Archive for February, 2009
cartoon of the day
Posted: 02/05/2009 by editormary in UncategorizedTags: Israel, Mr Fish, Political cartoons
1
Syd Walker – Smoke, Mirrors and the Fog of Endless War
Posted: 02/05/2009 by editormary in Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Newswire, Palestine, War, ZionismTags: Ariel Sharon, gaza, Hasbara, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Israel, Palestine, Syd Walker, Zionism
A couple of days ago I wrote an article called Humiliating the USA an Israeli Hobby. As the title suggests, it was about the bizarre, inverted power relations between the mighty USA and the tiny State of Israel.
The article hinged on a recent boast by Prime Minister Olmert that he ordered the US President to abstain on Resolution 1860 in the UN Security Council.
I presume that report was accurate. The source was AFP. Major news agencies such as AFP are typically considered ‘reliable’ sources. Even so, we can never assume that any source is 100% reliable. Journalists can make mistakes. Their sources can be mistaken, or lie deliberately.
In the article, I made a brief reference to an older instance of the same type of bragging by an Israeli PM. Back in late 2001, Ariel Sharon was quoted as saying: “don’t worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America” in a conversation with then cabinet member Shimon Peres.
I reported this outrageous Sharon quotation story for two reasons: (1) I believed it was true, and (2) it was relevant to the story as a whole.
But is it really true? Two days ago, I thought so. Now I’m not so sure.
The main reason I’d believed the quotation to be accurate is because it was repeated on a number of websites that in other instances I’ve found to be useful and credible sources of information. In my article, I gave a link to Media Monitors. I could have chosen Mid-East Realities or the Washington Reports on Middle East Affairs. The latter, in particular, has a lot of invaluable material, especially of a historical nature.
I recall reading years ago that the veracity of this quotation is contested – and probably checked out CAMERA’s rebuttal at that time. But I hadn’t found the denial particularly persuasive. CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) is, after all, 100% biased towards Israel. Its own reputation for integrity is very poor.
But now, pushed to look deeper into the origins of this story (prompted by the editor of the Beyond the Fringe website who has a refreshing appetite for accuracy), I’ve learnt more about the original report on which the other reports were based. The story seems to have come from only one source: the Islamic Association For Palestine (IAP). It’s a source that’s clearly biased to the Palestinian cause. That’s not to say it was lying about the story – or in error. But I can’t be sure.
CAMERA claims the Hebrew language radio channel Kol Yisrael – which IAP claimed ran the report of Sharon’s remarks on air – denies that it ever happened. IAP itself is no longer operating; at least, it’s website is down. Not surprising really. In 2006, the pro-Zionist website FrontPageMag.com gloated:
Terrorism expert Steven Emerson characterized IAP as Hamas’ “primary voice in the United States.” The former chief of the FBI’s counter-terrorism department, Oliver Revell, called IAP “a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants.”
In December 2004, a federal judge in Chicago ruled that IAP (along with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, or HLF), was liable for a $156 million lawsuit for having aided and abetted Hamas in the West Bank killing of a 17-year-old American citizen named David Boim. IAP thereafter had its assets frozen by the U.S. government and was shut down on grounds that it was funding terrorism.
Hmmm. That’s one way to knock out ideological enemies, I guess. Of course, if Palestinian minors were ever valued on a similar basis, the US national debt would double overnight.
All in all, I now feel it’s not possible to use the Sharon quotation with confidence that’s it’s accurate. There are too many unknowns. At least, that’s my current view. I reserve the right to change it again if new information becomes available.
This is not an unusual case. It’s quite typical of the difficulties of working through conflicting narratives of the conflict over Palestine, trying to make sense out of apparent confusion.
I find the following distinctions are useful:
1. Information (accurate and truthful)
2. Misinformation (inaccurate, although promulgated with truthful intent)
3. Disinformation (inaccurate and promulgated with dishonest intent)
It’s common to encounter all three of these in discussions about Palestine and Zionism. Working out which is which is too time consuming for most people, even if they had sufficient interest.
