OMNI
GAZA NEWSLETTER NO. 5
BUILDING A CULTURE OF
PEACE AND JUSTICE. July 28, 2014.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett. (#1: 3-3-08; #2 Nov. 16, 2012;
#3 Nov. 17, 2013; #4 May 31, 2014).
What’s
at stake: The US propaganda system
arises from the Complex--the Corporate-Pentagon-White House-Congress-Mainstream
Media Complex. And from the public that
permits that nation to receive $4 billion a year to make it the most militarily
powerful in the Middle East. This newsletter offers an anthology of
alternative views.
My
blog: War Department/Peace Department
My
Newsletters:
Index:
See: Israeli Aggressions, Israeli-Palestinian
Newsletter
See
at end for Contents of Nos. 1-4.
Contents
Gaza Newsletter #5
End
the Occupation, NATIONAL RALLY JULY 24
Attack,
Civilian Deaths
Barnard, NYT, Civilian
Toll Climbing
Video of Bombing Victims on a Street
Amy Goodman, Gaza Hospital Bombed
Protest
August
2 March
SEVERAL
FROM TIKKUN
Intro. By Rabbi Lerner
Hass,
Gazans Killed
Israel
Provoked This War by Henry Siegman
Ponomarev,
Gaza a Living Hell and Goya’s “Third of May, 1808
Morally
Depraved Zionist Regime
Poem by
Hammad
Yoffie on
US Jews
End the Occupation
Avnery, Netanyahu’s Stupidity
Jewish Voice for Peace
Judis, Who’s Most Responsible?
Chris Hedges, Palestinian Right to Self-Defense
HAW Statement
The Nation, Impunity
Rabbani
Amy Goodman, Democracy
Now
Niemela, Myths
Omer, Two Articles on Nowhere to Run or Hide
War Resisters League, Actions and a Film
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR): No Support for
Israeli War Crimes
Action Alert: What We Can Do
Jewish Opposition to the Invasion
Gaza’s “Ark” Destroyed
THE ASSAULT
INVASION MASSACRE
Questions About Tactics and Targets as
Civilian Toll Climbs in Israeli Strikes
Anne
Barnard, The New York Times, Reader Supported
News, July 22, 2014
Barnard
writes: "The blast from the Israeli strike was so powerful that it threw
an iron door clear over several neighboring houses. It came to rest along with
a twisted laundry rack still laden on Monday with singed clothes and a
child's slipper."
READ MORE
VIDEO
OF BOMBING VICTIMS
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Can't
understand the Arabic, but the footage is clear. Unarmed civilians, women,
children, men on sidewalks.
Jewish friends I know this is painful to see. But it can't be hidden. It's
wrong, and I know you feel that too. Palestinian friends, I can't even
imagine how painful this is. Horrendous.
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NationofChange,
July 22, 2014
Latest
Attack on Gaza Medical Site, IDF Shells al-Aqsa Hospital; 5 Dead, Dozens
Hurt
Amy
Goodman, Video Report
A
hospital in Gaza was shelled by the Israeli military yesterday killing
and harming many.
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PROTEST
COALITION MARCHES ON WHITE HOUSE
Aug. 2 National March on the White House
Stop the Massacre in Gaza!
We will be carrying symbolic coffins draped in
Palestinian flags to the doorstep of the White
House, representing the large number of civilians killed by Israeli airstrikes.
Saturday, Aug. 2, 1:00pm
Gather at the White House
Washington, D.C.
Transportation is being organized from all over the country
Join thousands of people in a National March on the
White House on Saturday, August 2 at 1:00pm to condemn the Israeli massacre in
Gaza.
We have been in the streets every day in cities
around the country. What is needed now is a massive National March on
Washington.
Israel receives $4 billion in “aid” from the United
States each year. This money is being used to commit war crimes against the
Palestinian people in Gaza. We are demanding that all U.S aid to Israel be
ended now!
More than 200 people in Gaza have been killed and
more than 1,500 have been wounded from Israeli bombs and missiles. This has to
end!
Join us to demand:
• Stop
the massacre in Gaza! End the blockade of Gaza!
• End
all U.S. aid to Israel!
• End
the colonial occupation!
Co-sponsors:
- ANSWER Coalition
- American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)
- Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
- American Muslim Alliance (AMA)
- Al-Awda: Palestine Right to Return Coalition
- Muslim Legal Fund of America
- MAS Immigrant Justice Center
- Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)
- Code Pink
#2DC4Gaza #LetGazaLive #FreePalestine
#Protest4Palestine
RSVP on Facebook
Click to become an endorser
Organize transportation to the National March
Please make an urgently needed donation to help us
cover the many expenses associated with a national mass mobilization. We can do
this only with your support.
End Answer message.
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Take
Part in National Day of Action for Gaza July 24
Dear Dick,
On Sunday, 25 members of the Abu
Jame' family were killedwhen Israel bombed their four-story
building just as they were gathering for iftar, the meal that breaks
Ramadan fasting for the day. Israel has killed more
than 600 Palestinians since July 8.
 While the U.S. continues to defend and fund Israel's assault, we
must amp up our organizing to end all U.S. support for Israeli
occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.
Congress and the State Department are getting many more calls from those
supportive of Israel's assault than those opposed. CNN is reporting support in the U.S. for
Israel's operation is at 57% with 34% opposed.
 More than 35 local, regional, and national groups are calling for
a National Day of Action for
Gaza this Thursday, July 24. There have been so many demonstrations in
support of Palestinians worldwide already, and the hope
is that getting people to all do something on one day will highlight the
breadth of the movement for Palestinians rights and send a clear message
that there needs to be an end to Israel's impunity.
Whether you can get out a crowd or just a few people, please do
something!
Some
ideas:
|
Dick,
take these actions:
3. Find resources and action ideas to respond to Israel's latest
aggression.
Register for our National Organizers' Conference: The Mainstreaming of
BDS & Continuing Struggle for Palestinian Rights.
|
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It is more important than ever to strengthen
our work for Palestinian rights.
|
Follow Us:
 Facebook
 Twitter
 YouTube
 Blog
 Vimeo
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Back to Top
The US Campaign aims to change U.S. policies that sustain Israel's 47-year
occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and
that deny equal rights for all.
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PROTEST ARTICLES BY JEWISH GROUPS AND INDIVIDUALS
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SEVERAL
FROM TIKKUN
Intro.
By Rabbi Lerner
Amira Hass reports on the 1000
Palestinians killed
Israel Provoked This War by Henry Siegman
Ponomarev,
Gaza a Living Hell and Goya’s “Third of May, 1808
Morally
Depraved Zionist Regime
Poem
by Suheir Hammad
LRabbi
Yoffie on US Jews’ Response to the Invasion
Editor's
Note: Sunday morning: As of yesterday, over 1,000 fatalities
in Gaza, 928 fatalities who had been identified by name as of 10 A.M.
yesterday revealed that 764 were civilians, and they included 215
children and 118 women. Over 30 Israeli soldiers and 2 Israeli civilians have
been killed. Israel rejected a proposed cease fire and furiously critiqued
Sec. of State Kerry for proposing it without allowing Israel to continue
(during the "cease fire") to destroy Hamas tunnels, and Kerry
backed down and apologized. Please read the articles below that provide
some of the information and analyses you won't find in Western media. --Rabbi
Michael Lerner RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com
We
start with an article by Henry Siegman who was once the powerful
director of the American Jewish Congress. In those days he refused to write
for Tikkun or join our board--our insistence that Israel should negotiate
with the Palestinians was considered far too radical, and Siegman, who told
me he personally agreed with Tikkun's position, lacked the courage to
challenge the major American Jewish mainstream of which he was a part. As has
happened to so many people after they lose their positions of power, he
became more forthright in his articulation of what needed to change. I
imagine the same thing will happen with Obama after he leaves office. It's a
terrible shame that these people didn't have the courage to do so when they
had the power to make a difference. On the other hand, I understand the
risks--Tikkun was at first welcomed as the liberal voice of the Jewish world
when we began in 1986, but once we criticized Israel's response to the First
Intifada in 1988 (do you remember the Defense Minister at the time, Yitzhak
Rabin's famous order to his army about the Palestinian protesters:
"Break their bones" or do you remember the way that Shimon Peres,
when he became Prime Minister, refused to negotiate an end of the occupation
with the Palestinians?), we lost our funding from the Jewish world and have
been treated as traitors though we continue to defend Israel from those who
believe it has no right to exist!! In any event, now we celebrate that
Henry Siegman is speaking the truths that the mainstream institutions of the
Jewish world, e.g. the Union of Reform Judaism and the American Jewish
Committee and the ADL and the Jewish Federations in cities around the world
that control huge amounts of money in the local Jewish communities,
refuse to talk about or allow to be debated. And yet these institutions claim
to be "open" and reflective and ethically sensitive!!! And their
members rarely challenge their leadership to be more courageous.--Rabbi Michael
Lerner
Israel
Provoked This War It’s up to President Obama to stop it.
