Al Jazeera: Gaza children shatter world record

The event is part of a UN-sponsored programme set up for students during their academic break (Al Jazeera)

“It was an unlikely place to shatter a world record, but the beaches of the Gaza Strip were the venue for thousands of Palestinian children who flew the largest number of kites simultaneously from the same place.

The record that once stood at 713 has been broken, thanks to the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and about 6,000 kite-flying children.

The event is part of the Summer Games programme run by UNRWA – an activities and curricular programme set up for students during their break from the academic school year.

More than half of Gaza’s 1.5 million people are under the age of 18 – so there is no shortage of potential record-breakers…”

–Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera English, 30 July, 2009

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/07/200973075042919122.html

See also:

Did the PLO die in Lebanon?

Some feel the unity of the resistance faltered once Arafat left Lebanon in 1982 [GALLO/GETTY]

“‘We have to fight the Israelis any place we can,’ says Mahmoud Taha. In 1972 he left his job as an electronics repairman in Saudi Arabia to join the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) in Lebanon.

‘We brought the war to Lebanon,’ Taha, who today lives in the Bourj el Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Beirut, told Al Jazeera.

‘But I did not think for one day the war was against the Lebanese. We were obliged to fight the war inside Lebanon, but we didn’t want it.’

Others, however, might disagree.

The role the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – of which the DFLP is a part – played in the Lebanese Civil War is highly politicised. The accounts and reports of the events that happened are always incomplete, and often contradictory, depending on the personal interests and political affiliations of those recounting them.

What remains indisputable, however, is that by the time the war ended in 1991, hundreds of thousands of people had been killed, the vast majority of them civilians.

The PLO was an essential party to this tragedy…”

–Spencer Osberg, Al Jazeera English, 28 July, 2009

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/plohistoryofrevolution/2009/07/200972855032594820.html

And Also

Israel defends Gaza war

“The Israeli government has said that its war on the Gaza Strip earlier this year, that left up to 1,417 Palestinians dead, was ‘necessary and proportionate’.

The government also said on Thursday that it was investigating about 100 complaints of misconduct by its forces during the three week war that began on December 27.

‘Israel had both a right and an obligation to take military action against Hamas in Gaza to stop Hamas’s almost incessant rocket and mortar attacks,’ the report published by the foreign ministry said…”

–Al Jazeera English, 31 July, 2009

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/07/2009730235653538743.html

And finally, from CounterPunch

The True Height of Insecurity

“The War is With the Arabs”

By HANNAH MERMELSTEIN

I saw this sign as I was entering Nablus last week, again on my way to Ramallah, and again near Bethlehem.  The phrase is printed in Hebrew, presumably by Israeli settlers, on huge signs throughout the West Bank.  Israeli racism rarely shocks me anymore, but its blatant display still makes me stop and catch my breath as I translate it into other contexts.  Imagine driving through the middle of a predominantly black neighborhood in a US city or town and seeing a enormous sign that says, ‘The war is with the Blacks’…”

–Hannah Mermelstein, CounterPunch, 24-26 July, 2009

http://www.counterpunch.org/mermelstein07242009.html

The Broken Dreams of Wada Cortas

Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

By NADIA HIJAB

‘It was a trying time for dreamers,’ Wadad Makdisi Cortas wrote of the year 1935. She was 26 and ‘yearned to speak my language, to read Arabic books, and to foster Arab independence and solidarity.’ But she had just become the headmistress of a girls’ school in Lebanon that was a particular thorn in the side of the French colonial rulers.

As in their other colonies, the French imposed their language, insisting that the students at the Ahliah National School for Girls not only be taught in French but also use it at recess. ‘Students who insisted on speaking Arabic were to be singled out, and those who persisted were to be given detention,’ Cortas recalled. (Of course, as history marched on, English won the battle to become the global lingua franca.)

