaza street-fighting caused by the ultimately unsuccessful Fateh coup attempt, it details a meeting between then-ambassador Richard H. Jones and Yuval Diskin (head of Israel's secret police, the Shabak - aka Shin Bet). It is a portrait of how divided Israel's Palestinian collaborators really were. "[Gaza warlord Mohammed] Dahlan is trying to manage Fatah's security forces by remote control. We are not even sure where he is... " Diskin is quoted as saying. He continued: "[Dahlan's men in Gaza] ask us to attack Hamas. This is a new development. We have never seen this before. They are desperate." Again, this is all important corroborating evidence for things we already knew or suspected. Recent media reports of a power struggle between Abbas and Dahlan (whom Fateh elements close to the US now blame for "losing" Gaza) suggest little has changed in terms of Fateh infighting.

Diskin is also reported in 07TELAVIV1732 to have claimed the Shabak had "a very good working relationship with the [Palestinian Authority] Preventive Security Organization (PSO) and the General Intelligence Organization (GIO)." The most striking quote in the whole cable to me is this: "Diskin said that the PSO shares with ISA [Shabak] almost all the intelligence that it collects".

There is also something of an overlooked smoking gun in this cable. Of Tawfik Tirawi, leader of the PA's GIO: "Diskin said... he is trying to develop ties with the Dughmush family in the Gaza Strip.'" The Doghmush clan (aka the "Army of Islam"), you may recall, are the same group that in March 2007 kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston (he was rescued by Hamas in July). While a Fateh connection to the group has long been suspected, to my knowledge this is the first confirmation of it from official sources.

Overall, this is a Palestinian Authority acting as nothing more than an extension of the Israeli occupation forces – a relationship that has only deepened in the last three-and-a-half years. However, there is a lot missing in the cables: little on the 2008-2009 Israeli assault on Gaza, nothing on the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai and little on the July 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. Despite some rather unlikely conspiracy theories currently doing the rounds on the internet, the likely reasons for these gaps are more mundane. First, none of the cables are rated "Top Secret"; second the inherent bias of US government personnel towards Israel; and third, only a small fraction of the leaked cables have actually been published so far. Indeed, during an interview with Al Jazeera this week, Julian Assange claimed they had thousands of cables on Israel still to come, including material on the al-Mabhouh assassination and the July 2006 war.

Also, of note is a graph illustrating the composition of the cables cache on the Wikleaks website. It appears to show that around 2000 cables from the US consulate in Jerusalem are still to come. These could be more interesting than the cables released so far (almost all from the embassy in Tel Aviv).

To be continued, in all likelihood.

* Follow Asa Winstanley on Twitter or visit his website: www.winstanleys.org

Israëlische bulldozers denderen door

IPS/OneWorld.nl | Mel Frykberg | 26-12-2010

In Oost-Jeruzalem worden Palestijnen uit hun appartement gezet, op de Westelijke Jordaanoever walsen Israëlische bulldozers hun huizen plat. Palestijnen betalen een hoge tol voor het spaak lopen van de vredesgesprekken met Israël.

Alleen puin en verwrongen metaal is er over van de kopieerzaak die Muhammad Robin Alyyan (27) met zijn twee broers dreef. Samen met andere Palestijnse huizen in het bezette gebied Oost-Jeruzalem vernielden Israëlische veiligheidsdiensten onlangs hun bloeiende onderneming. Ze hadden geen bouwvergunning, luidt de officiële verklaring.

150.000 euro weg
Mensenrechtenorganisaties hebben aangetoond hoe moeilijk het voor Palestijnen is om deze papieren te krijgen. Zij vermoeden hierin opzet van Israël, dat tegelijkertijd illegale joodse nederzettingen steunt zodat demografisch een joodse meerderheid ontstaat. "Binnen een paar uur hebben we 150.000 euro verloren", vertelt ondernemer Alyyan. De Israëlische grenspolitie heeft hem geboeid, geslagen en pepperspray in het gezicht gespoten, zegt hij.



Uit huis gezet
De Israëlische autoriteiten vernielden de afgelopen weken meerdere gebouwen en zetten Palestijnen uit hun huizen op de Westelijke Jordaanoever.
In Oost-Jeruzalem betrokken joodse kolonisten onder politiebegeleiding twee appartementen, waarbij een Palestijnse familie uit een van de flats werd gezet. Ondertussen liggen er bouwaanvragen voor honderden nieuwe woningen in illegale joodse nederzettingen in Oost-Jeruzalem.

Twintig straaljagers
Het Amerikaanse Witte Huis bood Israël recent nog wapens en technologie in ruil voor een verlenging van drie maanden van de bouwstop, die afliep in september. De deal omvatte onder meer twintig straaljagers (F-35's) en mobiel luchtafweergeschut (Iron Dome) ter waarde van 205 miljoen dollar. Verder beloofden de VS dat zij hun veto zouden gebruiken in de VN-Veiligheidsraad als de Palestijnse Autoriteit (PA) bij de VN aandringt op een Palestijnse staat. Toch ging de Israëlische regering niet in op dit aanbod.

Staat in het nauw
Door deze ontwikkelingen raakt de Palestijnse Autoriteit nog meer in het nauw. "Wat de regering nu overweegt, is om hun zaak van een Palestijnse staat rechtstreeks bij de VN te bepleiten, buiten Israël en de VS om", vertelt hoogleraar Samir Awad van de Birzeit-universiteit bij Ramallah. Premier Salaam Fayyad werkt eraan de Palestijnse staat op te richten tegen augustus 2011.

Alternatieve weg
Hoogleraar Awad vervolgt: "Dat plan ligt al twee jaar op de tekentafel en omvat de oprichting van eigen instellingen met de groeiende steun van leden uit de internationale gemeenschap. De onderhandelingen met Israël leiden tot niets. De Palestijnse Autoriteit moet een alternatieve weg zoeken, die de VN erbij betrekt maar zich niet alleen tot deze instantie beperkt."

Ronny Naftaniël en zijn gewelddadige stenengooiende Palestijnen

Bijna dagelijks post Ronny Naftaniël van de Nederlandse pro-Israël lobby baarlijke nonsens op Twitter. Vandaag: "90 Palestijnen proberen met geweld het Qalandia checkpoint over te gaan. Ze gooien met stenen. Israelisch leger arresteert 6 stenengooiers"

Naftaniël's bronnen zijn onbetrouwbaar. Protesteren is volgens hem "geweld", en het stenen gooien (heeft hij zelf gezien?) is blijkbaar zo erg dat hij het twee maal in één tweet propt. Dat de zwaar bewapende Israëlische soldaten continue traangasgraten afschieten op de protesteerders, vindt Ronny blijkbaar blijkbaar geen "geweld". Wie weet, misschien vindt hij het wel weer "zelfverdediging", net zoals hij beweerde over de honderden gedode kinderen in Gaza 2008-2009. De man heeft geen enkele moraal.

Het CIDI noemde het beschieten van scholen in Gaza "een tragisch incident", en dat het ook wel meeviel allemaal. Daarna lezen we weer sprookjes over de Israëli's het allemaal ook heel erg vonden, en dat Hamas burgers als schild gebruikt, nee sterker nog, Hamas stuurde hen juist de bombardementen in, nee nog sterker: Gazanen werden gedood door de boobytraps van Hamas.

Hoe zou Naftaniël gereageerd hebben wanneer Gazanen honderden joodse kinderen naar het hiernamaals zouden schieten? Zou hij dan ook uitleggen dat dat "niet buitenproportioneel" is, en de schuld is van het IDF? Nee, natuurlijk niet, want de Naftaniël's humaniteit stopt bij het checkpoint.

Wat er werkelijk in Qalandia aan de hand is:

French activists arrested at West Bank protest
(AFP) – 1 hour ago

JERUSALEM — Nine French activists were arrested on Sunday during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at a major Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank, police and protest organisers told AFP.