By
HENRY SIEGMAN
July
22, 2014
There seems to be
near-universal agreement in the United States with President Barack Obama’s
observation that Israel, like every other country, has the right and
obligation to defend its citizens from threats directed at them from beyond
its borders.
But this anodyne statement does not begin to
address the political and moral issues raised by Israel’s bombings and land
invasion of Gaza: who violated the cease-fire agreement that was in place
since November 2012 and whether Israel’s civilian population could have been
protected by nonviolent means that would not have placed Gaza’s civilian
population at risk. As of this writing, the number killed by the Israel
Defense Forces has surpassed 600, the overwhelming majority of whom are
noncombatants.
Israel’s assault on Gaza, as pointed out by analyst Nathan Thrall in theNew
York Times, was not triggered by Hamas’ rockets directed at Israel but by
Israel’s determination to bring down the Palestinian unity government that
was formed in early June, even though that government was committed to
honoring all of the conditions imposed by the international community for
recognition of its legitimacy.
The notion that it was Israel, not Hamas, that
violated a cease-fire agreement will undoubtedly offend a wide swath of
Israel supporters. To point out that it is not the first time Israel has done
so will offend them even more deeply. But it was Shmuel Zakai, a retired brigadier general and former
commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division, and not “leftist” critics, who said
about the Israel Gaza war of 2009 that during the six-month period of a truce
then in place, Israel made a central error “by failing to take advantage of
the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the
Palestinians in the [Gaza] Strip. … You cannot just land blows, leave the
Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they are in and expect Hamas
just to sit around and do nothing.”
This is true of the latest cease-fire as well.
According to Thrall, Hamas is now seeking through violence what it should
have obtained through a peaceful handover of responsibilities. “Israel is
pursuing a return to the status quo ante, when Gaza had electricity for
barely eight hours a day, water was undrinkable, sewage was dumped in the
sea, fuel shortages caused sanitation plants to shut down and waste sometimes
floated in the streets.” It is not only Hamas supporters, but many Gazans,
perhaps a majority, who believe it is worth paying a heavy price to change a
disastrous status quo.
The answer to the second question — whether a less
lethal course was not available to protect Israel’s civilian population — is
(unintentionally?) implicit in the formulation of President Barack Obama’s
defense of Israel’s actions: namely, the right and obligation of all
governments to protect their civilian populations from assaults from across
their borders.
But where, exactly, are Israel’s borders?
It is precisely Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s refusal to identify those borders that placed Israel’s population
at risk. And the reason he has refused to do that is because he did not want
the world to know that he had no intention of honoring the pledge he made
in 2009 to reach a two-state agreement with the
Palestinians. The Road Map for Middle East peace that was signed by
Israel, the PLO and the United States explicitly ruled out any unilateral
alterations in the pre-1967 armistice lines that served as a border between
the parties. This provision was consistently and blatantly violated by
successive Israeli governments with their illegal settlement project. And
Netanyahu refused to recognize that border as the starting point for
territorial negotiations in the terms of reference proposed by Secretary of
State John Kerry.
But on July 12, as noted in The Times of Israel by
its editor, David Horovitz, Netanyahu made clear that he has no
interest in a genuine two-state solution. As Horovitz puts it, “the
uncertainties were swept aside … And nobody will ever be able to claim in the
future that [Netanyahu] didn’t tell us what he really thinks. He made it
explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign
Palestinian state in the West Bank.” The IDF, Netanyahu said, would remain
permanently in the West Bank. During the Kerry-sponsored negotiations, he
rejected out of hand the American proposal that U.S. and international forces
be stationed on the Israeli-Palestinian border, which he insisted would
remain permanently under the IDF’s control. Various enclaves will comprise a
new Palestinian entity, which Palestinians will be free to call a state. But
sovereignty, the one element that defines self-determination and statehood,
will never be allowed by Israel, he said.
Why will he not allow it? Why did he undermine
Kerry’s round of peace talks? Why is he inciting against the Palestinian
unity government? Why does he continue to expand illegal settlements in the
West Bank, and why did he use the tragic kidnapping and killing of three
Israelis as a pretext to destroy what institutional political (as opposed to
military) presence of Hamas remained in the West Bank?
He’s doing all of these things because, as
suggested by Yitzhak Laor inHaaretz, he and his government
are engaged in a frenzied effort to eliminate Palestinians as a political
entity. Israel’s government is “intent on inheriting it all” by turning the
Palestinian people into “a fragmented, marginalized people,” Laor writes. It
is what the Israeli scholar Baruch Kimmerling described as “politicide” in a
book by that name he wrote in 2006.
So exactly who is putting Israel’s population at
risk? And what is Obama prepared to do about it?
I’m sure the president’s political advisers are
telling him that a congressional election year is not the time to take on the
Israel lobby. They are wrong, not only because it is always election time in
the United States, but because successive polls have established that
American Jews vote constantly and overwhelmingly Democratic for a wide
variety of domestic and international reasons, but support for Netanyahu’s
policies is not one of them.
And if the president wishes to convince Israelis
and Palestinians that Israeli-Palestinian peace is a cause worth taking risks
for, should he not be willing to take some domestic political risks as well?
Henry
Siegman is president of the U.S./Middle East Project. He served as senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and non-resident research
professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of
London, and is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress.
|
GAZA
/ A LIVING HELL WITH NO ESCAPE
Sergey
Ponomarev for N.Y Times
Relatives
of a boy killed Thursday in explosions at a UN school sheltering
Gaza residents grieving over his body at a hospital.
With a death toll of over 800 dead and climbing
daily, the photos from Gaza are like a Goya painting depicting the
desperation and frenzy of Palestinians existing in a living hell with no
apparent escape ~ surrounded by solders with their guns pointed ~ while
complicit Israeli's watch on hilltops from beyond their Iron Dome and
celebrate with their neighbors their barely concealed ethnic cleansing in
triumphal glee. They most certainly have the right to their self defense: Allen
L Roland, Ph.D
Francisco
Goya's Third of May, 1808
Goya's masterpiece Third of May,1808 fully captures the desperation
and despair of an entrapped Spanish people facing their eminent death at
the hands of their brutal French occupiers. To fully understand the
significance of Goya's classic painting of repression as well as its
similarities today, please watch this magnificent 12 minute video ~ BBC The Private Life Of A
Masterpiece - Goya's Third of May 1808 (2/4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qu1iehzdDE
And when you watch this
video, you will realize what that Spaniard is crying out to
his French executioners ~ and it's the same cry the entrapped
Palestinians are crying out to their brutal Israeli occupiers ~ WHY?
And it’s a question that
the world must soon find an answer ~ for this long festering
cancer of illegal repression and apartheid is spreading and must end soon
before it's too late.