Cortas’ memoirs span the 20th Century: She was born in 1909 and died in 1979. She writes beautifully, with dry humor and with sadness, of living and travelling in a Middle East without borders and of the agony inflicted as frontiers were carved into a soil alive with friendships and family ties — agonies that continue to this day…”

–Nadia Hijab, 22July, 2009

http://www.counterpunch.org/hijab07222009.html

Iran and Palestine

CNN and other Western media outlets have aired "unverified material" obtained from websites like Facebook and YouTube in their non-stop coverage of demonstrations in Iran (image courtesy EI)

The Western media and Iran

“Protestors, anywhere in the world, are extremely brave individuals whose reasons for demonstrating openly should be listened to and respected. Protest is democracy at work. However, too often, US and other Western-based media pick and choose which protests to cover and which to ignore completely.

The US media often celebrate themselves as the ‘freest and fairest’ in the world, completely independent of a state unlike, for example, the media in Iran. Yet, an astute observer will notice that the US media generally choose stories and cover them in a way that play directly into the US’s global agenda.

Who decides whether or not a particular issue is ‘newsworthy?’ One would think that this is the role of the media, to cover issues like conflict or rights abuses as they happen around the world. Although, it seems this isn’t the case. Most Western media appear to follow their government’s lead when focusing on different issues and then cover them in a way fitting with the government’s position, hence the complete domination of events in Iran in nearly every single Western media outlet and the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of the protestors and the opposition as just. The current case of Iran makes it clear that it is governments who are directing the media’s coverage, instead of the actual news organizations themselves.

There was also a noticeable shift in the US media’s coverage of foreign affairs after the attacks of 11 September 2001…”

–Matthew Cassel, The Electronic Intifada, 23 June 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10616.shtml

Check out the Latest News and Current Campaigns from Jewish Voice for Peace

“In the last 24 hours, we’ve learned that a dangerous pattern has emerged at YouTube. They have censored not just one, but at least two controversial but important videos that reveal the kind of hardcore racism, Islamophobia and Arab-hatred that exists in our Jewish community both among Americans and Israelis, hatred which must be unearthed in order to be countered…”

–Jewish Voice for Peace

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

See Also The Following Op-Ed from The New York Times:

Fictions on the Ground

“I am old enough to remember when Israeli kibbutzim looked like settlements (‘a small village or collection of houses’ or ‘the act of peopling or colonizing a new country,’ Oxford English Dictionary).

In the early 1960s, I spent time on Kibbutz Hakuk, a small community founded by the Palmah unit of the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish militia. Begun in 1945, Hakuk was just 18 years old when I first saw it, and was still raw at the edges. The few dozen families living there had built themselves a dining hall, farm sheds, homes and a ‘baby house’ where the children were cared for during the workday. But where the residential buildings ended there were nothing but rock-covered hillsides and half-cleared fields.

The community’s members still dressed in blue work shirts, khaki shorts and triangular hats, consciously cultivating a pioneering image and ethos already at odds with the hectic urban atmosphere of Tel Aviv. Ours, they seemed to say to bright-eyed visitors and volunteers, is the real Israel; come and help us clear the boulders and grow bananas — and tell your friends in Europe and America to do likewise…”

–Tony Judt, The New York Times, 22 June, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/opinion/22judt.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Finally, Don’t Miss this Upcoming Local Event:

Sunday, June 28, 2-4 PM
Peace Vigil to support President Obama’s efforts to freeze settlements and get a Palestinian state alongside Israel
Third Street Promenade at Santa Monica Blvd.
Sponsorede by Jews for Peace between Israelis and Palestinians (J-PIP)

Join Jews for Peace between Israelis and Palestinians (J- PIP) in a vigil to support President Obama’s goal of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As American Jews, we recognize that 42 years of occupation and ruling over 4 million Palestinians against their will, Has not given Israelis peace and security, and never will.
Israel and its people’s desire for peace and security can only be achieved, when the Palestinians also have peace and security in their own sovereign and viable state alongside Israel.
We call upon President Obama to do all in his power to ensure that this peace vision will be implemented as soon as possible.  First steps include:

• Settlement expansion on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem halted.
• Settlement outposts demolished.
• Checkpoints and roadblocks that do not contribute to Israel’s security removed.
• Gaza blockade lifted; and crossings open.
• Harassment of Gaza fishermen ended
  
• Rockets attack on Israeli civilians from Gaza stopped.
  