"Our forces today dispersed protesters who were throwing rocks at us and proceeded to arrest nine people, including some foreigners," Micky Rosenfeld said.

"The protest took place at the Qalandia checkpoint, north of Jerusalem, and the police made arrests after the activists tried to cross the checkpoint," he added.

A spokesman for the French EuroPalestine activist group said nine French citizens were arrested at the demonstration. A Palestinian detained at the protest was later released, he said

On Saturday, another French activist, Layli Ben Saffi, was arrested by the Israeli military during a protest against Israeli settler activity in the West Bank city of Hebron. He was released on Saturday evening.

Some 70 members of the EuroPalestine group have spent the last week in the Palestinian territories on an observer mission, a group spokesman said.

The president of the organisation, Olivia Zemor, was deported last Wednesday "on the recommendation of the security services," after being detained at Ben Gurion upon arrival.

Foto's van Qalandia vandaag (en eerder) over het "geweld" van de "90 Palestijnen" die "stenen gooien":

Israeli policemen scuffle with Palestinian and foreign activists during a protest against Israel's separation barrier at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, Sunday, Dec. 26, 2010. Israel says the barrier is necessary for security while Palestinians call it a land grab.

Nog meer "geweld" van de dames.

Gooide iemand daar iets? Ronny, twitteren joh!
Israeli soldiers clash with foreign and Palestinian activists during a pro-Palestinian protest at the major Israeli checkpoint of Qalandia, between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem, on December 26, 2010 where nine people were arrested including some foreigners.

Jawel, zeer gewelddadig, die "stenengooiers"

Oog kwijt geraakt door traangasgranaat.

Nog een traangasgranaat.

Geweld.

Qalandia checkpoint

VS 'vredesproces' lachertje

In ruil voor Amerikaanse wapens steun, moet Israël een bouwstop van 90 dagen op de Westelijke Jordaanoever afkondigen. De stop geldt niet voor Oost-Jeruzalem.

De VS belooft daarna geen verlenging van de bouwstop te eisen. Verder zal de VS Israël proberen te behoeden voor kritische VN-resoluties.
(Bron: NOS)

Weimar in Jerusalem: the rise of fascism in Israel

Redress | By Uri Avnery | 23 October 2010

Uri Avnery warns that fascism will overwhelm Israel unless progressive forces “awake from the coma, understand what is happening and where it is leading to, protest and struggle by all available means ... in order to arrest the fascist wave that is threatening to engulf us”.

In Berlin, an exhibition entitled “Hitler and the Germans” has just opened. It examines the factors that caused the German people to bring Adolf Hitler to power and follow him to the very end...

Since childhood, precisely this question has been troubling me. How did it happen that a civilized nation, which saw itself as the “people of poets and thinkers”, followed this man, much as the children of  Hamelin followed the pied piper to their doom.

This troubles me not only as a historical phenomenon, but as a warning for the future. If this happened to the Germans, can it happen to any people? Can it happen here, in Israel?

As a nine-year old boy I was an eyewitness to the collapse of German democracy and the ascent of the Nazis to power. The pictures are engraved in my memory – the election campaigns following each other, the uniforms in the street, the debates around the table, the teacher who greeted us for the first time with “Heil Hitler”. I resurrected these memories in a book I wrote (in Hebrew) during the Eichmann trial, and which ended with a chapter entitled “Can it happen here?” I am returning to them these days, as I write my memoirs.

"This week, a new bill was tabled. It would prohibit non-citizens from acting as tourist guides in East Jerusalem... The bill is intended to deprive Arab Jerusalemites of the right to serve as tourist guides at their holy places in their city, since they are apt to deviate from the official propaganda line."

Fascism – no longer a taboo

I don’t know if the Berlin exhibition tries to answer these questions. Perhaps not. Even now, 77 years later, there is no final answer to the question: why did the German republic collapse?

This is an all-important question, because now people in Israel are asking, with growing concern: is the Israeli republic collapsing?

For the first time, this question is being asked in all seriousness. Throughout the years, we were careful not to mention the word fascism in public discourse. It raises memories which are too monstrous. Now this taboo has been broken.

Yitzhak Herzog, the minister of welfare in the Netanyahu government, a member of the Labour party, the grandson of a chief rabbi and the son of a president, said a few days ago that “fascism is touching the margins of our society”. He was wrong: fascism is not only touching the margins, it is touching the government in which he is serving, and the Knesset, of which he is a member.

Not a day – quite literally – passes without a group of Knesset members tabling a new racist bill. The country is still divided by the amendment to the law of citizenship, which will compel applicants to swear allegiance to “Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”. Now the ministers are discussing whether this will be demanded only of non-Jews (which doesn’t sound nice) or of Jews, too – as if this would change the racist content one bit.

This week, a new bill was tabled. It would prohibit non-citizens from acting as tourist guides in East Jerusalem. Non-citizens in this case means Arabs. Because, when East Jerusalem was annexed by force to Israel after the 1967 war, its Arab inhabitants were not granted citizenship. They were accorded only the status of “permanent residents”, as if they were recent newcomers and not scions of families that have lived in the city for centuries.

The bill is intended to deprive Arab Jerusalemites of the right to serve as tourist guides at their holy places in their city, since they are apt to deviate from the official propaganda line. Shocking? Incredible? Not in the eyes of the proponents, who include members of the Kadima Party. A Knesset member of the Meretz party also signed, but retracted, claiming that he was confused.

This proposal comes after dozens of bills of this kind have been tabled recently, and before dozens of others which are already on their way. The Knesset members act like sharks in a feeding frenzy. There is a wild competition between them to see who can devise the most racist bill.

It pays. After each such bill, the initiators are invited to TV studios to “explain” their purpose. Their pictures appear in the papers. For obscure MKs, whose names we have never heard of, that poses an irresistible temptation. The media are collaborating.

"The Knesset members act like sharks in a feeding frenzy. There is a wild competition between them to see who can devise the most racist bill."

Israel’s place in the international club of fascists

This is not a uniquely Israeli phenomenon. All over Europe and America, overt fascists are raising their heads. The purveyors of hate, who until now have been spreading their poison at the margins of the political system, are now arriving at the centre.

In almost every country there are demagogues who build their careers on incitement against the weak and helpless, who advocate the expulsion of “foreigners” and the persecution of minorities. In the past they were easy to dismiss, as was Hitler at the beginning of his career. Now they must be taken seriously.

Only a few years ago, the world was shocked when Jörg Haider’s party was allowed Into the Austrian government coalition. Haider praised Hitler’s achievements. The Israeli government furiously recalled its ambassador to Vienna. Now the new Dutch government is dependent on the support of a declared racist, and fascist parties achieve impressive election gains in many countries. The “Tea Party” movement, which is blooming in the US, has some clearly fascist aspects. One of its candidates likes to go around wearing the uniform of the murderous Nazi Waffen-SS.

So we are in good company. We are no worse than the others. If they can do it, why not us?

But there is a big difference: Israel is not in the same situation as Holland or Sweden...

The German republic carried the name of Weimar, the town where the constituent assembly adopted its constitution after World War I. The Weimar of Bach and Goethe was one of the cradles of German culture.

It was a shiningly democratic constitution. Under its wings, Germany saw an unprecedented intellectual and artistic bloom. So why did the republic collapse?

Generally, two causes are identified: humiliation and unemployment. When the republic was still in its infancy, it was forced to sign the Versailles peace treaty with the victors of World War I, a treaty that was but a humiliating act of surrender. When the republic fell behind with the payment of the huge indemnities levied on it, the French army invaded the industrial heartland of Germany in 1923, precipitating a galloping inflation – a trauma Germany has not recovered from to this day.