The
recent invasion of Gaza testifies to the depraved and morally bankrupt
character of the Zionist regime in Israel. The government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu represents
an isolated and demoralized ruling class that has lost its head and has no
answer to the crisis it confronts except disorientated and homicidal
outbursts of violence and ethnic cleansing ~ which they laughingly
call 'mowing the lawn'.
Even the son of a famous Zionist general, Miko
Peled, shares that the current
preoccupation of Israel with Iran is a smokescreen to cover up apartheid
with Palestine, that the only law that applies to Palestinians is Israeli
military law and that only a bottom up American demand for human
rights and democracy can change or break the Israeli garrison
apartheid state and its AIPAC supporters. See article:http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/07/19/a-zionist-generals-son-shatters-the-myths/
This
mass slaughter against a defenseless Palestinian population serves only to
deepen the revulsion and hostility toward Zionism throughout the Middle
East, around the world and among Jewish workers in Israel itself, What will
this map look like in 2016 ~ particularly when on Friday, the US Senate voted 100-0 to support Israel's recent
invasion of occupied Gaza.
POEM BY SUHEIR MUHAMMAD
Perhaps only poetry can
adequately describe the living hell of occupied Palestine;
"Occupation, curfew, settlements,
closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike,
terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks
genocide with the words of a quiet technician.
Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open
street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust
the future or have faith that the past will always be there.
Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the
constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket
attack from an M16.
A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance
stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an
Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death.
A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths
while you watch your family dying around you.
Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in
silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in
the earth, water falling over water.
And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity,
and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror,
then you know something of the courage that is
Palestine.” ~ Suheir Hammad
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Yoffie
was president of the Union of Reform Judaism and remains one of the Reform
movement's most influential spokespeople.
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Copyright
2014 Tikkun Magazine. Tikkun is a registered trademark.
2342 Shattuck Avenue, #1200
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-644-1200
Fax 510-644-12
[end Tikkun items]
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By Uri Avnery, CounterPunch.org,
posted July 18 [from HAW]
HOMEARCHIVESSUBSCRIBEDONATEABOUT
July 25-27, 2014
Who is Winning in Gaza?
Netanyahu’s Operation Stupidity
by URI AVNERY
[Avnery is an Israeli insider. The first part of the article compares the
assault on Gaza to the Nazi Blitz of London.
--Dick]
What would history look like if it were written in the style of the
“Solid Cliff (a.k.a. Protective Edge) operation?
For example:
Winston Churchill was a scoundrel.
For five years he kept the population of London
under the unceasing fire of the German Luftwaffe. He used the inhabitants of
London as a human shield in his crazy war. While the civilian population was
exposed to the bombs and rockets, without the protection of an “iron dome”, he
was hiding in his bunker under 10 Downing Street.
He exploited all the inhabitants of London as
hostages. When the German leaders made a generous peace proposal, he rejected
it for crazy ideological reasons. Thus he condemned his people to unimaginable
suffering.
From time to time he emerged from his underground
hideout to have his picture taken in front of the ruins, and then he returned
to the safety of his rat hole. But to the people of London he said: “Future
generations will say that this was your finest hour!”
The German Luftwaffe had no alternative but to go on
bombing the city. Its commanders announced that they were hitting only military
targets, such as the homes of British soldiers, where military consultations
were taking place.
The German Luftwaffe called on the inhabitants of London
to leave the city, and many children were indeed evacuated. But most Londoners
heeded the call of Churchill to remain, thus condemning themselves to the fate
of “collateral damage”.
The hopes of the German high command that the
destruction of their homes and the killing of their families would induce the
people of London to rise up, kick out Churchill and his war-mongering gang,
came to naught.
The primitive Londoners, whose hatred of the Germans
overcame their logic, perversely followed the coward Churchill’s instructions.
Their admiration for him grew from day to day, and by the end of the war he had
become almost a god.
A statue of him stands even today in front of the
Parliament in Westminster.
Four years later the wheel had turned. The British
and American air forces bombed the German cities and destroyed them completely.
A stone did not remain on a stone, glorious palaces were flattened, cultural
treasures were obliterated. “Uninvolved civilians” were blown to smithereens,
burned to death or just disappeared. Dresden, one of the most beautiful cities
in Europe, was totally destroyed within a few hours in a “fire storm”.
The official aim was to destroy the German war
industry, but this was not achieved. The real aim was to terrorize the civilian
population, in order to induce them to remove their leaders and capitulate.
That did not happen. Indeed, the only serious revolt
against Hitler was carried out by senior army officers (and failed). The
civilian population did not rise up. On the contrary. In one of his diatribes
against the “terror pilots” Goebbels declared: “They can break our homes, but
they cannot break our spirit!”
Germany did not capitulate until the very last
moment. Millions of tons of bombs did not suffice. They only strengthened the
morale of the population and its loyalty to the Führer.
And so to Gaza.
Everyone is asking: who is winning this round?
Which must be answered, the Jewish way, with another
question: how to judge?
The classical definition of victory is: the side that
remains on the battlefield has won the battle. But here nobody has moved. Hamas
is still there. So is Israel.
Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian war theorist,
famously declared that war is but the continuation of policy by other means.
But in this war, neither side had any clear political aims. So victory cannot
be judged this way.
The intensive bombing of the Gaza Strip has not
produced a Hamas capitulation. On the other hand, the intensive rocket campaign
by Hamas, which covered most of Israel, did not succeed either. The stunning
success of the rockets to reach everywhere in Israel has been met with the
stunning success of the “Iron Dome” counter-rockets to intercept them.
So, until now, it is a standoff.
But when a tiny fighting force in a tiny territory
achieves a standoff with one of the mightiest armies in the world, it can be
considered a victory.
The lack of an Israeli political aim is the outcome
of muddled thinking. The Israeli leadership, both political and military, does
not really know how to deal with Hamas.
It may already have been forgotten that Hamas is
largely an Israeli creation. During the first years of the occupation, when any
political activity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was brutally suppressed,
the only place where Palestinians could meet and organize was the mosque.
At the time, Fatah was considered Israel’s
arch-enemy. The Israeli leadership was demonizing Yasser Arafat, the
arch-arch-terrorist. The Islamists, who hated Arafat, were considered the
lesser evil, even secret allies.
I once asked the Shin-Bet chief at the time whether
his organization had created Hamas. His answer: “We did not create them. We
tolerated them.”
This changed only one year after the start of the
first intifada, when the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was arrested. Since
then, of course, reality has been completed reversed: Fatah is now an ally of
Israel, from the security point of view, and Hamas the arch-arch-terrorist.
But is it?
Some Israeli officers say that if Hamas did not
exist, it would have to be invented. Hamas controls the Gaza strip. It can be
held responsible for what happens there. It provides law and order. It is a
reliable partner for a cease-fire.
The last Palestinian elections, held under
international monitoring, ended in a Hamas victory both in the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip. When Hamas was denied power, it took it in the Gaza strip by
force. By all reliable accounts, it enjoys the loyalty of the large majority in
the territory.
All Israeli experts agree that if the Hamas regime
in Gaza were to fall, far more extreme Islamic splinter groups would take over
and plunge the Strip, with its 1.8 million inhabitants, into complete chaos.
The military experts don’t like that.
So the war aim, if one can dignify it as such, is
not to destroy Hamas, but to leave it in power, though in a much weakened
state.
But how, for God’s sake, does one do that?
One way, demanded now by the ultra-right-wingers in
the government, is to occupy all of the Gaza Strip.
To which the military leaders again answer with a
question: And then what?
A new permanent occupation of the Strip is a
military nightmare. It would mean that Israel assumes the responsibility for
pacifying and feeding 1.8 million people (most of whom, by the way, are 1948 refugees
from Israel and their descendants). A permanent guerrilla war would ensue. No
one in Israel really wants that.