Of course, ‘most people’ believe (or hope) that they don’t need to do their own analysis. They trust the mass media to do it for them. That’s a big problem. The western mass media’s longstanding Zionist bias is shocking.
Another recent case of pro-Palestinian misinformation – or possibly disinformation – was a video that flashed around the web in early January. I saw it first on another website and reposted in A Surgical Strike: The Palestinian View on January 2nd.
Almost immediately, a local Zionist posted a comment complaining that I was using fake material. This is what he wrote:
“What no acknowledgment Syd that this video has now been removed from all other credible sites on the web, including pro-palestinian, because it is a fraud which shows the explosion of Hamas rockets at an Hamas rally in 2005” Update: THIS VIDEO IS MISLEADINGI was deceived by the video I grabbed and uploaded from here. The video was not taken on January 1st 2009. It was not taken in a civilian market, and it was not the result of an IDF air strike.
This video is from September 23rd 2005, and was taken in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. A Hamas pick-up truck carrying Qassam rockets detonated by mistake during a Hamas rally, leaving at least 15 killed and dozens more injured.
In recent days there has been some debate about the video in question by wiser heads than mine. The consensus seems to be that the footage was indeed not from the current conflict in Gaza. Score One to the Zionists.
However, I was only concerned in my post to present an indication of the utter horror on the ground from a Palestinian perspective – to contrast it with an Israeli-style high-tech, sanitized and unemotional perspective on killing fellow human beings. It was fairly easy to find another, valid current video from the conflict as a replacement. That’s what I did. I didn’t post the annoying Zionist comment at the time. This is my blog and I am not here to do favours to Zionist apologists. They don’t get a bad run for their anti-human views in the mass media. I intend to help to redress the imbalance.
Nevertheless, honesty matters. It matters a lot. In the end, honesty is crucial to those who want a healed world based on truth and reconciliation. Hence this article.
It’s worth noting that, at the time this video was first posted, Israel was blocking all mass media’s access to Gaza. Reports of the horror inside the crowded strip of land were necessarily scant and below professional standards. That’s what un-embedded journalism from a real war zone is like.
As for Ariel Sharon and his notorious brag, who knows whether he said it or not? Even if it’s possible to get an accurate transcript of the initial radio report (I doubt that), the story itself could have been based on a false or exaggerated report.
The comments allegedly made by Ariel Sharon were allegedly directed at Shimon Peres. Perhaps they’re the only ones who know for sure what was said?
Sharon is not talking these days. President ‘Sir’ Peres can talk (and some!), but has a track record of lying on crucial issues that’s at least half a century long. The ‘facts’ of that particular matter may never be clear.
There’s something else to bear in mind. Even if Sharon’s ‘We control America’ quotation is disinformation (that is, a deliberate lie), we can’t necessarily conclude Palestinians are authors of the deceit. It’s a possibility of course, but it’s also possible that Zionists seed these false quotations, rather like the Martin Luther King fake quotation that I reported on previously.
Why would they do that? Why might some of the Zionist strategists think it’s a good idea to have quotations circulating widely on the web that make Sharon sound even more obnoxious than he actually was?
I can think of a few reasons. First, they will assume that most people will never see the quotes, which would be generally avoided by the mass media (even if accurate). Those who do see the quotations fall into a few camps. There’ll be those who think it’s fine that Israel does control America. Others will be shocked – but scared to say anything about it. In their case, the quotation may help freeze them up with just a little more fear.
Then there are folk like me, who are very pissed off indeed with the Zionists and what they’ve been up to. We’re so angry, in fact, that we blog about these subjects regularly. Quotes like Sharon’s ‘We control America’ are tempting to use if they seem credible.
IF these quotations turn out to be false, it gives the Zionists a ‘gotcha’ moment.
On a bulletin board or forum, a discussion about the horrors of Israeli strikes on Gaza can easily degenerate into a squabble over the accuracy of a single quotation. The very concern that many people have (and rightly so!) for accuracy and truth, can be used to distract us from the really significant facts of the moment.