When the world economic crisis broke out in 1929, the German economy broke down. Millions of despairing unemployed sank into abject poverty and cried out for salvation. Hitler promised to wipe out both the humiliation of defeat and the unemployment, and fulfilled both promises: he gave work to the unemployed in the new arms industry and in public works, like the new autobahns, in preparation for war.

And there was a third reason for the collapse of the republic: the growing apathy of the democratic public. The political system of the republic just became loathsome. While the people were sinking into misery, the politicians went on playing their games. The public was longing for a strong leader, to impose order. The Nazis did not overthrow the republic. The republic imploded, the Nazis only filled the void.

In Israel there is no economic crisis. On the contrary, the economy is flourishing. Israel did not sign any humiliating agreement, like the Treaty of Versailles. On the contrary, it won all its wars. True, our fascists speak about the “Oslo criminals”, much as Hitler ranted against the “November criminals”, but the Oslo agreement was the opposite of the Versailles treaty, which was signed in November 1919.

If so, what does the profound crisis of Israeli society stem from? What causes millions of citizens to regard with complete apathy the doings of their leaders, contenting themselves with shaking their heads in front of the TV set? What causes them to ignore what’s happening in the occupied territories, half an hour’s drive from their home? Why do so many declare that they do not listen to the news or read newspapers anymore? What is the origin of the depression and despair, which leave open the road to fascism?

"... the genetic code of the Zionist movement is pushing towards the annexation of the whole of the historical country up to the Jordan River, and – directly or indirectly – the transfer of the Arab population."

The state has arrived at a crossroads: peace or eternal war. Peace means the foundation of a Palestinian state and the evacuation of the settlements. But the genetic code of the Zionist movement is pushing towards the annexation of the whole of the historical country up to the Jordan River, and – directly or indirectly – the transfer of the Arab population. The majority of the people is evading a decision by claiming that “we have no partner for peace” anyhow. We are condemned to eternal war.

Democracy is suffering from a growing paralysis, because the different sectors of the people live in different worlds. The secular, the national-religious and the Orthodox receive totally different educations. Common ground between them is shrinking. Other rifts are gaping between the old Ashkenazi community, the Oriental Jews, the immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, and the Arab citizens, whose separation from the rest is increasing all the time.

For the second time in my life, I may have to witness the collapse of a republic. But that is not predestined. Israel is not the goose-stepping Germany of those days, 2010 is not 1933. The Israeli society can yet sober up in time and mobilize the democratic forces within itself.

But for that to happen, it must awake from the coma, understand what is happening and where it is leading to, protest and struggle by all available means (as long as that is still possible), in order to arrest the fascist wave that is threatening to engulf us.

Israel shedding allies as government goes ‘from bad to worse’

Dit jaar is Israël toegelaten (waarom?) tot de Organisatie voor Economische Samenwerking en Ontwikkeling (OESO, in het Engels OECD). Deze week is er een bijeenkomst over toerisme in Jeruzalem. Nadat o.a. Turkije, Spanje en Groot-Brittannië hebben afgezegd roept de Arabische Liga op tot een boycot van de bijeenkomst. Minder dan de helft van de 33 leden komen opdagen. In de Nederlandse pers wordt de bijeenkomst doodgezwegen.

Eerder deze week moest de Israëlische minister van Toerisme Stas Misezhnikov (lid van Lieberman's ultrarechtse Yisrael Beitenu partij) onder druk van de OESO zijn opmerkingen inslikken over dat de bijeenkomst in wezen een bewijs was van de erkenning van Jeruzalem als "ondeelbare hoofdstad" van Israël.

Israel shedding allies as government goes ‘from bad to worse’

The Globe and Mail | By Patrick Martin | Oct. 18, 2010

The list of Israel’s friends is quickly becoming a lot shorter than that of its former friends. To the second category can be added a number of OECD member countries and officials, a leading British film director and the King of Morocco –who have all in the past few days cited increasing unease with Israel’s policies toward Palestinians.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has always been, like his father King Hassan XII, a quiet friend of Israel and the Jewish people. Just last month he reportedly donated millions of dollars to refurbish Jewish cemeteries in Morocco.

The King and his father felt a particular kinship with Israeli President Shimon Peres. So as Morocco prepared to host next week a session of the World Economic Forum, at which Mr. Peres was to be a participant, it was natural to invite the Israeli to the palace for a visit.

That, according to members of Mr. Peres’s staff, was the way things stood until the government of Benjamin Netanyahu ended the freeze on Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank at the end of last month. Then last week, the government announced tenders for more than 200 housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

On Saturday night, Mr. Peres received the word: He was not welcome at the Moroccan palace at this time.

“It is reasonable to think that the President is furious, and rightly so,” wrote Shalom Yerushalmi in Monday’s Maariv newspaper. “Last Monday, Peres criticized Netanyahu, saying ‘Now is the time for leadership that will take historic decisions,’” Mr. Yershalmi recalled, adding that, “until a short while ago, Peres believed in Netanyahu – not any more.”

From L-R, Estonia's Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, Chile's Finance Minister Felipe Larrain, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Slovenia's Prime Minister Borut Pahor and Secretary General of Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Angel Gurria join hands during the OECD Forum and Ministerial Council to Focus on Innovation, Growth in Paris May 27, 2010.

Word of that international setback had barely emerged Monday when news came that celebrated British director Mike Leigh had cancelled plans for his week-long visit to Israel next month owing to Israeli government policies. The director of Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake had agreed to deliver a master workshop to Israeli film students and to meet with film people in several centres.

In a letter to his Israeli host, Renen Schorr, director of the Sam Spiegel Film and TV School, Mr. Leigh wrote that he had almost cancelled his plans after the flotilla incident in May, when Israeli commandos boarded a ship bound for Gaza and several people were killed.

“Since then, your government has gone from bad to worse,” he told Mr. Schorr. He cited “the resumption of the illegal building on the West Bank,” and the matter of an oath of loyalty to the “Jewish state” the government proposes to administer to all non-Jews who seek to become Israeli citizens (primarily directed at people who marry Arab Israelis).

“This is the last straw,” Mr. Schorr said.

Meanwhile, OECD officials are arriving in Jerusalem for a conference on tourism that almost was cancelled as well.

Less than half of the OECD’s 33 member countries are sending delegates, and some of those missing are believed to have been uncomfortable with staging a conference here at this politically charged time.

They and several OECD officials became particularly alarmed when Israel’s Minister of Tourism, Stas Misezhnikov, a member of Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party, announced that holding the conference in Jerusalem was “a seal of approval on the fact that we have a state whose recognized capital is Jerusalem.”

The declaration was said to have upset OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria, who only a few months ago had presided over the acceptance of Israel’s membership in the club of developed nations. None of those states has accepted Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem, much of which was occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.

“By hosting the OECD conference in Jerusalem, Israel seeks de facto recognition of its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem,” said Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator in peace talks with Israel. He added Monday that it “creates the perception that the OECD is complicit with Israel’s provocative and unlawful actions in this occupied city.”

It is reported that in exchange for allowing the conference to go ahead in Jerusalem, the Israeli government pledged it would maintain a low political profile at all events related to the OECD meeting. Planned excursions for delegates to sites such as the Dome of the Rock and Western Wall were cancelled, since they are located in the occupied sector of the city.

Voortgang judaïsering Oost-Jeruzalem

De Qarsh familie woont sinds 1939 in hun gehuurde huis in de wijk Al-Sa'adiya van het bezette Oost-Jeruzalem. Zij werden op straat gezet na een juridische strijd met kolonisten die claimen het huis ooit gekocht te hebben van de Palestijnse verhuurder die in de jaren '60 naar de VS emigreerde. Dezelfde groep kolonisten verloren eerder een rechtzaak over de claim op een ander Palestijns huis.