J PIP will supply pro-peace, nonviolent, non-defamatory signs
We welcome everyone who shares J-PIP’s vision of a sovereign and viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Support this important VIGIL.

Info: www.J-PIP.org
Sponsored: Jews for Peace between Israelis and Palestinians (J-PIP)

Israel’s South Africa Moment and other Recent News

EU's approach: Israel suffers no consequences for its actions and the Palestinians are generously granted the right to barely survive. (Pepijn van Houwelingen, link to EI)

Our South Africa Moment has Arrived

“As Israel shifts steadily to the fanatic, racist right, as the latest parliamentary election results have shown, Palestinians under its control are increasingly being brutalized by its escalating colonial and apartheid policies, designed to push them out of their homeland to make a self-fulfilling prophecy out of the old Zionist canard of ‘a land without a people.’ In parallel, international civil society, according to numerous indicators, is reaching a turning point in its view of Israel as a pariah state acting above the law of nations and in its effective action, accordingly, to penalize and ostracize it as it did to apartheid South Africa…”

–Omar Barghouti, The Electronic Intifada, 19 March, 2009

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20907

Euros do not buy the Palestinians political rights

“The carnage of Israel’s recent invasion of Gaza spurred great numbers of dismayed Europeans to participate in demonstrations against the war. In major cities such as Madrid, Brussels, Rome, Berlin and London, tens of thousands took part in demonstrations to make clear to their governments that what was happening was unacceptable. Yet, their objections to Israel’s massive use of deadly force were not reflected in the declarations and actions of their countries, as represented by Europe’s most significant political body, the European Union, which did not alter its policy of status quo relations with Israel.

It is true that the EU did condemn Israel’s conduct (always mentioned in conjunction with Palestinian rocket fire) and called for an immediate ceasefire, something which the United States unsurprisingly fell short of. In addition, various members of the European Parliament expressed their outrage over the destruction of Gaza. British liberal-democrat Chris Davies, for example, said during a 14 January parliamentary debate that the war was ‘evil’ and that Israel had ‘turned Gaza into hell’ with its ’21st-century killing machines.’

Despite these and other remarks, however, the EU undertook no action that could have been perceived as even vaguely critical of Israel and much effort was put into not ’singling out’ the country…”
–Pepijn van Houwelingen, The Electronic Intifada, 23 March, 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10416.shtml

Democracy Now!: Israel Promises Internal Probe After Soldiers Describe Civilian Killings, Lax Rules of Engagement in Gaza Attack

“JUAN GONZALEZ: The Israeli Military Advocate General has for the first time called for criminal inquiries into the conduct of Israeli troops in Gaza. The request came in response to soldiers’ testimonies that described loose rules of engagement, troops firing on unarmed civilians, and troops intentionally vandalizing property during the three-week assault on Gaza. The soldiers’ accounts are published in the Israeli daily Haaretz and based on statements made a month ago by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio that the incidents would be examined and added, quote, ‘We have the most moral army in the world.’

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now on the line from Gaza by Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass.

Amira, welcome to Democracy Now! The Haaretz newspaper describing this as a several day exposé, Israeli soldiers in their own words, talk about its significance.

AMIRA HASS: Its significance, of course, is that the soldiers actually confirm what Palestinians have been telling for the past three months, and journalists who listen to Palestinians and believe Palestinians and know their work of taking affidavits and testimonies from Palestinians have done so during the last three months. This is the main importance, because it’s—we don’t know the exact locations of this.

And it’s not the only—it’s not the only incident. Some Israelis might get the impression that the soldiers who spoke spoke about the only incident of killing civilians and of very lenient—lenient rules of engagement, and this is not true. The whole attack—the three weeks of attack were characterized by these attacks on—almost indiscriminate attacks on civilians, attacks on people who carried white flags, attacks on rescue teams, not to mention the attacks from the air at whole civilian neighborhoods.