Occupy and then leave? Easily said. The occupation
itself would be a bloody operation. If the “Molten Lead” doctrine is adopted,
it would mean more than a thousand, perhaps several thousands of Palestinian
dead. This (unwritten) doctrine says that if a hundred Palestinians must be
killed in order to save the life of one Israeli soldier, so be it. But if
Israeli casualties amount to even a few dozens of dead, the mood in the country
will change completely. The army does not want to risk that.
For a moment on Tuesday it seemed as if a cease-fire
had been achieved, much to the relief of Binyamin Netanyahu and his generals.
But it was an optical illusion. The mediator was the
new Egyptian dictator, a person loathed by Islamists everywhere. He is a man
who has killed and imprisoned many hundreds of Muslim Brothers. He is an open
military ally of Israel. He is a client for American largesse. Moreover, since
Hamas arose as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, General
Abd-al-Fatah Al-Sisi hates them with all his heart, and does not hide it.
So, instead of negotiating with Hamas, he did
something exceedingly stupid: dictate a cease-fire on Israeli terms without
consulting Hamas at all. Hamas leaders learned about the proposed cease-fire
from the media and rejected it out of hand.
My own opinion is that it would be better if the
Israeli army and Hamas negotiated directly. Throughout military history,
cease-fires have been arranged by military commanders. One side sends an
officer with a white flag to the commander of the other side, and a cease-fire
is arranged – or not. (An American general famously answered such a German
offer with “Nuts!”).
In the 1948 war, on my sector of the front, a short
cease-fire was arranged by Major Yerucham Cohen and a young Egyptian officer
called Gamal Abd-al-Nasser.
Since this seems to be impossible with the present
parties, a really honest broker should be found.
In the meantime, Netanyahu was pushed by his
colleagues/rivals to send the troops into the Strip, to try at least to locate
and destroy the tunnels dug by Hamas under the border fence to stage surprise
attacks on border settlements.
What will be the end of it? There will be no end,
just round after round, unless a political solution is adopted.
This would mean: stop the rockets and the bombs, end
the Israeli blockade, allow the people of Gaza to live a normal life, further
Palestinian unity under a real unity government, conduct serious peace
negotiations, MAKE PEACE.
* The first part of this article was published
Wednesday in Ha’aretz.
URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist
with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of
Anti-Semitism.
Counterpunch
Tells the Facts and Names the Names
Published since 1996
Copyright © CounterPunch
All rights reserved.
counterpunch@count
Jewish Voice for Peace
Huge protest in Haifa against Israel's assault on
Gaza
Image via Abbas Hamideh
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You
give me hope. The millions worldwide standing with Gaza give me hope. The
values we share - the same values that are shining from Palestine - give
me hope.
|
|
We must stand up - not just against this
massacre, but for our values.
|
Turn
your hope into action.
|
Dear Dick,
It's been a wrenching week. The desperate
situation in Gaza - and throughout Israel and Palestine - is clearly
escalating even further. I know there is talk of a ceasefire proposal from
the US, but that seems, at best, an unlikely source of actual
resolution.
It all feels like we're in a situation that is both shockingly uncharted,
but also horrifyingly familiar.
The latest reports show over 815 dead in
Gaza. My Jewish-Israeli friends in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem say that a
true fascist mob mentality is settling in to Israeli society, beyond what
they've ever experienced. And in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,
tens of thousands of Palestinians marched for freedom last night - the
largest political demonstration since the 1980s.
This is when I need the JVP community the most. JVP
is rooted, of course, in values inspired by Jewish tradition. But it is
more than that. JVP is is rooted in the values we share with our
allies and partners. With the values that are shining from Palestine, even
amidst the horrific violence.
We
value equality - for all people, under all
circumstances.
We
value justice - which is more than the false choice
between Gaza being imprisoned or invaded.
We value courage - to speak out, to give voice, to shed
light.
As you've likely seen, JVP chapters and members
around the country are doing amazing work to put those values into action.
In Boston, JVP led a 2,000 person demonstration Wednesday - and
focused the attention of every major Boston news source on the rising death
toll in Gaza.
And in Washington D.C., our chapter's
collaboration with CodePink dramatically interrupted Israeli Ambassador Ron
Dermer's keynote address at the far-right CUFI Conference.
As our values have taught us, we refuse to be
silent. We refuse to allow racism and cruelty to go unchecked. We refuse to
erase those who have been killed. We refuse to watch from the sidelines. We
refuse to stop until the violence, and the occupation, end. We refuse to be
lose hope.
Grace Paley z"l, the Jewish activist and
author, once said: "the only recognizable feature of hope, is
action." I've heard her words ring loudly in my ears these past few
weeks. I am committed to doing everything I can to stop this
bloodshed once and for all. And I want you - I need you - with
me.
Click here for our form to let us know the
next actions you have planned.
Click here for our toolkit with all you
need to take to the streets.
Click
here to email for support getting something organized.
The millions around the world standing with Gaza give me hope. You give me
hope.
Sincerely,
|
Rabbi Alissa Wise
Organizing Director
|
|
Contact
Info:
Connect
with Us:
|
By John B. Judis, New
Republic, posted July 25
Carefully detailed historical background. The
author is a senior editor of The New
Republic and author of a 2014 book on the Truman administration and
the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
[from HAW]
Chris Hedges, The Palestinians' Right to
Self-Defense
Chris Hedges, Truthdig, Reader Supported News, July 26, 2014
Hedges writes: "No nation, including any in the Muslim world, appears
willing to intervene to protect the Palestinians. No world body, including
the United Nations, appears willing or able to pressure Israel through sanctions
to conform to the norms of international law. And the longer we in the
world community fail to act, the worse the spiral of violence will
become."
READ MORE
HAW statement on Gaza
The Hawblog
The weblog of
Historians Against the War
Sign the Petition
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Statements
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Archive
Teach-In
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Academic Freedom
Links
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About us / Contact us
Friday, July 25, 2014
[haw-info] HAW
statement on Gaza
The Steering
Committee of Historians Against the War deplores the
ongoing attacks
against civilians in Gaza and in Israel. We also
recognize the
disproportionate harm being inflicted on the population of
Gaza by the Israeli
military, which the United States has armed and
supported for
decades.
We are especially
disturbed that so many Palestinian children are being
killed or wounded in
the attack. And we regard as unacceptable the
failure of American
elected officials to hold Israel accountable for
such acts.
As we watch the death
toll mount and observe the terror of the trapped
inhabitants in Gaza,
we call upon our fellow historians to speak out now
for a cease-fire, for
the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from
Gaza, and for the
suspension of all US military aid to Israel until the
aid is no longer used
for the commission of war crimes.
Please write letters
to your local or national newspapers or magazines
and contact your
elected officials to express your opposition to U.S.
funding of the
Israeli military and its attack on people in Gaza.
Note: You are
receiving this email because you signed a Historians Against the War
statement (see http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/) or asked to be
included in HAW's informational mailings. If you no longer wish to receive
these occasional messages about HAW's work, send an email to
haw-info-request@stopthewars.org?subject=unsubscribe.
_______________________________________________
haw-info mailing list
haw-info@stopthewars.org
http://server1.naffe.net/mailman/listinfo/haw-info_stopthewars.org
posted by Marc at
5:13 PM
The War on Gaza and the Cycle of Impunity
If Israel is not brought to justice, it will
commit the same crimes again and again.
Palestinians flee their homes in the Shajaiyeh
neighborhood of Gaza City. July 16, 2014. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
As we go to press,
Israel’s third assault on Gaza in five years continues into its second
week, with no end in sight. So far the Israeli military has killed nearly
200 Palestinians—some 80 percent of them civilians, according to the United
Nations—and wounded more than 1,300. Israeli officials boast of their
precision targeting, but the high civilian casualty rate, stemming from
deliberate attacks on homes as well as a hospital, school, cafe, a rehab
center for the disabled, mosques and other nonmilitary infrastructure,
calls to mind the conclusion of Haaretz columnist Gideon
Levy, who wrote, “The goal of Operation Protective Edge is to restore the
calm; the means: killing civilians. The slogan of the Mafia has become
official Israeli policy.”