East Jerusalem: Settlers Take Over Another House

Palestine Monitor | 14 August 2010

All but one of the nine Qresh families living in the large building in the Sa’adiye neighborhood near Herod’s gate had been attending a wedding when over 30 young settlers arrived to seize the house. At the time of arrival, the settler group was accompanied by police who prevented the families from re-entering their home. Mickey Rosenfield, the Israeli National Police spokesman, told Ma’an News that the settlers had presented “documents claiming that they owned the property”.

The decision being made in court does not relate to Ownership rights but to tenants rights. The building has been home to 49 members of the Qresh Family since 1936 and was in the ownership of Kamal Handal, an American Palestinian who now resides in the United States. According to the settlers however, the house was sold to Ateret Kohanim, the Settler organization behind the takeover, in 1987.

According to Hagit Efran of Settlement Watch the residents claim that they have been consistently paying rent to the settlers since the building was bought and that they have protected tenants’ rights, preventing their unwarranted eviction. They have been pursuing their case before the Israeli courts over the years: in both 2000 and 2008 they successfully challenged eviction orders.

"If they bought the house, that’s fine. Congratulations. But I have rights here. They can make me pay them rent but they cannot force me out," AFP has quoted resident Majid Qarsh as saying.




Settlers clash with Jerusalemite family, settler runs over youth

Palestinian Information Center | October 4, 2010

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israeli settlers attacked Al-Qarsh family in Al-Sa'diya neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem on Sunday night and tried to remove their furniture from their house. The settlers claim they own the house which they or their ancestors have never lived in before.

The Israeli police intervened to protect the settlers and prevented human rights activists and journalists from B'Tselem organization from entering the house to document the settlers' violations against the family.

A Judaization campaign is taking place throughout the neighborhoods and towns of Jerusalem in which Palestinian citizens are rendered homeless after their homes are demolished or seized by Israeli settlers.

In another incident, an Israeli settler deliberately ran over a Palestinian young man called Samir Abu Marih on Sunday evening in Beit Ummar, north of Al-Khalil city. The young man sustained injuries all over his body and was taken to hospital, eyewitnesses said.

Een Israëlische soldaat zorgt dat het verwijderen van de inboedel van de Palestijnse familie Qarsh door joodse kolonisten ordelijk verloopt, 10 oktober 2010.

Justitie doet inval bij kraanverhuurder Riwal

Na vier jaar grijpt de overheid eindelijk in. Dat lijkt me wel lang genoeg voor Riwal om het e.e.a. in de papierversnipperaar te laten verdwijnen.

Justitie heeft vanmorgen een inval gedaan bij kraanverhuurbedrijf Riwal in Dordrecht. Zo'n 40 rechercheurs in burger kwamen om acht uur op meerdere plaatsen het hoofdkantoor aan de Maxwellstraat binnen. Het personeel werd naar de bedrijfskantine gestuurd en alle kantoren werden uitgekamd.

Een woordvoerder van het Landelijk Parket heeft de inval bevestigd. Het onderzoek van justitie heeft te maken met een onderzoek naar de betrokkenheid van Riwal bij de bouw van illegale scheidingsmuren op de door Israel bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever. Justitie heeft twee aangiften binnengekregen over het Dordtse bedrijf.

Televisiebeelden van Riwal aan het werk

Eerder in opspraak
In 2006 en 2007 kwam het Dordtse bedrijf om dezelfde reden ook al opspraak, nadat in een TV-programma te zien dat kranen van Riwal meebouwden aan zo'n muur. Israël zegt die muren te bouwen om zich te beschermen tegen invallen van Palestijnse terroristen. Het Internationaal Gerechtshof sprak in 2004 echter uit, dat die bouwsels illegaal zijn.

In het midden Doron Livnat, bestuurslid van de zionistische lobbygroep CIDI, voor de wagens van zijn bedrijf, dat de segregatiemuur in Israël helpt bouwen. Volgens Ronny Naftaniël van het CIDI betreft dit een "privézaak" van het bestuurslid.

Morele oproep
Na veel ophef in de Tweede Kamer en in de media liet Riwal op 19 juni 2007 weten, dat het wel kranen had uitgeleend aan een vestiging in Israël, maar dat niet bekend was waar die voor gebruikt werden. De toenmalig ministers Bot en Verhagen deden toen een 'morele oproep' aan Riwal om daar mee te stoppen.

Sponsor
Riwal is één van 's werelds grootste verhuurders van hoogwerkers. Het bedrijf was van de familie Schalekamp, maar vader Dick en zijn zoon Jaap verkochten hun aandelen aan een Israëlier. Die runt het bedrijf samen met Dick Schalekamp jr. Riwal is sponsor van veel clubs, waaronder FC Dordrecht. (bron: RTV Rijnmond)

» Doron Livnat: "Dienstbaar voor de Zionistische zaak"

» Klaagmuur 2.0 made in Holland (uitgebreide achtergrondinformatie Riwal)

Israëlische ngo klaagt aan dat politie rechten van Palestijnen schendt in Jeruzalem

(Belga) De Palestijnse inwoners van Oost-Jeruzalem, de overwegend Arabische sector van de heilige stad, worden gediscrimineerd door de Israëlische politie. Dat zegt een Israëlische mensenrechtenorganisatie.

In een rapport, dat zondag gepubliceerd werd, zegt de Israëlische mensenrechtenorganisatie ACRI ("Association for Civil Rights in Israel") dat "confrontaties tussen Joodse kolonisten en Palestijnen dagelijkse kost zijn zonder dat de Israëlische politie de Palestijnse burgers beschermt". Volgens die ngo worden de rechten van de Palestijen in de oostelijke sector van Jeruzalem, die geannexeerd werd in juni 1967, "met voeten getreden" door de Israëlische ordediensten. Het rapport is beschikbaar op de website www.acri.org.il. Er staat onder meer in te lezen dat "de Palestijnen die klacht indienen tegen de Joodse nederzettingen als verdachte worden beschouwd of opgepakt worden, terwijl onderzoeken naar geweld door Joden bij gebrek aan bewijzen worden afgesloten". Ook zegt de ACRI dat de politie Palestijnse minderjarigen, "soms niet ouder dan 12 jaar", hardhandig ondervraagt, in het midden van de nacht. Verder zouden bewakingscamera's op de binnenkant van privé-woningen in de Arabische wijken van Oost-Jeruzalem gericht zijn. De woordvoerder van de Israëlische politie, Micky Rosenfeld, ontkent de beschuldigingen "ten stelligste". (bron)

» Life in Occupied East Jerusalem - by Stephen Lendman

Palestinian house ocuupied by Israeli settlers in Sheikh Jarrah January 19, 2010. The Gawi house was taken over 5 months ago and the family, led by Nasser Gawi has lived in a tent on the street since. The Al-Kurds family, where the front half of the house was taken in December, still lives in the back of the house.
» Sheikh Jarrah court case delayed until April: Settler Harassment Continues

A Palestinian woman (C), whose house has been occupied by Israeli settlers, carries her child and holds her national flag as a Jewish family of settlers steps out from the disputed house on August 2, 2010 in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah during a protest to mark one year since the Palestinian family was evicted from the house.

Israeli Jews and Arabs demonstrate in Tel Aviv on August 6, 2010 marking the one year anniversary of the eviction of Palestinian families from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The protesters will demand the reinstatement of the evicted families and call for an end to the racist policy of 'judaization' of East Jerusalem.

Formalizing Israel’s Land Grab

Truthdig | by Chris Hedges | August 16, 2010

Time is running out for Israel. And the Israeli government knows it. The Jewish Diaspora, especially the young, has a waning emotional and ideological investment in Israel. The demographic boom means that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories will soon outnumber Jews. And Israel’s increasing status as a pariah nation means that informal and eventually formal state sanctions against the country are probably inevitable.