So I would say that—of course, it was not my report. Haaretz did a great job at putting a lot of emphasis to this testimonies of soldiers. It drew attention to what many Israelis managed to ignore during the last three months…”

–Democracy Now!, 20 March, 2009

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/20/israel_promises_internal_probe_after_soldiers

See Also:

Palestinian Doctor, Peace Advocate Recounts Israeli Attack on Home that Killed 3 Daughters, Niece

–Democracy Now!, 20 March, 2009

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/20/palestinian_doctor_peace_advocate_recounts_israeli

Corrie: Rachel, Tristan & Palestine

By Cindy Corrie and Craig Corrie

“We thank all who continue to remember Rachel and who, on this sixth anniversary of her stand in Gaza, renew their own commitments to human rights, justice and peace in the Middle East. The tributes and actions in her memory are a source of inspiration to us and to others.

Friday, 13 March, we learned of the tragic injury to American activist Tristan Anderson. Tristan was shot in the head with a tear gas canister in Nilin village in the West Bank when Israeli forces attacked a demonstration opposing the construction of the annexation wall through the village’s land. On the same day, a Nilin resident was shot in the leg with live ammunition. Four residents of Nilin have been killed in the past eight months as villagers and their supporters have courageously demonstrated against the Apartheid Wall deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice — a wall that will ultimately absorb one-quarter of the village’s remaining land.

Those who have died are 10-year-old child Ahmed Mousa, shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29 July 2008; Yousef Amira (17), shot with rubber-coated steel bullets on 30 July 2008; Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) and Mohammed Khawaje (20), both shot and killed with live ammunition on 8 December 2008. On this anniversary, Rachel would want us all to hold Tristan Anderson and his family and these Palestinians and their families in our thoughts and prayers, and we ask everyone to do so.

We are writing this message from Cairo where we returned after a visit to Gaza with the Code Pink delegation from the United States. Fifty-eight women and men successfully passed through Rafah crossing on Saturday, 7 March to challenge the border closures and siege and to celebrate International Women’s Day with the strong and courageous women of Gaza…”

–The Electronic Intifada, 17 March 2009

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20896

Gaza Death Toll Exceeds 850 While Propaganda “Bombardment” Continues

New York, US, 30 December 2008. (Anonymous; posted on The Electronic Intifada)

For more images of protest worldwide, see http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10101.shtml

Latest Update from Al Jazeera: “The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 854 and more than 3,650 injured as the Israeli offensive entered its third week…”

–Al Jazeera English, 11 January, 2009

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200911084430400848.html

Also from Al Jazeera: Global Protests Condemn Gaza War

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200919123947912684.html

The corpses of members of the al-Daya family are pulled from the rubble of their Gaza City home which was destroyed in an Israeli attack, 6 January 2009. (Mohamed al-Zanon/MaanImages, posted on EI)

Is Israel Winning the ‘Media War’ over Gaza?

“…Israel never won the media war in the United States for, frankly, there was never one to begin with. Yet somehow, millions of people around the world managed to read through the filters, the propaganda, the perplexing logic, the Maxim cover pages, and took to the streets in a collective act of passion and dismay, without billion-dollar media crafters ‘tightly controlling’ their every move, scripting their chants or directing their hoarse voices: We are all Palestinians and ‘with our souls, with our blood, we will die for you Gaza’…”

–Ramzy Baroud, 9 January, 2009

http://www.ramzybaroud.net/articles.php?id=382544dfab20804983602d76dd983deb&mode=details&offset=0&browse_category=4772301

or http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20221

See Also:

In U.S., war of words over Gaza

“As war rages between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and President-elect Barack Obama counts down the days until he has to deal directly with the conflict as the leader of the free world, a war to control the message is raging at home. And it’s unusually fierce.This week, some jarring events made headlines and illustrated the nature of that war:

– Hugely popular comedian Jon Stewart, who is Jewish – birth name, Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz – was lauded by the Muslim Public Affairs Council this week for a scathing ‘Daily Show’ segment entitled, ‘Israel Invades Gaza … Missile Tov!’…”

–Carla Marinucci, The San Francisco Chronicle, 10 January, 2009

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/10/MNGU156LEQ.DTL&type=printable

Watch Jon Stewart’s take on the Gaza Bombardment here: http://www.thankyoujonstewart.com/