Of course, Hamas’s
strategy of firing poorly aimed rockets—some 1,000 of them to date—at
Israeli cities is just as atrocious as the far more deadly Israeli
barrages; both are in fact violations of international law amounting to war
crimes. But the wildly disproportionate casualty rate—one Israeli has been
killed so far, and a few injured—exposes the true nature of this “war,” in
which one of the world’s most powerful militaries uses F-16s, helicopter
gunships, drones and heavy artillery against a nearly defenseless,
imprisoned population with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Reflexive US support
for Israel by politicians from both parties is of long vintage and no
surprise to anyone. Even so, it was shocking and shameful to hear White
House and US diplomats repeatedly voice support for Israel’s “right to
defend itself” as it rained bombs and missiles down on the people of Gaza.
Much of the US media repeated tired clichés about the “cycle of violence,”
as if the conflict began when three Israeli teens were kidnapped and
murdered. But lost in the media frenzy was the deeper context to this
latest round of bloodshed. The collapse of the ill-starred peace process in
the spring had created a dangerous vacuum. Secretary of State John Kerry
mostly attributed the failure to Israel’s relentless settlement project.
Israel, for its part, blamed the accord between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority, which it was determined to destroy.
The government saw
its opportunity in the kidnapping of the three teens: although Israeli
police were almost certain within days that the teens had been murdered—and
almost certainly by freelance thugs rather than Hamas operatives—the Shin
Bet placed a gag order on the media so that it could round up hundreds of
Hamas members. At the same time, the government ginned up a
#BringBackOurBoys campaign—a cruel deception of the anguished parents, but
also part of a strategy to foment public hysteria against Palestinians in
general and Hamas in particular. It worked—perhaps better than intended, as
an ominous, pogromlike atmosphere fell across the country when the teens’
bodies were found, with Netanyahu himself tweeting a cry of “vengeance for
the blood of a small child.” The mob attacks culminated in the lynching of
a Palestinian teen.
Achieving a
cease-fire will be difficult, given the regional upheavals—all the more
reason for European and regional governments to step up their efforts. But
unless the deeper issues are addressed, the cycle will continue—the cycle
not of violence, but of impunity. Impunity is what happens when an
aggressor fractures the norms of international law and basic human rights
yet is never held to account, and so is free to commit the same crimes
again and again. That is what we’re seeing now, and that is exactly what the
Goldstone Report—the findings of the UN investigation of Operation Cast
Lead in 2008–09—so presciently warned against. It said then that bringing
to justice those who committed war crimes—Israel as well as Hamas—was
perhaps the only effective way to prevent another round of violence.
It was the United
States that prevented Goldstone’s recommendations from getting a fair
hearing in the UN—and it’s the United States, the world’s sole superpower,
the key bankroller of Israel’s military, and the unconditional defender of
Israel in international forums, that bears deep responsibility for the
continuation of the decades-long occupation. Congress and the White House
may seem to be an impregnable fortress to those struggling for justice on
this issue. But never underestimate the power of sustained grassroots
action. The campaign to bring justice to Israel is small but steadily
growing, and the media and politicians know it. The fact is, with groups
like J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace on the scene, it’s no longer
political suicide to stand up to AIPAC and its kin. It’s our job, as
citizens of America and citizens of the world, to force the politicians to
do the right thing and compel Israel to end its occupation and, at long
last, free Palestine.
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Israel mows the lawn
Mouin Rabbani
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n15/mouin-rabbani/israel-mows-the-lawn
In 2004, a year
before Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Dov Weissglass,
éminence grise to Ariel Sharon, explained the initiative’s purpose to an
interviewer from Haaretz:
The significance of
the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process … And when you
freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state,
and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.
Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that
it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this
with … a [US] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of
Congress … The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the
amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political
process with the Palestinians.
In 2006 Weissglass
was just as frank about Israel’s policy towards Gaza’s 1.8 million
inhabitants: ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to
make them die of hunger.’ He was not speaking metaphorically: it later
emerged that the Israeli defence ministry had conducted detailed research
on how to translate his vision into reality, and arrived at a figure of
2279 calories per person per day – some 8 per cent less than a previous
calculation because the research team had originally neglected to account
for ‘culture and experience’ in determining nutritional ‘red lines’.
This wasn’t an
academic exercise. After pursuing a policy of enforced integration between
1967 and the late 1980s, Israeli policy shifted towards separation during
the 1987-93 uprising, and then fragmentation during the Oslo years. For the
Gaza Strip, an area about the size of Greater Glasgow, these changes
entailed a gradual severance from the outside world, with the movement of
persons and goods into and out of the territory increasingly restricted.
[Turning Gaza into a prison. --Dick]
The screws were
turned tighter during the 2000-5 uprising, and in 2007 the Gaza Strip was
effectively sealed shut. All exports were banned, and just 131 truckloads
of foodstuffs and other essential products were permitted entry per day.
Israel also strictly controlled which products could and could not be
imported. Prohibited items have included A4 paper, chocolate, coriander,
crayons, jam, pasta, shampoo, shoes and wheelchairs.
In 2010, commenting
on this premeditated and systematic degradation of the humanity of an
entire population, David Cameron characterised the Gaza Strip as a
‘prison camp’ and – for once – did not neuter this assessment by
subordinating his criticism to proclamations about the jailers’ right of
self-defence against their inmates.
It’s often claimed
that Israel’s reason for escalating this punitive regime to a new level of
severity was to cause the overthrow of Hamas after its 2007 seizure of
power in Gaza. The claim doesn’t stand up to serious scrutiny. Removing
Hamas from power has indeed been a policy objective for the US and the EU
ever since the Islamist movement won the 2006 parliamentary elections, and
their combined efforts to undermine it helped set the stage for the ensuing
Palestinian schism.
Israel’s agenda has
been different. Had it been determined to end Hamas rule it could easily
have done so, particularly while Hamas was still consolidating its control
over Gaza in 2007, and without necessarily reversing the 2005
disengagement. Instead, it saw the schism between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority as an opportunity to further its policies of separation and
fragmentation, and to deflect growing international pressure for an end to
an occupation that has lasted nearly half a century. Its massive assaults
on the Gaza Strip in 2008-9 (Operation Cast Lead) and 2012 (Operation
Pillar of Defence), as well as countless individual attacks between and
since, were in this context exercises in what the Israeli military called
‘mowing the lawn’: weakening Hamas and enhancing Israel’s powers of
deterrence. As the 2009 Goldstone Report and other investigations have
demonstrated, often in excruciating detail, the grass consists
overwhelmingly of non-combatant Palestinian civilians, indiscriminately
targeted by Israel’s precision weaponry.
Israel’s current
assault on the Gaza Strip, which began on 6 July with ground forces moving
in some ten days later, is intended to serve the same agenda. The
conditions for it were set in late April. Negotiations that had been going
on for nine months stalled after the Israeli government reneged on its
commitment to release a number of Palestinian prisoners incarcerated since
before the 1993 Oslo Accords, and ended when Netanyahu announced he would
no longer deal with Mahmoud Abbas because Abbas had just signed a further
reconciliation agreement with Hamas. On this occasion, in a sharp departure
from precedent, US Secretary of State John Kerry explicitly blamed Israel
for the breakdown in talks. His special envoy, Martin Indyk, a career
Israel lobbyist, blamed Israel’s insatiable appetite for Palestinian land
and continued expansion of the settlements, and handed in his resignation.