Desperate Israeli politicians, watching opposition to their apartheid state mount, have proposed a perverted form of what they term “the one-state solution.” It is the latest tool to thwart a Palestinian state and allow Israel to retain its huge settlement complexes and land seizures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The idea of a single state was backed by Moshe Arens, a former defense minister and foreign minister from the Likud Party, in a column he wrote last month in the newspaper Haaretz asking “Is There Another Option?” Arens has been joined by several other Israeli politicians including Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin.

The Israeli vision, however, does not include a state with equal rights for Jewish and Palestinians citizens. The call for a single state appears to include pushing Gaza into the unwilling arms of Egypt and incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Israel. Palestinians within Israeli-controlled territory, however, will remain burdened with crippling travel, work and security restrictions already in place. Palestinians in the occupied territories, for example, cannot reclaim lost property or acquire Israeli citizenship, yet watch as Jews born outside of Israel and with no prior tie to the country become Israeli citizens and receive government-subsidized housing. Palestinians in the West Bank live in a series of roughly eight squalid, ringed ghettos and are governed by military courts. Jews living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, like all full Israeli citizens, are subject to Israeli civilian law and constitutional protection. Palestinians cannot serve in the armed forces or the security services, while Jewish settlers are issued automatic weapons and protected by the Israel Defense Force.

If Israel sheds Gaza, which has 1.5 million Palestinians, the Jewish state will be left with 5.8 million Jews and 3.8 million Arabs. And, at least in the near future, Jews will remain the majority. This seems to be the main attraction of the plan.

The landscape of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, known as “facts on the ground,” has altered dramatically since I first went to Jerusalem over two decades ago. Huge fortress-like apartment complexes ring East Jerusalem and dominate the hillsides in the West Bank. The settler population is now more than 462,000, with 271,400 living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and 191,000 living in and around Jerusalem. The settler population has grown at the rate of 4.6 percent per year since 1990 while the Israeli society taken as a whole has grown at 1.5 percent.

The net effect of the Israeli seizure of land in East Jerusalem, which includes recent approval for an additional 9,000 housing units, and the West Bank is to promulgate a form of administrative ethnic cleansing. Palestinian families are being pushed off land they have owned for generations and evicted from their homes by Israeli authorities. Dozens of families, tossed out of dwellings they have occupied in East Jerusalem for decades, have been forced onto the streets. Groups such as Ateret Cohanim, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish private organization that collects funds from abroad, purchases Palestinian properties and pursues legal strategies to evict families that have long resided in East Jerusalem. Israel’s judicial system and police, in violation of international law, facilitate and enforce these evictions and land seizures.

Heavily armed settlers carry out frequent unprovoked attacks and ad hoc raids and house evictions to supplement the terror imposed by the police and military. They are the civilian arm of the occupation.

“This acquiescence in settler violence is particularly objectionable from the perspective of international humanitarian law because the settlers are already unlawfully present in occupied territory, making it perverse to victimize those who should be protected—the Palestinians—and offer protection to those who are lawbreakers—the settlers,” said Richard Falk when we spoke a few days ago. Falk is the U.N. special rapporteur who was denied entry into the occupied territories by the Israeli government.

Falk said that incorporating Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank into a single Israeli state would see Israel impose gradations of citizenship.

“If the Palestinians in pre-’67 Israel enjoy second-class citizenship, those in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will be given a third-class citizenship,” Falk said. “The real proposal, the envisioned outcome of this kind of proposal, is an extension of Israeli control over the occupied territory as a permanent reality. It is presently a de facto annexation. The creation of a single state would give the arrangement a more legalistic cover. It would seek to resolve the issue of occupied territory without the bother of international negotiations.”
“The effect is to fragment the Palestinian people in such defining ways as to make it almost impossible to envision the emergence of a viable Palestinian sovereign state,” said Falk. “The longer it continues, the more difficult it is to overcome, and the more serious are the abridgement of fundamental Palestinian rights.”

Falk, who taught international law at Princeton University, will issue a report to the United Nations this fall in which he will assert that the Israeli process of colonialism and apartheid has accelerated over the past three years. He will call in the report for the U.N. to consider unilaterally declaring Palestine an independent state, as it did with Kosovo. Falk cites as examples of Israeli colonialism the official 121 Jewish settlements, as well as roughly 100 “illegal outposts” in the West Bank, and the extensive network of roads reserved exclusively for Jews that connects the settlements to one another and to Israel behind the green line. He estimates, when “all restrictions on Palestinian control and development are taken into account,” that Israel has effectively seized 38 to 40 percent of the West Bank.

The punishing conditions imposed by the Israeli blockade of the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza have been replicated for the roughly 40,000 Palestinians who live in “Area C,” the 60 percent of the West Bank that remains under complete Israeli military control. Save the Children, UK (STCUK), in a recent report called “Life on the Edge” argues that Israeli policies of land confiscation, expanding settlements, lack of basic services such as food, water, shelter and medical clinics are at “a crisis point.” The report concludes that food security problems are even worse than in Gaza. According to the report, “ ... Seventy-nine percent of communities surveyed recently don’t have enough nutritious food; this is higher than in blockaded Gaza where the rate is 61 percent.” Palestinian children growing up in Area C experience, according to the report, malnutrition and stunted growth at double the level of children in Gaza. Forty-four percent of these children were found to suffer from diarrhea, often with lethal effects. STCUK writes that “Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian access to and development of agricultural land—in an area where almost all families are herders—mean that thousands of children are going hungry and are vulnerable to killer illnesses like diarrhea and pneumonia.”

“Children are being forced to cross settlement areas and risk beatings and harassment by settlers, or walk for hours, just to get to school ... many children are losing hope in the future,” Jihad al-Shommali of the Defense for Children International Palestine Section was recently quoted as saying with reference to the problems of children in Area C.

Falk said, “This overall pattern suggests systematic violations by Israel of Article 55 of Geneva IV and Article 69 of the First Geneva Protocol of 1977 that delimits Israel’s obligations to ensure adequate provision of the basic needs of people living under its occupation, especially in Area C where it exercises undivided control.”

The annexation of Palestinian territory has been reinforced by the construction of 85 percent of the separation wall—256 of a planned 435 miles has been completed—on occupied Palestinian territory. The barrier cuts the West Bank off from Israel and has been built in a configuration which plunges deep into the West Bank. The settlements and the land to the west of the wall, which makes up 9.4 percent of the West Bank, have already been absorbed into Israel. The seizure of nearly 40 percent of the West Bank includes Israeli control of most of the Palestinians’ water supply. The Jewish settlers in the West Bank are allotted per capita four to five times the amount of water allotted to Palestinians by the Israeli government.

The settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank violate Article 49(6) of Geneva IV, which prohibits the transfer of the population of an occupying power to the territory temporarily occupied. Israel’s stubborn rejection of the demand of Security Council Resolution 242 that it withdraw from Palestinian territories it occupied in 1967 creates, as Falk said, “a background that resembles, and in some dimensions exceeds, in important respects the situation confronting the government of Kosovo.”

“Lengthy negotiations have not resolved the issue of the status of Palestine, nor do they give any reasonable prospect that any resolution by negotiation or unilateral withdrawal will soon occur,” he said. “Under these circumstances, it would seem that one option available to the Palestine Liberation Organization [the Oslo Agreement empowered the PLO to negotiate international status issues] acting on its own or by way of the Palestinian Authority under international law would be to issue a unilateral declaration of status, seeking independence, diplomatic recognition and membership in the United Nations. The recent Kosovo advisory opinion of the World Court in The Hague provides a well-reasoned legal precedent for such an option.”

The invisible Israelis - Something is missing in the PLO report

The Palestinian Monitoring Group at the Negotiations Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization is continuing on a daily basis to report the events of the previous day. The report is concise and tends to be repetitive, with some omissions that are understandable and others that are not. (For example, they do not keep track of Israeli bureaucratic harassment, perhaps because they lack the manpower to keep an eye on all these events ). The report provides boring but necessary statistics that remind us where we are living.

