“‘Viva Palestina’ Aid Convoy Enters Gaza
A humanitarian aid convoy has arrived in the Gaza Strip after departing from Britain over a month ago. On Thursday, over 300 activists with the group Viva Palestina crossed into Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. The group includes several dozen people who took part in the Gaza-bound aid flotilla attacked by Israeli forces on May 31st.
Bulldozer Driver Testifies at Corrie Wrongful Death Trial
A wrongful death case brought by the family of the slain American peace activist Rachel Corrie, meanwhile, has resumed in Israel. Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago as she stood in front of a Palestinian home to help prevent its demolition. An internal Israeli army investigation exonerated the soldiers involved. On Thursday, the driver of the bulldozer testified in court for the first time but spoke from behind a partition to protect his identity. Appearing on CNN International, Rachel Corrie’s mother, Cindy Corrie, criticized the secretive proceedings.
Cindy Corrie: ‘This is the second witness that we’ve seen testify behind a screen. And we felt that it was disassociating in a way. It distanced this person from us. I hoped to see a whole human being today and to hear from a whole human being. Instead, we got the words—sometimes pretty conflicted, pretty confused words—from this person behind the screen.’
In his testimony, the driver said he couldn’t remember several basic details of Rachel Corrie’s killing, including the time of day when it occurred…”
—Democracy Now!, 22 October, 2010
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/22/headlines#4
And From The Electronic Intifada:
The international community’s final test
“…The only way to save the two-state solution is for the Palestinians to declare the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and to demand that the world community recognize it and its borders — as it did in the case of Kosovo.
That would also mean supporting the right of Palestinians to struggle nonviolently to end the occupation of their state. Any future negotiations, therefore, would not be about the right of the Palestinians to have their own sovereign independent state, but rather about how to apply and implement that right.
This would be the true test of the state-building strategy of the United States and the donor community. It would be the real instrument to finally demarcate the difference between support for free Palestinian institutions in a sovereign and viable state, or footing the bill of occupation and using EU and US tax dollars to maintain under various guises what will never amount to anything but an apartheid system denying Palestinians their human and national rights…”
–Mustafa Barghouthi, The Electronic Intifada, 18 October 2010
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11577.shtml
Also from The Electronic Intifada:
Ardent Zionist turns boycott advocate
“…Occupied East Jerusalem (IPS) – A former captain in the Israeli Air Force, previously an ardent Zionist who lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, has been labeled a psychopath and denounced by many Israelis for the moral stand he has taken against the Israeli occupation.
Yonatan Shapira, 38, was fired from his job, has been verbally abused in public, subjected to death threats in newspaper talk-back comments, called a traitor by many Israelis, falsely charged with assaulting Israeli security forces, and interrogated by Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet.
While Israel often gets a lot of negative publicity for its brutal treatment of Palestinians and the inherent racism within its society, there is a growing core of Israeli human rights activists who are challenging government policy — and paying a high price for their courage…”
–Mel Frykberg, The Electronic Intifada, 21 October 2010
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11585.shtml
See Also:
Obama expands his Islamophobia to include Sikhs as well
“US President Barack Obama has ruled out a visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, sacred to Sikhs, because Obama does not want to wear the head-covering that is required as a sign of respect in case it makes him look like a Muslim. From The New York Times:
But the United States has ruled out a Golden Temple visit, according to an American official involved in planning. Temple officials said that American advance teams had gone to Amritsar, the holy city where the temple is located, to discuss a possible visit. But the plan appears to have foundered on the thorny question of how Mr. Obama would cover his head, as Sikh tradition requires, while visiting the temple…”
–Ali Abunimah, 19 October, 2010
USC Students for Justice in Palestine 