The challenge this
poses to Netanyahu is clear. If even the Americans are telling the world
that Israel is not interested in peace, those more directly invested in a
two-state settlement – such as the EU, which has started to exclude any
Israeli entities active in occupied Palestinian territory from
participation in bilateral agreements – may start considering other ways to
nudge Israel towards the 1967 boundaries. Negotiations about nothing are
designed to provide political cover for Israel’s policy of creeping
annexation. Now that they’ve collapsed yet again, the strategic asset that
is American public opinion may start asking why Congress is more loyal to
Netanyahu than the Israeli Knesset is. Kerry had been serious about
reaching a comprehensive agreement: he adopted almost all of Israel’s core
positions and successfully rammed most of them down Abbas’s throat – yet
Netanyahu still balked. Refusing even to specify future Israeli-Palestinian
borders during nine months of negotiations, Israeli leaders instead
levelled a series of accusations at Washington so outlandish – encouraging
extremism, giving succour to terrorists – that one could be forgiven for
concluding Congress was funding Hamas, rather than Israel, to the tune of
$3 billion a year.
Israel received
another blow on 2 June, when a new Palestinian Authority government was
inaugurated, following the April reconciliation agreement between Hamas and
Fatah. Hamas endorsed the new government even though it was given no
cabinet posts and the government’s composition and political programme were
virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor’s. With barely a protest
from the Islamists, Abbas repeatedly and loudly proclaimed that the
government accepted the Middle East Quartet’s demands: that it recognise
Israel, renounce violence and adhere to past agreements. He also announced
that Palestinian security forces in the West Bank would continue their
security collaboration with Israel. When both Washington and Brussels
signalled their intention to co-operate with the new government, alarm
bells went off in Israel. Its usual assertions that Palestinian negotiators
spoke only for themselves – and would therefore prove incapable of
implementing any agreement – had begun to look shaky: the Palestinian
leadership could now claim not only to represent both the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip but also to have co-opted Hamas into supporting a negotiated two-state
settlement, if not the Oslo framework as a whole. There might soon be
increased international pressure on Israel to negotiate seriously with
Abbas. The formaldehyde was beginning to evaporate.
At this point
Netanyahu seized on the 12 June disappearance of three young Israelis in
the West Bank like a drowning man thrown a lifebelt. Despite clear evidence
presented to him by the Israeli security forces that the three teenagers
were already dead, and no evidence to date that Hamas was involved, he held
Hamas directly responsible and launched a ‘hostage rescue operation’
throughout the West Bank. It was really an organised military rampage. It
included the killing of at least six Palestinians, none of whom was accused
of involvement in the disappearances; mass arrests, including the arrest of
Hamas parliamentarians and the re-arrest of detainees released in 2011; the
demolition of a number of houses and the looting of others; and a variety
of other depredations of the kind Israel’s finest have honed to perfection
during decades of occupation. Netanyahu whipped up a demagogic firestorm
against the Palestinians, and the subsequent abduction and burning alive of
a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem cannot and should not be separated from
this incitement.
For his part, Abbas
failed to stand up to the Israeli operation and ordered his security forces
to continue to co-operate with Israel against Hamas. The reconciliation
agreement was being put under serious pressure. On the night of 6 July, an
Israeli air raid resulted in the death of seven Hamas militants. Hamas
responded with sustained missile attacks deep into Israel, escalating
further as Israel launched its full-scale onslaught. For the past year
Hamas had been in a precarious position: it had lost its headquarters in
Damascus and preferential status in Iran as a result of its refusal to give
open support to the Syrian regime, and faced unprecedented levels of
hostility from Egypt’s new military ruler. The underground tunnel economy
between Egypt and Gaza had been systematically dismantled by the Egyptians,
and for the first time since seizing control of the territory in 2007 it
was no longer able regularly to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of
government employees. The reconciliation agreement with Fatah was its way
of bartering its political programme in exchange for its own survival: in
return for conceding the political arena to Abbas, Hamas would retain
control of the Gaza Strip indefinitely, have its public sector placed on
the PA payroll and see the border crossing with Egypt reopened.
In the event, the
quid pro quo Hamas hoped for was not permitted to materialise and,
according to Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group, ‘life in Gaza
became worse’: ‘The current escalation,’ he wrote, ‘is a direct result of
the choice by Israel and the West to obstruct the implementation of the
April 2014 Palestinian reconciliation agreement.’ To put it differently,
those within Hamas who saw the crisis as an opportunity to put an end
toWeissglass’s regime gained the upper hand. So far, they appear to have
the majority of the population with them, because they seem to prefer death
by F-16 to death by formaldehyde.
Among all the
sanctimonious howls – this time including a lily-livered Cameron’s – about
Israel’s right to self-defence, and in the face of the categorical
rejection of the Palestinians’ equivalent right, the fundamental point that
this is an illegitimate attack is often lost. As the lawyer Noura Erakat
has cogently argued, ‘Israel does not have the right to self-defence in
international law against occupied Palestinian territory.’ Its argument
that it no longer occupies the Gaza Strip has been dismissed by Lisa Hajjar
of the University of California as a self-generated ‘licence to kill’.
Once again, Israel is
‘mowing the lawn’ with impunity, targeting civilian non-combatants and
civilian infrastructure. Given its continual insistence that it uses the
most precise weapons available and chooses its targets carefully, it is
impossible to conclude that the targeting is not deliberate. According to
UN agencies, more than three-quarters of the more than 260 Palestinians
killed so far have been civilians, and more than a quarter of them
children. Most were targeted in their own homes: they cannot be described
as collateral damage under any definition of the term. Of course
Palestinian militants have also been recklessly targeting Israeli
population centres, though their attacks have resulted in just a single
death: a man handing out sweets to the soldiers pulverising the Gaza Strip.
Human Rights Watch has criticised both sides but, true to form, has accused
only the Palestinians of war crimes.
18 July
AMY GOODMAN, DEMOCRACY NOW: GAZA AND CONTEXTS
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A Daily Independent Global News Hour with
Amy Goodman & Juan González
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Stories
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Amidst talk of a
potential ceasefire, the Palestinian death toll has passed 815 in
Israel's relentless bombings of the Gaza Strip. On Thursday,
at least 16 civilians died and more than 200 were ... Read More →
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At least 16 people
were killed and more than 200 injured Thursday when a school
used as a United Nations shelter came under fire in Gaza.
Palestinian families displaced by the assault ...Read More →
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Israel's assault
on the Gaza Strip has triggered the largest West Bank protest in
years, with more than 15,000 people
marching Thursday from Ramallah toward Jerusalem. Two
Palestinians ... Read More →
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We are joined from
Gaza City by Dr. Belal Dabour of Shifa Hospital, the largest in
Gaza. Dabour describes how Shifa has been stretched beyond capacity
since the Israeli military assault ... Read More →
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Insidious
Myth Prevents Peace in Gaza
by Erin Niemela, Common Dreams, July 26, 2014
There’s really only
one myth that needs busting and it’s this: 'Violence is justifiable.
HISTORY OF ISRAELI ASSAULTS ON GAZA BY MOHAMMED
OMER:
NOWHERE TO RUN OR HIDE
Mohammed
Omer, “In Gaza, There’s Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide.” The
Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs (Jan./Feb 2013). This article (I subscribe to
the magazine) has 2 main subjects:
Israeli Operation Pillar of Smoke and the assassination of Ahmad
Al-Jabari, and Israel’s 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead in which “Israel killed
1, 500 Palestinian men, women, and children.” I was not able to find this online. --Dick
"Nowhere
to Run": Israel
Fires Over 500 Strikes in Gaza,
Civilian Toll Grows in Humanitarian Crisis
Sunday,
November 18, 2012
"Nowhere to Run"
Israel is continuing to pound the Gaza Strip with air strikes amidst fears
that Israel could soon
launch a ground invasion into Gaza.