Israeli activists are detained by Israeli border police during a protest near a disputed house in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Friday, May 14, 2010. According to Israeli police 30 left-wing Israeli activists were detained Friday during a protest.

In the past week, a daily average of 174 occupation-related incidents were reported in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem ) and the Gaza Strip. What brought the average down was Saturday, which had a mere 138 events, mainly because there were no "wall construction events," which are counted on other days (at present at 19 sites ). This daily item also does not appear in the summary for May. That is perhaps one of the reasons why the daily average in May is much lower than what is mentioned in the daily reports.

Six Palestinians were killed during May - four armed men and a 65-year-old civilian by fire from the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip, while in the West Bank, settlers apparently shot and killed a 16-year-old youth who apparently threw stones. Outside this count, there was also a year-and-a-half old toddler from the village of Beit Ummar who choked to death after inhaling tear gas and a woman from the same village who was killed by an Israeli car.

A total of 70 people were injured, including 10 children and nine armed Palestinians in Gaza, both by the IDF and settlers. During the month of May, 289 Palestinians were arrested (two in Gaza ) and the largest number in the Jerusalem district - 66. Among these were 35 minors and 16 Palestinian security officers.

During the past few months, another sub-chapter has been added to the daily report - "Provocation" of the Palestinian security forces by the Israeli army. There were 22 such events in May, a rise of 83.3 percent over the previous month. What is considered provocation? For example, there were eight cases in which Israeli troops presented Palestinian security forces with a summons to the Shin Bet security forces - including a general intelligence officer from Jerusalem and three officers of the national security force who returned from training in Jordan via the Allenby Bridge. There were also three instances in which an Israeli unit was stationed right next to positions held by the Palestinian police or preventive security forces. The statistics also note 11 cases where Palestinian security officers were stopped and their vehicles searched, including three buses carrying 150 officers from the national security force at the Hamra roadblock in the Jordan Valley.

Indirect statement

The choice of the term "provocation" in connection with the Palestinian security forces is interesting. Unintentionally, this term gives legitimacy to the army's others actions - raids, shooting and arrests. This term exposes, clearly without meaning to do so, the philosophy of coordination between the security forces, a philosophy that is distorted by the IDF and the Shin Bet when they treat Palestinians in uniform as they do any other person, that is, as part of an occupied people.

The IDF carried out 669 raids in civilian residential areas during May, 25 of these in the Gaza Strip. On June 19, a week ago Saturday, for example, there were 18 raids. They included one in the village of Azoun and another in the village of Iraq Bourin. In Iraq Bourin the residents were demonstrating against the expropriation of their lands when the army raided the village and declared it a closed military area. Clashes broke out with the residents. The army used tear gas and started shooting rubber-coated bullets. A wheat field went up in flames when tear gas grenades fell there. In a similar demonstration three months earlier, two youths were killed by live fire.

Of 35 raids on June 23, one took place in Gaza. A large force of armored vehicles and a bulldozer entered an agricultural area east of the large village of Abasan El Khabira. While the bulldozer was digging up the earth, intensive fire was directed toward the houses. The daily report takes pains to note that at 2:55 P.M. and at 7:30 P.M., fire was opened from Abasan in the direction of an Israeli patrol on the Green Line, and that the IDF returned fire.

The Palestinian group noted 82 incidents of settlers' violence during May. This is a 4.7 percent drop as compared with April but a 39 percent rise compared with March.

Mainly on Fridays, there is another clause in the report - "Demonstrations." On June 18, at 1:30 P.M. in Bil'in, at 1.40 P.M. at Na'alin, at 2 P.M. at the court checkpoint, at 2:10 P.M. at Nabi Salah. The court checkpoint in East Ramallah (on the way to the settlement of Beit El ) has for a decade blocked direct access to Ramallah from 19 villages.

The group's reports speak of "international peace activists" who participated in demonstrations and were also detained by the army. Spokesmen for the popular struggle committees reported that three activists were detained on the same day in Bil'in, a British woman and two Israeli women.

No coincidence

The omission of the Israeli presence in the demonstrations is systematic and not coincidental. Even in the weekly regular demonstration at Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, according to the daily report, there is massive participation by "international peace activists." But we know that the demonstration's organizers, most of the participants and most of those arrested are Israelis. True, there are Palestinians who oppose any joint activity with Israelis against the occupation and who consider it part of the "normalization" (befriending the occupier, accepting the occupation as a normal situation ) that they reject (therefore they are cross with the Popular Struggle Committees, which consider Israelis active against the occupation as partners to all intents and purposes ).

It seems their influence has permeated the PLO's Negotiations Department as well, which is one of the strongholds for meetings with Israelis, even of the type that perpetuates the occupation. Perhaps in the political department they are afraid that mentioning the regular activity of the Israelis who oppose the occupation will cast suspicion on them as promoting "normalization" with the occupation.

Haaretz | By Amira Hass | 28.06.10

An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man gestures as he stands outside the house of the Palestinian Kurd family who were evicted by Israeli settlers in east Jerusalem's Arab quarter of Sheikh Jarrah on April 17, 2010.

Palestinians, foreign and Israeli activists hold banners during a demonstration in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Friday, April 2, 2010.

An Israeli activist is detained by Israeli border police during a protest near a disputed house in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Friday, May 14, 2010.

A Palestinian woman whose house has been occupied by Jewish settlers argue with Israelis who came to celebrate Jerusalem Day on May 12, 2010 in front of her disputed house in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

An Israeli soldier smokes a cigarette as he stands guard next Israeli settlers gesturing opposite Palestinians (not seen) camping outside their homes from which they have been expelled in the Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah quarter on April 10, 2010.

Palestinians and left wing Israelis demonstrate during a rally against the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in favor of Jewish settlers who claim ownership, in the east Jerusalem neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah, Saturday, March 6, 2010.

Witnesses: Jerusalem man shot point blank by Israeli forces

De ogen zijn (een beetje) gericht op de Israëlische aanval op het Free Gaza hulpkonvooi, maar de dagelijkse terreur gaat gewoon door.

Jerusalem - Ma'an - A report conducted by a Jerusalem rights center following the shooting death of a Palestinian man in East Jerusalem on Friday by Israeli border guards suggests he was shot point blank.

Ziad Al-Julani, 38, was shot and killed after he reportedly failed to stop at a checkpoint in the Wadi Joz neighborhood in the occupied part of the city.

According to testimony compiled by the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights, an initial shot knocked Al-Julani to the floor, after which Israeli Special Forces "fired shots in the face and abdomen at close range."

Witnesses said Friday he was in serious condition as he was taken to hospital, with Israeli news sites reporting that the man died en route.

Israeli media reports said the man drove toward border guards setting up in the neighborhood, crashed his pickup truck and fled on foot, at which point he was shot dead.

Relatives of East Jerusalem Palestinian resident Ziad al-Julani cry over his body as it is transported in a taxi to al-Aqsa Mosque for his funeral June 11, 2010

Sa’d Hamed As-Silwadi, from Silwan and the father of a child injured during the shoot-out, told the center he parked his car beside a butchery and saw Al-Julani driving toward the Al-Hadmi neighborhood in Wadi Joz where he was killed.

He said he saw Al-Julani get out of his vehicle when he was first shot by Israeli forces. A relative of Al-Julani tried to help him, As-Silwadi said, but was kicked by forces. As-Silwadi returned to his vehicle to find his five-year-old child with a rubber bullet wound to the neck and head, and rushed him the Maqased Hospital in the Mount of Olives.

Ahmad Qutteneh told the center he saw Al-Julani running from four members of Israel's Special Forces, approaching him and opening fire at close range. "Then I saw one of them come near him and shot him in the face and body," Qutteneh told the center.