Democracy Now!: Former Amb. Martin Indyk vs. Author Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel’s Assault on Gaza and the US Role in the Conflict

“The Israeli assault on Gaza is entering its thirteenth day. Some 700 Palestinians have been killed, with many thousands more wounded, and a humanitarian crisis is mounting. Ten Israelis have died, four by ‘friendly fire.’ A ceasefire has not been reached, and the offensive continues. We host a debate between Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs during the Clinton administration, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and author of, Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East, and Norman Finkelstein, author of several books, including The Holocaust Industry, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and Beyond Chutzpah…”

–Democracy Now!, 8 January, 2009

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/8/former_amb_martin_indyk_vs_author

Also check out the following highly informative articles from ZNet and The Electronic Intifada:

Criticism of Israel’s War Crimes Mounts

“…Yesterday, Amnesty International also accused Israeli soldiers of using Palestinian civilians as human shields – a charge Israel has repeatedly levelled against Hamas...”

–Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 9 January, 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10153.shtml

Statement Of Special Raporteur For The Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967

“…Most accounts of the temporary ceasefire indicate that it was a major Israeli use of lethal force on November 4, 2008 that brought the ceasefire to a de facto end, leading directly to increased frequency of rocket fire from Gaza. It is also relevant that Hamas repeatedly offered to extend the ceasefire, even up to ten years, provided that Israel would lift the blockade. These diplomatic possibilities were, as far as can be assessed, not explored by Israel…”

–Richard Falk, ZNet, 11 January, 2009

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20214

And Finally:

What You Don’t Know About Gaza

“NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about ‘restoring Israel’s deterrence,’ as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: ‘The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.’

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming ‘Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East.’”

–The New York Times, 7 January, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08khalidi.html

Peres: Obama ‘very impressed’ by Arab League peace plan; Sabra and Shatila ‘animated documentary’

“LONDON – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama proclaimed himself ‘very impressed’ with the Arab League’s peace plan when he discussed it with President Shimon Peres during a brief visit to Israel four months ago, Peres said Tuesday.

Peres, who had just arrived in London for an official visit, made the comment in interviews to be published in the British media. He was responding to questions about whether he thought Obama would advance the Middle East peace process in general and the Arab League’s plan in particular.

But he denied a Sunday Times report earlier this week which claimed that Obama had said Israel would be ‘crazy’ to reject the Arab initiative…”

–Anshel Pfeffer, Ha’aretz, November 19 2008

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1038636.html

War, death and animation: Cartoon film stirs Israel’s conscience

“Until a matter of months ago, very few Israelis realised that their army fired flares to light up Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps while Lebanese Christian militiamen committed the notorious massacre of Palestinian civilians there in 1982.

But Ari Folman, who as a 19-year-old soldier fired some of the flares, makes their descent through the sky over Beirut’s beachfront one of the recurring images of Waltz With Bashir, his ‘animated documentary’ that premiers in Britain this week.

In Israel, the film has rekindled discussion about the divisive invasion of Lebanon that was initially billed by Ariel Sharon, who was defence minister at the time, as a limited push to halt PLO rocket attacks, and the extent of Israeli responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre where the estimated number of victims ranged from 700 to more than 3,000. Folman has said he had no idea the massacre was being committed when he shot the flares.

The killings by Phalangist militiamen dispatched into the camps by Israel came after their leader, Bashir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, was assassinated in a bombing wrongly blamed on Palestinians. An Israeli state commission of inquiry set up as a result of a tide of public protest in the massacre’s wake found that Mr Sharon, today comatose from a stroke nearly three years ago, bore ‘personal responsibility’ for not having foreseen the danger that the Phalangists would commit the slaughter. He was forced to give up the defence portfolio, something that did not prevent him from being elected as premier in 2001 and re-elected in 2003. Lebanon, for its part, has never seriously investigated the massacre…”

–Ben Lynfield, The Independent, November 17, 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-death-and-animation-cartoon-film-stirs-israels-conscience-1021732.html

Israel Opens Gaza Border; Rahm Emanuel Apologizes for Father’s Remarks

Israel Briefly Opens Gaza Border Crossing

“Israel temporarily opened a border crossing with Gaza today to allow a limited supply of humanitarian aid to reach the territory. Thirty trucks, including eleven from the United Nations, were allowed to travel into Gaza. On Friday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency announced it had run out of food and was unable to replenish storage facilities because of the Israeli blockade. The UN provides food aid to 750,000 Palestinians. Israel says the blockade is needed because Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets at nearby Israeli towns.”