Israeli troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers are now massing near
the Palestinian territory. Earlier today, 85 missiles exploded within 45
minutes in Gaza
City, sending black
pillars of smoke. At least 21 Palestinians have died in the most recent
round of violence, while three Israelis died on Thursday. Israel said it launched 150 air strikes
overnight, while Palestinians fired a dozen rockets into Israel. Israel has
started to draft 30,000 reserve troops in a sign the assault may soon
widen. Among the casualties of Israeli violence was the 11-month-old son of
a BBC Arabic journalist, Jihad Misharawi. Egyptian Prime Minister
Hisham Kandil traveled to Gaza
today to condemn the Israeli attack. For more, we get a report from Rafah
by Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer, who says, "One thing that we
ought to talk about here is the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
This is a situation of targeting a population of civilians, exactly like Israel is
shooting in a fishbowl. And there is no shelter, and there is nowhere to
run for the general population. Gaza
is living in a very dire situation." We also speak with Gershon
Baskin, the founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and
Information, who was the initiator of the secret talks between Israel and
Hamas for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
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By John B. Judis, New
Republic, posted July 25
Carefully detailed historical background. The author
is a senior editor of The New Republic and
author of a 2014 book on the Truman administration and the origins of the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
AMY GOODMAN, DEMOCRACY
NOW
|
What
Does Hamas Really Want? Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy on Ending the
Crippling Blockade of Gaza & How the West Chose War in Gaza: Crisis
Tied to Israeli-U.S. Effort to Isolate Hamas & Keep the Siege &
Israeli Writer Gideon Levy: If Netanyahu Wants to Stop the Rockets, He
Needs to Accept a Just Peace & "Unimaginably Catastrophic":
As Gaza's Displaced Top 100,000, Israel Reportedly Shells U.N. School
|
.
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Democracy
Now! Daily Digest
A
Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González
|
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Stories
|
The
Israeli assault on Gaza has entered its third week as the Palestinian
death toll has topped 600, mostly civilians. More than 100 of the dead
are children. More than 3,700 Palestinians have ...Read More →
|
As
the Israeli assault on Gaza enters its third week, a new push is
underway for an internationally brokered ceasefire. Speaking earlier
today, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said there is "no
... Read More →
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While
many trace the Israeli assault on Gaza to the series of events that
began with the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three teenage
Israelis in the occupied West Bank, we look at how ... Read More →
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Joining
us from Tel Aviv, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy argues that Middle
East peace will never come until the Israeli government drops its
rejection of basic Palestinian rights. "Sure ... Read More →
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The
United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees says the number of
people seeking refuge at its sites in Gaza has soared to more than
100,000. According to unconfirmed reports, one of ... Read
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July
22, 2014, The Time to Stand with Gaza is Now
On July 8th,
Israel unleashed a brutal and sustained military offensive on the people of
Gaza, who have already been confined to an open-air prison by the decade-old
Israeli blockade and sealing of Gaza's borders. Bombardment from air, land and
sea is killing hundreds, displacing tens of thousands more and targeting
hospitals as well as other infrastructure crucial for survival. The reports on
the atrocities are horrifying and the resistance and resilience of the
Palestinian people continues to provide global inspiration.
In
the Palestinian spirit of steadfast commitment to freedom and dignity we call
not just for an end of the current Israeli assault on Gaza, but for an end of
the Israeli occupation of Palestine along with its Apartheid regime. We are
joined in this call by people of conscience around the world, including those
in South Africa, where War Resisters International recently held their triennial conference. Last week in Cape Town, 40,000 people
took to the streets in solidarity with Palestinians in the footsteps of their
own freedom struggle against Apartheid. There have been funeral processions and
protests around the world where people are coming together to mourn their dead,
restore a sense of humanity to those treated only as either victims or targets,
and say that we will not be silent when governments carry out ethnic cleansing.
Mass
murder and Israel's use of force is neither defensive nor exceptional. As in
all settler regimes, including the U.S., massacre and displacement are more
than outcomes; they are a central strategy for Israeli dominance over land and
resources.
In
the face of this naked cruelty, Palestinian resistance continues, in ways
ranging from art to hunger strikes and civil disobedience, to the
fundamental resistance of survival with dignity. This resistance is rooted
in a generations-old grassroots, nonviolent, civil society movement. It is
this civil society that has called for a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel, and to which
the War Resisters League adds our voice. With the U.S. government's decisive
financial, military, and diplomatic support enabling Israel's violence, it is
time for a powerful movement response. Take action now to end the siege of
Gaza and call for the end of Israeli apartheid.
Things you can do:
(Image
above by Amir Schiby)
Take
Action: No U.S. Support for War Crimes by Israel!
July
22, 2014
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Center
for Constitutional Rights
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Dear
CCR Supporter,
The
scenes from Gaza are indescribable. Whole families killed inside their
homes. Hospitals attacked with the wounded still inside. Those trying to
flee have nowhere to go, due to Israel’s and Egypt’s long-standing
closure of Gaza’s borders. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights
described this weekend’s Israeli military attack in the Shuja’iyah
neighborhood as a “massacre.” United Nations Secretary General Ban
Ki-Moon called it an “atrocious action.”
Collective
punishment and targeting civilians are prohibited under international
law. Further, the U.S. Leahy Law bars the U.S. from funding foreign
military units and individuals where there is credible evidence that they
took part in gross violations of human rights.
Thank
you for taking action.
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About
Us
The
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AMERICAN
EDUCATIONAL TRUST ACTION ALERT
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1902
18th St NW • Washington, DC 20009 | (800) 368-5788 •
Fax: (202) 265-4574
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ACTION
ALERT
July
14, 2014
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Send
Help to Gaza
Bloody
violence has descended once again on the Palestinians living in Gaza.
American-made Israeli jets have dropped bombs on Palestinian homes,
businesses, a mosque, and even a rehabilitation center for the disabled,
threatening the already-tenuous existence of Gazan families. Despite the
pleas of the United Nations, UNRWA, UNICEF, the Arab League, U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William Hague
the Israelis and Hamas have not agreed to a ceasefire. Innocent civilians
of Gaza are paying the price for this violence.
According
to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
- 175
Palestinians have been killed since July 7.
- 80 percent
of those killed were civilians.
- 36
children have died as a result of Israeli attacks.
- $60
million is needed to pay for medical supplies and medical referrals
out of Gaza.
- 25,300
children have been traumatized by the bombing and need psychological
support.
- 1,140
Palestinians have been injured. Of those, 296 are children and 233
are women.
- 5,600
Palestinians have been displaced due to damage to their homes.
- Another
16,000 Palestinians are taking shelter in UNRWA schools.
- 32 fishing
boats, a source of income for impoverished Palestinians, have been
damaged, burned, or destroyed by Israeli attacks.
- In one airstrike, Israelis
killed 18 Palestinians from a single family, including six children
and three women, one of whom was pregnant.
The
Palestinian people, who have endured so much, need your help in this time
of trial.
What
Can You Do?
1. Send
a financial contribution to an organization working to help Gazans
survive this latest catastrophe. Here are some suggestions (in
alphabetical order):
American
Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) 1522 K St. NW, Suite 202 • Washington, DC
20005-1270 • (202) 347-2558 •www.anera.org • Sponsors ongoing programs
in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan and provides emergency relief.
Helping
Hand for Relief and Development (Helping Hand USA) 12541 McDougall St • Detroit, MI
48212 • 1 (888) 808-HELP •www.HHRD.org • A global humanitarian
relief and development organization responding to human sufferings in
emergency and disastrous situations anywhere all over the world.
Islamic
Relief USA P.O.
Box 6098 • Burbank, CA 91510 • 1 (888) 479-4968 • www.irw.org • Works in more than 30
countries to alleviate hunger, illiteracy and diseases, provides rapid
relief to victims of man-made and natural disasters.
Jerusalem
Fund 2425
Virginia Ave., NW • Washington, DC 20037 • (202) 338-1958 • www.thejerusalemfund.org • Provides
grants to hospitals, orphanages, clinics, schools, universities and civil
society organization.
Kinder
USA P.O.