Mahmud Othman Al-Julani, 34, his cousin, told the center that he was home when the incident happened, which is near the site of Al-Julani's death, he said. "I went out of the house to see him laid on the floor, 15 meters away from me. When I tried to help him they [Israeli forces] beat me with sticks," the center reported him as saying.

Others told the center the shooter was seen "dancing beside the body singing and cheering 'I killed an Arab, I killed an Arab'."

The Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights called on Israeli authorities to investigate the Al-Julani's death.

A spokesman for Israel's border guards did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the Jerusalem center's report on Saturday.

A Barbados national, Moira Joulani, center, mourns with her child, Yasmine, age 7, left, during the funeral of her husband Zeyad Joulani, in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Shufat, Friday, June 11, 2010.

On Friday, other testimony has the man speeding toward the hospital with an injured man in his truck. Two border guards were reportedly injured in the incident.

Following the shooting, clashes erupted in the area, with Palestinian residents angered at what they said was a day of oppression and violence enforced by Israeli soldiers.

Two women, a man, a senior citizen and a child in a nearby car were said to have been injured in the shouting that erupted after the shooting, with Israeli forces using rubber-coated bullets against the crowd. The four were transferred the Al-Maqasid Hospital for treatment.

Israeli forces sealed off the area as clashes continued.

Al-Julani was a father of four, and a tradesman living in East Jerusalem's Shu'fat neighborhood.

It is unclear why Israeli border guards set up the checkpoint in Wadi Joz, however, some observes suggest the military installation was erected ahead of potential clashes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of East Jerusalem following Friday prayers, as Israel hosts a light show in the occupied part of the city.

Special Place in Hell

Special Place in Hell / Rebranding Israel as a state headed for fascism

Haaretz | By Bradley Burston, 18.05.10

SHEIKH JARRAH, East Jerusalem - No one knows fascism better than Israelis. They are schooled, drilled in the history, the mechanics, the horrendous potential of fascist regimes. Israelis know fascism when they see it. In others.

They might well have expected when fascism began taking root here, it would arise at a time of a national leadership of galvanizing charisma and sweeping, powerfully orchestrated modes of action.

But that would have been much too obvious to deny. And it would take denial, inertia, selective memory, a sense that things – bad as they are - can go on like this indefinitely, for fascism to be able gain its foothold in a country founded in its very blood trail.

In fact, it has taken the most dysfunctional, the most rudderless government Israel has ever known, to make moderates uncomfortably aware of the countless but largely cosmetized ways in which the right in Israel and its supporters abroad have come to plant and nurture the seeds of fascism.

Wrote Boaz Okun, the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronot's legal affairs commentator and a retired Israeli judge, of Israel's ban on Noam Chomsky: "The decision to shut up Professor Chomsky is a decision to shut down freedom in the state of Israel.

"I'm not speaking of the stupidity of supplying ammunition to those who claim that Israel is fascist," Okun wrote, "rather, of our fear that we may actually be turning that way."



At the weekend, Israeli police riot troops waded into a thoroughly non-violent sit-in near the entrance to this East Jerusalem settlement zone, where Palestinian residents were expelled by Israeli court order, to allow their homes to be taken over by Jews.

What was curious here was not the neck-wrenching brutality of the Yasam riot police in their gunmetal gray uniforms, bristling with assault rifles, clubs, tear gas and helmets, arrayed against the demonstrators, most of of them Israeli Jews, some of them well past retirement age.

What was surprising was not the fact that several burly officers, seeing a young Reshet Bet (Israel State Radio news) reporter - his microphone clearly and unmistakably marked, interview one of the seated demonstrators - jump him and drag him away in a headlock to a police custody van.

In the end, what was peculiar was that the police seemed so entirely bewildered, so completely lacking in clear orders, left on their own to decide how to proceed in an arena of hair-trigger sensitivity. Fascism with a confused face.

Why should we be concerned by any of this? Perhaps because we have made our peace with a number of factors that can turn a society toward fascism as a solution.

1. Losing a War.

We've lost two in the space of less than three years. Our targets, Hezbollah and Hamas, are better armed and entrenched than ever. Our strategic and diplomatic standing is in decline. Iran and Syria are ascendant. And there is abundant reason to suspect that the Gaza War, a major factor in the loss of our international standing, may have been altogether avoidable, the huge civilian death toll indefensible and unconscionable. This has, in turn, led to

2. International quarantine, a sense of being scapegoated, and a search for an internal fifth column.

3. A radical redefinition of positive values.

Look no further than the name of Jerusalem's obscene Museum of Tolerance project.

4. Olfactory fatigue

We have grown desensitized to the consequences of actively denying basic staples and construction supplies to 1.5 million people in Gaza, many of them still waiting to rebuild homes we destroyed.

We have grown inured to the appropriation of Palestinian-owned West Bank land, to abusive treatment of law-abiding Palestinians at checkpoints, to the ill-treatment and summary expulsion of foreign workers, to racist, anti-democratic and, yes, fascistic rulings by extreme rightist rabbis, especially some of those holding official positions in the West Bank.

5. Fascism by rubber stamp.

"There are a million reasons why someone would be denied entry into Israel,” Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said Monday, when asked about the ministry’s border policies in the wake of the Chomsky ban.

“There may be a million reasons, but try to find a single criterion for entry refusal and you’ll hit a blank wall,” said Association for Civil Rights in Israel attorney Oded Feller. "The Interior Ministry simply doesn’t publish them, despite a court ruling that ordered them to do so.”

6. The sense that despite everything, all is well.

There will be those who argue that the fact that I, or my Haaretz colleagues, are allowed to publish what we do, is proof that there is no fascism here, nor evidence of a police state.

The fact is that were we not Israeli Jews, and part of an establishment institution, any of us could find ourselves tossed out on the same pavement, and with the same lack of due process and due explanation, as Noam Chomsky.

7. The sense that there is a war on now, when there isn't.

8. Selective enforcement of court rulings. Routine defiance of same, in particular by radical settlers

9. The 180-degree untruth that officials allow Israeli and Jerusalem Arabs to do what they want, while cracking down on their Jewish neighbors.

10. Equating criticism of the government with favoring the destruction of Israel.

This has become increasingly felt beyond Israel's borders. In San Francisco, the canary in the coal mine of free discourse within the Jewish community, the Jewish Federation [JCF] recently revised and tightened http://sfjcf.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/policy/ the terms under which it agrees to grant funds to organizations.

"The JCF does not fund organizations that through their mission, activities or partnerships … advocate for, or endorse, undermining the legitimacy of Israel as a secure independent, democratic Jewish state, including through participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in whole or in part."

The guidelines go on to state that "Presentations by organizations or individuals that are critical of particular Israeli government policies but are supportive of Israel’s right to exist as a secure independent Jewish democratic state" are "generally in accord with the policy statement," but "early JCRC [Jewish Community Relations Council] consultation is strongly encouraged and the programming should be presented within an overall program strategy that is consistent with JCF’s core values."

Can all this have spread this far, this fast? Because of Israel, have Bay Area Jews who do not believe in a specifically Jewish state, now forfeited their right to be part of the Jewish community? Have Jews who love Israel but are seen as too critical, or who support a boycott to make their criticisms manifest, been effectively excommunicated?

It's a free country, I guess.

Jerusalem Day

Jerusalem Day was declared a national holiday by the State of Israel on the 12th May 1968 in celebration of the "liberation" of East Jerusalem and the unification of the city in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War. The medieval Maghrabi Quarter near the Jewish Wailing Wall was demolished soon after, and its Palestinian inhabitants were evicted in order to make way for an open space for Jewish worshipers [1]. To celebrate this occasion the victorious hymn "Jerusalem of Gold" was written in glorification of the annexation of East Jerusalem and the reclaiming of the Western Wailing Wall.

An Israeli border police officer sprays colored pepper spray in the eyes of a handcuffed a Palestinian protester as Israeli security forces scuffle with Palestinians during a demonstration against the construction of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Walajeh, outside Jerusalem, Tuesday, April 27, 2010.