A Truth & Reconciliation Commission was established in post-Apartheid South Africa to help its people face up to a sordid past and establish a truthful basis for peaceful co-existence.
The equivalent in post-Apartheid Palestine will face a challenge of considerably greater complexity.
http://sydwalker.info/blog/2009/01/18/smoke-mirrors-and-the-fog-of-endless-war/
thanks to Niki for highlighting this! http://nikiraapana.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-01-23T12%3A43%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=7
The progressive movement against the war of occupation in Iraq is a reason for hope, as is resistance to free trade agreements in Latin America. Those are moments that we have to celebrate: that people still find the resolve and energy to resist.
Danny Glover, American actor
Danny Glover, American actor
The Wounds of Gaza
Posted: 02/04/2009 by editormary in Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Human Rights, Newswire, Palestine, War, ZionismTags: DIME, gaza, IDF, Israel, Israel's war against Gaza, Unconventional Weapons, War, weapons, Zionism
Two Surgeons from the UK, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang, managed to get into Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Here they describe their experiences, share their views, and conclude that the people of Gaza are extremely vulnerable and defenseless in the event of another attack.
The wounds of Gaza are deep and multi-layered. Are we talking about the Khan Younis massacre of 5,000 in 1956 or the execution of 35,000 prisoners of war by Israel in 1967? Yet more wounds of the First Intifada, when civil disobedience by an occupied people against the occupiers resulted in massive wounded and hundreds dead? We also cannot discount the 5,420 wounded in southern Gaza alone since 2000. Hence what we are referring to below are only that of the invasion as of 27 December 2008,
Over the period of 27 December 2008 to the ceasefire of 18 Jan 2009, it was estimated that a million and a half tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza Strip. Gaza is 25 miles by 5 miles and home to 1.5 million people. This makes it the most crowded area in the whole world. Prior to this Gaza has been completely blockaded and starved for 50 days. In fact since the Palestinian election Gaza has been under total or partial blockade for several years.
On the first day of the invasion, 250 persons were killed. Every single police station in Gaza was bombed killing large numbers of police officers. Having wiped out the police force attention was turned to non government targets. Gaza was bombed from the air by F16 and Apache helicopters, shelled from the sea by Israeli gunboats and from the land by tank artillery. Many schools were reduced to rubble, including the American School of Gaza, 40 mosques, hospitals, UN buildings, and of course 21,000 homes, 4,000 of which were demolished completely. It is estimated that 100,000 people are now homeless.
Israeli weapons
The weapons used apart from conventional bombs and high explosives also include unconventional weapons of which at least 4 categories could be identified.
Phosphorus Shells and bombs
The bombs dropped were described by eye witnesses as exploding at high altitude scattering a large canopy of phosphorus bomblets which cover a large area.
During the land invasion, eyewitnesses describe the tanks shelling into homes first with a conventional shell. Once the walls are destroyed, a second shell – a phosphorus shell is then shot into the homes. Used in this manner the phosphorus explodes and burns the families and the homes. Many charred bodies were found among burning phosphorus particles.
One area of concern is the phosphorus seems to be in a special stabilizing agent. This results in the phosphorus being more stable and not completely burning out. Residues still cover the fields, playground and compounds. They ignite when picked up by curious kids, or produce fumes when farmers return to water their fields. One returning farming family on watering their field met with clouds of fumes producing epistaxis. Thus the phosphorus residues probably treated with a stabilizer also act as anti-personnel weapons against children and make the return to normal life difficult without certain hazards.
Surgeons from hospitals are also reporting cases where after primary laparotomy for relatively small wounds with minimal contamination find on second look laparotomy increasing areas of tissue necrosis at about 3 days. Patients then become gravely ill and by about 10 days those patients needing a third relook encounter massive liver necrosis. This may or may not be accompanied by generalized bleeding , kidney failure and heart failure and death. Although acidosis, liver necrosis and sudden cardiac arrest due to hypocalcemia are known to be a complication of white phosphorus it is not possible to attribute these complications as being due to phosphorus alone.