–Democracy Now, Nov 17, 2008

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/17/headlines#8

Obama aide apologises to US-Arabs

“Benjamin Emanuel told an Israeli newspaper that his son, who is Jewish, would ‘obviously influence the president to be pro-Israel’. He also referred to Arabs in a way which a leading Arab-American group called an ‘unacceptable smear’. A spokesman for Rahm Emanuel said he had called the group to apologise.

Mr Emanuel also offered to meet members of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In the interview last week with the Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv, Israeli-born Benjamin Emanuel talked about his son’s new job.

Anger at remarks

He said: ‘Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House’…”

–BBC, Nov 14, 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7729046.stm

See also:

Rahm Emanuel Apologizes for Paternal Insult of Arabs

“Exactly 48 years ago in Atlantic City (on Nov. 16, 1960), Rabbi Bernard Bergman, president of the Religious Zionists of America, made a plea to President-elect John F. Kennedy: Time to get the Israelis and the Arabs together for some peace negotiating. Not a bad idea after two wars in 12 years. Specifically, the rabbi said, Kennedy, once president, should do everything in his power to get then-Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to the same table. Bergman was addressing the annual National Convention of the Religious Zionists of America at the Chelsea Hotel in Atlantic City.

Wonderful sentiments and worthy aims, you might tell yourself. Especially in light of what we know happened in the intervening 48 years. Imagine if Kennedy had taken just such initiative. He didn’t. He wasn’t interested in the Middle East.

But wait. There was something more about those wonderful sentiments by the rabbi, once he got done with the obvious. According to an account in The New York Times, ‘Rabbi Bergman said the Arab countries would benefit from Israel’s great store of trained personnel if they abandoned their “foolhardy and nonsensical program of bestiality, venom and rancor toward Israel.” ‘

Was the rabbi kidding us? Bestiality? It gets worse…”

–Pierre Tristam, About.com Guide to Middle East Issues, Nov 16, 2008

http://middleeast.about.com/b/2008/11/16/rahm-emanuel-apologizes-for-paternal-insult-of-arabs.htm

Mahmoud Darwish: The New Yorker and Other Tributes

A young Mahmoud Darwish in Cairo. (Al Akhbar)

“The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died Saturday from complications of major heart surgery, in Houston, Texas. Darwish, born in 1941, was also a newspaperman, an activist, and a drafter of the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence. Darwish spent much of his life in exile, but he remained stubbornly attached to his homeland. In his poetry, he used its landscape to describe the struggles of his people and his feelings on life, love, and death. Though a polyglot, he wrote in Arabic; his work quickly became popular, and has been translated into twenty languages. In 2000, the Israeli education minister proposed that Darwish be taught in schools, but Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared the country ‘not ready.’ If not then, perhaps now. In 2007, we published Darwish’s poem ‘Remainder of a Life,’ which begins: ‘If I were told: / By evening you will die, / so what will you do until then?” The poet lists a variety of tasks, some quotidian (bathing, shaving), some pleasurable (drinking wine, reading), all described with a rebellious glee. The poem ends:

Then I’d comb my hair and throw away the poem… this poem, in the trash, and put on the latest fashion in Italian shirts, parade myself in an entourage of Spanish violins, and walk to the grave!

That final exclamation point is a salute to an extraordinary life.”