Box 224846 • Dallas, Texas 75222-9785 • (972) 664-1991 • www.kinderusa.org • Supports relief and development
programs in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan.
Life
for Relief and Development P.O.
Box 236 • Southfield, MI 48037 • (248) 424-7493 • www.lifeusa.org • Provides medicines and
medical equipment and supports infrastructure development in Afghanistan,
Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.
Médecins Sans
Frontiers /Doctors Without Borders 333 7th Ave., 2nd Floor • New York, NY 10001
• (212) 679-6800 •www.doctorswithoutborders.org • Global
organization that provides emergency medical relief across the Arab and
Muslim world.
Near
East Foundation 230
Euclid Ave. • Syracuse, NY 13210 •(315) 428-8670 •www.neareast.org • Supports community
development and provides humanitarian and emergency assistance in more
than 16 countries.
Oxfam
America •
226 Causeway Street, 5th FL. • Boston, MA 02114-2206• (800) 77-OXFAM • www.oxfamamerica.org • An international
confederation of 17 organizations working in approximately 94 countries
worldwide to find solutions to poverty and what it considers as injustice
around the world.
Palestinian
Medical Relief Society (PMRS)
• P.O. Box 450554 • Atlanta, GA 31145 • (404) 441-2702 • www.pmrs.ps • U.S.-based support
group which receives tax-free donations for this grassroots,
community-based Palestinian health organization.
United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) American Friends of
UNRWA Association, Inc. • 1666 K St., NW • Suite 440 • Washington, DC
20006 • (202) 223-3767 • www.friendsunrwa.org • This U.N. agency aids
Palestinian refugees through emergency relief such as food and health
care, as well as long-term assistance through education and finance
programs.
United
Palestinian Appeal (UPA)
1330 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Suite 104 • Washington, DC 20037
• (202) 659-5007 •www.helpupa.com • Sponsors health,
education and community development programs in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
World
Vision P.O.
Box 9716 • Federal Way, WA 98063-9716 • (888) 511-6598 • www.worldvision.org • Global Christian
humanitarian organization providing relief in many countries in the Arab
and Muslim world.
The
Zakat Foundation of America P.O. Box 639 • Worth, IL 60482 • (708) 499-6151 •
Fax (708) 499-6154 • www.thezakat.org• Sponsors programs for
emergency relief, orphan sponsorship, education, development and health
in 10 countries.
2.
Urge U.S. government officials and United Nations representatives to call
for a ceasefire. Contact:
3.
Call or write your local newspaper or radio station and ask it to cover
the crisis in Gaza.
- Write the editor a letter. Make it brief and to
the point.
- Add comments about Gaza at
the end of any article you read in that newspaper about the Middle
East.
- Google a photo about the
Gaza crisis. Put the picture on Facebook and get people to like it.
- Send out tweets using the
hashtags #GazaUnderAttack, #Palestine, #FreePalestine, #PrayForGaza,
#Israel, #Unite4Gaza, #Gaza2DK, and #Gaza
- Ask any groups that you
work with to take on the cause of getting relief into Gaza.
- Hold a teach-in about Gaza
at your local college or library.
- Organize a demonstration.
###
AET is
a non-profit foundation that publishes the Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs(www.wrmea.org) and maintains the AET Bookstore (middleeastbooks.com).
Thank
you for your support.
The
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, P.O. Box 53062, Washington
DC 20009. Phone: (202) 939-6050, Fax: (202) 265-4574, Toll Free: (800)
368-5788, www.wrmea.org. To donate or subscribe to the Washington
Report, please visit our Web site or call 888-881-5861 or
e-mail circulation@wrmea.org.
The Washington Report is published by the American
Educational Trust, a non-profit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC
to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning
U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. Material from theWashington
Report on Middle East Affairs may be printed without charge with
attribution to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
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REMEMBERING
GAZA’S ARK
OCTOBER
2013
[I
received the following from Ann Wright. –Dick]
Israel attacked Estelle one year ago.
As
the building of Gaza's Ark continues, despite the difficulties caused by the
Israeli blockade and made worse by the Egyptian regime's closure of most of the
tunnels (sign petition: http://goo.gl/WpVPru),
today we commemorate one year since Israel's piracy of the peaceful aid ship,
the Estelle.
The Estelle was the latest of the Freedom Flotilla ships to challenge the
illegal blockade of Gaza. On this day we salute everyone who has worked
on or supported the Estelle campaign (including former Canadian MP Jim Manly*
who was on board), and assure you and the world that we will not stop our
efforts till the blockade ends and all Palestinians can realize their human
rights.
Please continue to support Gaza's Ark so we can continue our work.
[Gaza’s
Ark was destroyed during the Israel invasion of July 2014. --Dick
* To interview former Canadian MP Jim Manly who was on the Estelle and was
imprisoned by Israel and then deported call +1-250-758-0966
Here
is the press release issued by the Estelle campaign on the anniversary of the
Israeli attack:
One year since the hijacking of Estelle
PRESS RELEASE: 2013-10-19 21:04
It has been a year since the hijacking of Ship to Gaza Sweden’s sailing ship
S/V Estelle. The hijacking took place in international waters, 38 nautical
miles off the coast of the Gaza strip.
Thirty people from eight countries were on board, firmly decided to
non-violently challenge the illegal blockade of Gaza. Gaza, the port of
Palestine, was the destination, as was the 1,7 million Palestinians who by then
had lived under siege for over six years. A reception of the boat was prepared.
Estelle symbolized hope for an end of isolation and politics of separation, and
an end to the devastating consequences on living conditions and freedom of
movement.
The Israeli military chose to once again board a civilian vessel, loaded with
humanitarian cargo and symbolic gifts from the many people who welcomed and
supported Estelle’s travel from Scandinavia through Europe. The boarding was a
military operation, and the operation was needless to say not peaceful.
According to the IDF seventy soldiers boarded the ship. Thirty people were
taken as prisoners and, against their will, taken to Israel. All activists without
Israeli citizenship were deported and banned from entering Israel. Israel kept
S/V Estelle and the ship is now under threat of confiscation. The whereabouts
of Estelle's cargo remains unknown to its rightful owners: Donors as well as
recipients.
Estelle was the latest of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition ships to challenge the
blockade. The blockade is now running on its seventh year, and has through the
actions of the Egyptian regime lately even worsened its grip on the lives of
the people in Gaza. We are perpetuating our fight for human rights and freedom
for the Palestinian people.
Dror Feiler, Ann Ighe, Victoria Strand, spokespersons for Ship to Gaza Sweden
Link to picture and a list of passengers and crew on the last leg of Estelle’s
journey:
http://shiptogaza.se/sv/node/1052
Link to a movie about Estelle’s journey through Europe, made by filmmaker and
activist Laura Arau:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2bNcDe_tI0
Link for the support campaign that emerged on Facebook during the days before
and after the boarding:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.451936291514720.94643.195473957160956&type=1
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Gaza’s Ark mailing
list.
To unsubscribe from this list please send e-mail to: gazaark-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net
YouTube - Videos from this email
The
President Wants to Hear from Us
From
the White House: Write or Call
President
Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in
American history. That begins with taking comments and questions from you, the
public, through our website.
Call
the President
PHONE
NUMBERS
Comments:
202-456-1111
Switchboard:
202-456-1414
TTY/TTD
Comments:
202-456-6213
Visitor's
Office: 202-456-2121
Write
a letter to the President
Here
are a few simple things you can do to make sure your message gets to the White
House as quickly as possible.
1. If
possible, email us!
This is the fastest way to get your message to President Obama.
2. If you write a letter, please consider typing it on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch
sheet of paper. If you hand-write your letter, please consider using pen and
writing as neatly as possible.
3. Please include your return address on your letter as well as your
envelope. If you have an email address, please consider including that as well.
4. And finally, be sure to include the full address of the White House to
make sure your message gets to us as quickly and directly as possible:
The
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
END GAZA NEWSLETTER #5
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