There is real urgency to analyze and identify the real nature of this modified phosphorus as to its long term effect on the people of Gaza. There is also urgency in collecting and disposing of the phosphorus residues littering the entire Gaza Strip. As they give off toxic fumes when coming into contact with water, once the rain falls the whole area would be polluted with acid phosphorus fumes. Children should be warned not to handle and play with these phosphorus residues.
Heavy Bombs
The use of DIME (dense inert material explosives) were evident, though it is unsure whether depleted uranium were used in the south. In the civilian areas, surviving patients were found to have limbs truncated by DIME, since the stumps apart from being characteristically cut off in guillotine fashion also fail to bleed. Bomb casing and shrapnel are extremely heavy.
Fuel Air Explosives
Bunker busters and implosion bombs have been used . There are buildings especially the 8 storey Science and Technology Building of the Islamic University of Gaza which had been reduced to a pile of rubble no higher than 5-6 feet.
Silent Bombs
People in Gaza described a silent bomb which is extremely destructive. The bomb arrives as a silent projectile at most with a whistling sound and creates a large area where all objects and living things are vaporized with minimal trace. We are unable to fit this into conventional weapons but the possibility of new particle weapons being tested should be suspected.
Executions
Survivors describe Israeli tanks arriving in front of homes asking residents to come out. Children, old people and women would come forward and as they were lined up they were just fired on and killed. Families have lost tens of their members through such executions. The deliberate targeting of unarmed children and women is well documented by human right groups in the Gaza Strip over the past month.
Targeting of ambulances
Thirteen ambulances had been fired upon killing drivers and first aid personnel in the process of rescue and evacuation of the wounded.
Cluster bombs
The first patients wounded by cluster were brought into Abu Yusef Najjar Hospital. Since more than 50% of the tunnels have been destroyed, Gaza has lost part of her lifeline. These tunnels contrary to popular belief are not for weapons, though small light weapons could have been smuggled through them. However they are the main stay of food and fuel for Gaza.
Palestinians are beginning to tunnel again. However it became clear that cluster bombs were dropped on to the Rafah border and the first was accidentally set of by tunneling. Five burns patients were brought in after setting off a booby trap kind of device.
Death toll
As of 25 January 2009, the death toll was estimated at 1,350 with the numbers increasing daily. This is due to the severely wounded continuing to die in hospitals. 60% of those killed were children.
Severe injuries
The severely injured numbered 5,450, with 40% being children. These are mainly large burns and polytrauma patients. Single limb fractures and walking wounded are not included in these figures.
Through our conversations with doctors and nurses the word holocaust and catastrophe were repeatedly used. The medical staff all bear the psychological trauma of the past month living though the situation and dealing with mass casualties which swamped their casualties and operating rooms. Many patients died in the Accident and Emergency Department while awaiting treatment. In a district hospital, the orthopaedic surgeon carried out 13 external fixations in less than a day.
It is estimated that of the severely injured, 1,600 will suffer permanently disabilities. These include amputations, spinal cord injuries, head injuries, large burns with crippling contractures.
Special factors
The death and injury toll is especially high in this recent assault due to several factors:
No escape: As Gaza is sealed by Israeli troops, no one can escape the bombardment and the land invasion. There is simply no escape. Even within the Gaza Strip itself, movement from north to south is impossible as Israeli tanks had cut the northern half of Gaza from the south. Compare this with the situation in Lebanon 1982 and 2006, when it was possible for people to escape from an area of heavy bombardment to an area of relative calm – there was no such is option for Gaza.
Gaza is very densely populated. It is eerie to see that the bombs used by Israel have been precision bombs. They have a hundred percent hit rate on buildings which are crowded with people. Examples are the central market, police stations. Schools, the UN compounds used as a safety shelter from bombardment, mosques (40 of them destroyed), and the homes of families who thought they were safe as there were no combatants in them and high rise flats where a single implosion bomb would destroy multiple families. This pattern of consistent targeting of civilians makes one suspect that the military targets are but collateral damage, while civilians are the primary targets.