In 1980 the Israeli Knesset passed the Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel, confirming Jerusalem's status as the nation's "eternal and indivisible capital". UN Security Council Resolution 478 stated thereafter that the Jerusalem Law was "null and void and must be rescinded forthwith". [2].  The Resolution instructed UN member-states to withdraw their diplomatic representation from the city – refusing to confer official status on Israel's illegal act of annexation.

The UN position, however, did not deter Israel from its continued attempts to cleanse East Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants by the use of force and military orders. The so-called "City of Gold" turned into a ghettoised place with rubble from demolished Palestinian houses, razed Palestinian neighbourhoods , desecrated Muslim graveyards, and dispossessed homeless families serving as testimony to Israel's underlying aim of "purifying" the city of its indigenous Palestinian population. According to the Head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions – Jeff Halper - only 11 percent of East Jerusalem land is available for Palestinian housing as result of Israel's discriminatory policies which means that Jerusalemite Palestinians are virtually barred from 93 percent of the municipality of Jerusalem. The overall goal is to confine Palestinians to small enclaves in East Jerusalem, or to remove them from the city altogether – an action referred to by Israel as the "quiet transfer".

The policy of ethnic cleansing is further intensified by the ongoing construction of a 8- meter -high Segregation Wall complete with watch towers, electronic sensors, and military patrols. The Wall encircles East Jerusalem, rips through villages and neighbourhoods, divides families – leaving about 35,000 West Bank Palestinians enclosed between the Wall and the Green Line in a "no man's land" [3] . The International Court of Justice's ruling (9 July 2004) declared the Israeli Wall an illegal entity that had to be removed, stating that financial compensation must be paid to affected Palestinians. The ruling was endorsed by a consequent UN resolution (20 July 2004 [4]) .Yet Israel continues to press ahead with the construction of the Wall, flouting UN resolutions with impunity, leading to a situation whereby "Jerusalem is being transformed from a city into a region dominating the entire central position of the West Bank" (Jeff Halper, An Israeli in Palestine , Pluto press 2008).

The  recent expropriations in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah and elsewhere make it increasingly unlikely that East Jerusalem could ever serve as the designated capital of a Palestinian state. The Israeli police is given free hand to harass evicted families and arrest demonstrators who are committed to a non-violent, popular resistance against Israel's expansionist policy in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. [5]

In spite of the outcry from members of civil society around the world, the ultra-right government under the leadership of Netanyahu brazenly continues its relentless purge of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In a recent decision the Israeli Government declared a plan to construct 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem. The announcement was specially timed to obstruct the evident willingness of the Palestinian Authority to resume halted negotiations with Israel. It attracted a strong public condemnation by US Vice President -Joseph Biden – who referred to Israel's action as  "precisely the kind of step that undermines  … the trust we need right now in order to begin profitable negotiations."[6]

Israeli and international activists prevent a bulldozer to work during a protest against the construction of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Walajeh, outside Jerusalem, Thursday, May 6, 2010.

ISRAEL ESCALATES ITS ETHNIC CLEANSING

The Israeli Government's response to US call and the expressed concerns of human rights activists (including Israeli human rights groups) is a further escalation of its ethnic cleansing strategies. A new military order came into force in April this year which will enable the deportation of  hundreds of Palestinians from the West Bank and their indictment on charges that carry prison terms of up to seven years. The new order defines as an infiltrator "anyone who enters the West Bank illegally and does not hold a permit. [7] This order is the latest step by the Israeli government to limit Palestinian freedom of movement and residency by administering a pass and permit system reminiscent of Apartheid South Africa.

In order to stifle any criticism of the state's undemocratic actions, members of the Israeli parliament tabled a bill this May which, if it became law, would prevent any human rights organisations from being registered. It would close down existing groups if they were found to be passing information "to foreign entities" or were involved in legal proceedings abroad against war crimes of senior Israeli government officials and officers. In a joint statement, Israeli human rights groups declared that the bill would "trample democratic values." They claimed  that the bill is the "direct result of irresponsible leadership that is doing all it can to undermine democratic values and the institutions that are the backbone of a democracy: the Supreme Court, a free press and human rights organisations".[8]

RE-BRANDING ISRAEL

"Brand Israel" is the new multi- million propaganda project which aims to legitimize Israel's policies and make them acceptable to people abroad. [9] . In its effort to legitimize the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem the Zionist Federation are hosting a Jerusalem Day celebration in a Hendon synagogue where the Guest Speaker is Benny Begin- an Ultra-right member of the Israeli parliament. The website refers to Benny Begin as a minister of Netanyahu's inner cabinet who is "a vigorous defendant of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the Jewish nation and for the rights of Jewish settlement in Yisrael" (the land of Israel). Ironically Jerusalem is the very same city where a Jewish terrorist group headed by a Begin (Benny's father) planted a bomb at the King David hotel in the Western part of Jerusalem (in 1946) – destroying the hotel and killing 91 people, mainly British Mandate officials. [10]

SILENCE AND INACTION IS NOT AN OPTION

Jerusalem Day is a day of reckoning rather than of celebration. Solidarity groups across the world are committed to non-violent actions in order to remind the international community of the continued plight of the Palestinians. The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) appeals to civil society to boycott Israel, including consumer goods and produce, and state-sponsored appearance of politicians, military staff and public figures from the worlds of arts, science, and academia, along with divestment from companies which trade and profit from Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

The BDS movement is gaining momentum in the West. Trade unions, faith organisations, charities, human rights organisations, political parties,  civil and municipal bodies and major commercial companies are showing their commitment to boycott and divest from Israel. However, it has to be said that in order to achieve its ultimate aims the BDS movement has to expand across the globe and win active support from Arab and Muslim nations who should use their potential impact in terms of oil production and distribution, and trade and commerce. Arab leaders have to be approached and challenged by their own people and by pro- Palestinian groups in the same manner that Western leaders are being confronted by the BDS movement. Arab regimes , under the umbrella of the Arab League, need to play a greater role in achieving a just resolution to the Palestinian cause rather than remaining disengaged, or implicitly (and explicitly) cooperating with Israel and the US . Disengagement by Arab and Muslim leaders implies support for the status quo.

On Jerusalem Day -the ultimate symbol of the Palestinian dispossession of their home, land, livelihood and heritage – the international community ought to be reminded of the resounding words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor".

Ruth Tenne's personal appeal on Jerusalem Day was written in commemoration of a city in which she spent the early 60s as a student – being unaware of the plight of the Palestinians and remaining blind to the many expropriated Palestinian homes which were taken over by Israeli residents in the aftermath of the 1948 war. Ruth confronted her ingrained Zionist heritage in the aftermath of the 1967 "six days war" and became an active supporter of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the BDS movement and Jews for Justice for Palestinians. In this capacity she published a number of articles and book reviews on the issue of the Israeli-Palestine conflict and the BDS campaign in websites and the press such as Middle-East Online , Media Monitors Network,Palestine Chronicle, International Socialism Journal, Socialist Review, Palestine News , the Morning Star and Islamic Times.

Note: The last Friday of Ramadan was also designated ‘Jerusalem Day' by Ayatullah Khomeini. Hizbullah of Lebanon celebrate this day every year.

1. http.//www.pij.org/details.php?id=646
2. http://en.allexperts.com/e/u/un/united_nations_security_council_resolution_478.htm.
3. http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article4
4. http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/F3B95E613518A0AC85256EEB00683444
5. http://www.uruknet.info/?p=62641
6. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6271YE20100310.
7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8614908.stm
8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/29/rights-groups-israeli-bill-military
9. http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/Articles/Analysis/tabid/75/newsid395/6745/Behind-Brand-Israel-Israels-recent-propaganda-efforts/Default.aspx
10. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/kd.html