–Jenna Krajeski, The New Yorker, August 11, 2008

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2008/08/mahmoud-darwish.html

See also:

Here the Birds’ Journey Ends

by Mahmoud Darwish English Translation Published in The New Yorker on August 25, 2008

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/08/25/080825po_poem_darwish

More Darwish Tributes:

Mahmoud Darwish: Palestine’s prophet of humanism

Saifedean Ammous, The Electronic Intifada, 12 August 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9758.shtml

A guest of eternity: Mahmoud Darwish in memoriam

Raymond Deane, The Electronic Intifada, 13 August 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9761.shtml

The poetics of Palestinian resistance

As’ad AbuKhalil, The Electronic Intifada, 18 August 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9772.shtml

Failing Darwish’s legacy Sumia Ibrahim, The Electronic Intifada, 19 August 2008 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9774.shtml

Farewell Mahmoud Darwish Sinan Antoon, Al-Ahram Weekly, 14 – 20 August 2008 http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/910/fr1.htm

…and finally, a piece from The Economist, which, in spite of some questionable statements, remains informative:

Obituary: Mahmoud Darwish Aug 21st 2008 From The Economist print edition http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11959317

Palestine In The American Imagination: Religion, Politics And Media

Photo: Senator John McCain is greeted by an Ultr-Orthodox Jewish man as he arrives at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, March 19, 2008. (Source: AP)

“Abstract: A study of the political, religious and cultural factors underlying the pro-Israeli bias apparent in the Western media today, as depicted in the mainstream news and television programmes.

As Palestinians hurriedly buried their loved ones in the Gaza Strip following a deadly Israeli onslaught, which further contributed to Gaza’s worst humanitarian crisis since 1967 [1], US and Israeli celebrities rallied at a Los Angeles benefit concert for the Israeli town of Sderot, located near the border of Gaza. [2] Hollywood movie stars Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, Valerie Harper and comedian Larry Miller mingled with Israeli celebrities such as singer Ninet Tayeb and others. Children from the Israeli town of Sderot, which received the lion’s share of homemade Palestinian rockets, were cheerful nonetheless. Song and dance, interrupted occasionally by solemn messages of support delivered via satellite by both Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates, replaced the cries of sirens the images of huddling families in the town’s shelters. It was a bittersweet moment, that of solidarity, a renewal of the vow made too often, that Israel’s plight is that of America, and Israel’s security is an American priority, and, indeed, ‘God loves those who love Israel’.

Welcome to America’s parallel reality on Israel and Palestine, barefaced in its defying of the notions of commonsense, equality and justice, ever-insistent on peeking at the Arab-Israeli conflict from a looking glass manufactured jointly in the church, in the Congress and in the news room, where the world is reduced to characters interacting in a Hollywood-like movie set: good guys, well groomed and often white-skinned vs. bad guys bearing opposite qualities…”

–Ramzy Baroud, The Palestine Chronicle, June 20, 2008.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/

or

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17970

Remembering the Nakba, 60 years later

“…The Haganah militia entered Beit Affa in the summer of 1948. ‘They arrived at 1:00 am’ Handuma recalls, ‘and started to kill our people. I saw my husband’s cousin axed to death, and an elderly woman being murdered. We hid in our homes, and the killing continued until 7:00 am. Then the Haganah broke down the front doors of our houses and told us all to get out. They separated us, women from men, and then they took the men and blindfolded them, tied their hands together, and forced outside into the hot sun.’ The surviving villagers’ lives were saved when Egyptian troops arrived and drove the Haganah out of Beit Affa. ‘But we had to leave our village,’ says Handuma. ‘We were still afraid for our lives — and for the honor of our girls. The land would have to wait for us…’

Report, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 15 May 2008

http://pchrgaza.ps/files/campaigns/english/gaza_closure/Narratives_10.html

A Mirror on Israel

“Last summer, the Pappe family packed its belongings, rented out its spacious house in Israel and moved to Britain. Ever since his support of an academic boycott on Israel’s universities became public, historian Ilan Pappe, 54, has felt like public enemy number one. Pappe says he had received death threats by phone almost on a daily basis.

Did it not occur to you that calling for an academic boycott on Israel might incite the public against you?

‘I supported the boycott because I believe that without pressure, Israel will not end the occupation. Even before then I reached the conclusion that the peace process enables Israel to stall for time. When in 2003 several international organizations approached me and asked whether I would support the boycott I replied positively’…” 

–Ilan Pappe and Ayelet Negev, YNet News, cited on the Z Communications Site

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16944