The quantity and quality of the ammunition being used as described above.
Gaza’s lack of defense against the modern weapons of Israel. She has no tanks, no planes, no anti-aircraft missiles against the invading army. We experienced that first hand in a minor clash of Israeli tank shells versus Palestinian AK47 return fire. The forces were simply unmatched.
Absence of well constructed bomb shelters for civilians. Unfortunately these will also be no match for bunker busters possessed by the Israeli Army.
Conclusion
Taking the above points into consideration, the next assault on Gaza would be just as disastrous. The people of Gaza are extremely vulnerable and defenseless in the event of another attack. If the International Community is serious about preventing such a large scale of deaths and injuries in the future, it will have to develop a some sort of defense force for Gaza. Otherwise, many more vulnerable civilans will continue to die.
Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang
(Franklin, thanks for sending!!)
This is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.
Euripides
Nicola Nasser – Gaza New Siege Mechanism
Posted: 02/04/2009 by editormary in Features, Newswire, Palestine, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, War, ZionismTags: Abu Mazen, EU, gaza, Hamas, Israel, Israel's war against Gaza, Palestine, PLO, Rebuilding of Gaza, Reconstruction, Siege of Gaza, Zionism
The rebuilding of Gaza has become the latest siege weapon. The Israeli occupation, the US that had backed its offensive, and the EU which did nothing to stop it are conspiring to turn the reconstruction process into a means to produce a suitable “peace partner” while the Arab summit in Kuwait hopes to use it to bring about Palestinian reconciliation. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA) government is urging all parties and others to look to it as the sole channel for administering the construction process on the grounds that it is the government formed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation that is recognised as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Soon we will see that freezing reconstruction will become the tool of all those parties for extracting from the resistance what they have been unable to gain from three weeks of warfare and the long blockade that preceded it.
Israel, the occupying power, is determined to keep a tight grip on the reconstruction process, which is why it sustained its closure of the border crossing following its “unilateral” ceasefire. Indeed, this is why it declared the ceasefire unilaterally: it did not want to be bound by any agreement — the Egyptian initiative or any other framework — that would oblige it to lift the embargo, if only partially, in order to facilitate reconstruction. Tel Aviv has also been seeking to obtain “guarantees” from international agencies such as UNWRA. On 19 January Reuters reported that Western diplomats revealed that Israel had asked the UN and other agencies to submit itemised lists of the goods, equipment and staff that they intend to send into Gaza, whether for urgent relief or for the more long-term reconstruction process. According to these sources, Israel plans to keep close tabs on these processes by insisting that the various agencies obtain its approval in advance for every project. One of the conditions for that approval will be that the project will not benefit Hamas or its government in Gaza. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has appointed Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog as coordinator of the Gaza reconstruction drive.
The US not only fully supports Israel on this; it is open about using the reconstruction process to help the PA reassert its authority and influence in Gaza. The EU is equally frank in its approval. EU External Relations Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner made clear that the EU would not contribute to reconstruction unless Gaza produced a viable peace partner and that it would not make aid available to a government led by Hamas. A high-level European diplomat was reported by Reuters as saying that this was “a recipe for failure”. “Let’s be realistic. If the PA is going to be responsible, its leadership and institutions have to exist on the ground. Right now none of that does,” he said.
It is patently clear that to Tel Aviv, Washington and Brussels the assertion of PA rule over Gaza is the strongest argument for holding off reconstruction as a Damocles sword over Gaza, and for the occupying power this condition is its strongest “guarantee” for sustaining its grip on that sword. The fear now is that Israel and the international powers that have helped it to perpetuate its occupation since 1967 will use a Palestinian façade buttressed by official Arab support to stage a repeat in Gaza of the Iraq experience in the wake of the 1991 war when reconstruction and development were perpetually deferred in order to further weaken the country preparatory to toppling the regime through the invasion that took place in 2003. It may or may not be a coincidence that the Israeli invasion of Gaza ended almost on the same date that the war against Iraq started 18 years ago. Nor does it bode well for the aftermath of a “regime change” scenario in Gaza that Iraq’s infrastructure today, six days after the Saddam regime was toppled, is worse than it was beforehand.
The attempt to engineer such a scenario can be seen in PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s appeal to the Arab summit last week to channel the reconstruction process through the PA and its institutions, an appeal echoed by World Bank President Robert Zoellick who met with Abbas on the fringes of the summit in Kuwait. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and other Western leaders had proposed creating a temporary international committee to oversee the funding and organisation of the reconstruction effort. However, Abbas and his supporters rejected such a mechanism on the grounds that “it presumes that the separation between Gaza and the West Bank will continue,” as acting PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad put it, adding that international donors who are eager to reconstruct Gaza “will risk deepening the Palestinian division by ignoring the role of the PA”.
The PA’s stance, if followed, would condemn Arab pledges made in Kuwait — as well as any pledges made in a possible international conference on the reconstruction of Gaza called for by Egypt, the PA and the EU president — to remain pending until such time as a “viable peace partner” secures a steady seat in Gaza.
Although the participants at the Kuwaiti summit stressed the need for the reconstruction of Gaza in principle, they failed to reach an agreement over the mechanism. Differences between leaders obstructed a proposal to create a reconstruction fund and the most participants managed to agree upon was to make reconstruction contingent upon Palestinian reconciliation, a task they designated to Arab foreign ministers without setting a date or place for a ministerial meeting for this purpose, leaving us with the question as to when and how Arab ministers are to succeed where their heads of state failed.
Of course this procrastination through delegating makes the pledge to reconstruct Gaza barely worth the paper it was written on and will probably consign it to the same oblivion fated for so many other Arab summit resolutions. One of those forgotten resolutions was that adopted by the emergency Arab summit in Cairo in October 2000 calling for the creation of an Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem Fund for the purpose of reconstructing Palestinian infrastructure, especially in the sectors of healthcare, education, agriculture and housing. Apparently Arab leaders in Kuwait did not wish to recall that that resolution did not restrict the distribution of funds through the channel of the PA but also provided for other channels such as UNWRA, the Egyptian and Qatari Red Crescents, the Jordanian Royal Philanthropic Organisation, the UN Arab Gulf Programme and other such regional and international humanitarian agencies. Perhaps, too, they did not want to remind anyone that when that earlier resolution was passed there was no “Hamas problem” behind which are hiding those who do not really want to reconstruct the occupied territories, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank.
The underlying reason why the Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem Fund was not adopted by the Kuwaiti summit as a mechanism for the reconstruction of Gaza is that the urgent humanitarian mission has been politicised whereas it should remain above the political fray between Palestinians, Arabs, foreign powers and everyone else whose voices are loud enough to drown out the appeals of those in need. There is nothing to debate about humanitarian relief. The Israeli offensive destroyed all the civil infrastructure of the government in Gaza on the grounds that it served as bases for Hamas whereas in fact it was PA infrastructure paid for by taxpayers in donor countries. Whole residential quarters were flattened, totally destroying 4,000 homes and severely damaging around 16,000 more. There are now some 100,000 civilians in urgent need of shelter, temporarily accommodated in some 12 refuges opened by UNWRA in schools that were also targeted by Israeli guns and therefore need to be repaired as well. In addition, agricultural land ruined by bombardment has to be reclaimed, potable water needs to be supplied to half a million Palestinians, electricity has to be restored to about the same number of people, and about 80 per cent of the inhabitants of Gaza are in urgent need of food relief (these are all UN estimates). Any political argument for postponing such urgent aid is morally outrageous.
The Israeli list of “prohibited materials” even before its offensive includes such items as iron, steel and cement, which are now absolutely vital to reconstruction. UN Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes pointed out this self-evident truth in a statement last Tuesday saying that if Israel refuses to allow in construction materials reconstruction cannot begin.
It is equally obvious that to adopt the PA as the sole channel for reconstruction financing is to effectively allow the occupying power, which destroyed Gaza, to supervise reconstruction. It is hardly possible to expect the PA, which is at Israel’s every beck and call, to independently and effectively manage the reconstruction process by remote control from Ramallah, let alone release funding for projects without Israel’s prior approval. Remember that President Abbas, himself, pleaded the difficulty of obtaining an Israeli exit permit on short notice as the reason he did not appear at the Doha summit on Gaza, according to Qatari Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Hamed Ben Jasem Al Thani. Also, only two months ago, Abbas’s government in Ramallah could not disburse salaries to some 70,000 PA government employees who are believed paid to stay home because of the internal Palestinian rift. If, as acting Prime Minister Fayyad repeats on every occasion, the PA is unable to deliver the budgetary allocation to Gaza, which is about half of its total budget, how can that government be relied upon to deliver the funds that have been pledged — or will be pledged — for reconstruction?
Kuwait, for one, acted correctly when instead of waiting for the Arab summit to reach an agreement it donated $34 million directly to UNRWA. Similarly, Norway donated 20 million kroner to organisations capable of reaching civilians directly in Gaza, such as the International Red Cross. Such noble examples confirm the existence of practical, serious channels for meeting urgent humanitarian needs. These should not be made pawn to the demand for the arrival of a Palestinian “peace partner” to Gaza, contrary to the insistence of PA Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki in Kuwait that everything had to be coordinated with the PA “in all fields” before beginning the relief and reconstruction process. If that demand is met, nothing could be more guaranteed to subject the reconstruction process to the whims of the occupying power and turn it into another way to besiege Gaza in order to bring it to its knees.
* The writer is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit on the West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. This article was translated from Arabic and published by Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No. 932, 29 January – 4 February 2009.
Source: http://en.timeturk.com/nicola-nasser-gaza-new-siege-mechanism–377-yazisi.html TimeTurk
Iqbal Tamimi – Alarabiya TV and its USA agenda of media manipulations
Posted: 02/02/2009 by editormary in Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Features, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, War, ZionismTags: alarabiya tv, gaza, Iqbal Tamimi, Israel, Mass media, Palestine, women
The latest of Al Arabiya TV series of betrayals to the ethics of journalism and another move of manipulations of the media came today with a report it has published on its news website.
Al Arabiya claims that Palestinian Mothers are requesting NOT to broadcast images of children killed in Gaza because it causes fear and panic amongst the children in Gaza.
What A heap of Bull media Sh-t.
Before going to disintegrate Al Arabiya’s method of handling the coverage of Current Affairs, I would like to mention that the Foreign Ministry of Israel hailed on its website by Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni a number of Arab journalists and recommend reading their articles regularly, and have their list of names available on the official website of the Ministry as a reference because she considers them as Israel’s ambassadors in the Arab world, for they follow exactly the Israeli line and defend its point of view to the letter. She recommended not only publishing their present articles during the last war, but all their old ones – especially the ones they wrote against Hamas, and guess what? Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, General Manager, Al Arabiya Channel and the former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al- Awsat who happens to hold a US post-graduate degree in mass communications from USA, is on this so-called Honour list.
Regarding Al Arabiya’s report claiming that the women of Gaza complained that what their children see on TV screens of bodies or parts of bodies of Gaza children became a worrying concern and that it should be stopped.
I would like to borrow an old saying of my Palestinian culture book of sarcastic quotes that can be applied in this case, we were told since we were young, ‘if you want to find if a certain claim is a lie, just look how big it is’ and sure enough this lie is extra large, for everybody around the world knows that Gaza still does not have electricity to connect TV sets to, and almost the majority of the homes in Gaza have no living room or TV sets left to watch TV, let alone the fact that most of the families are left with no mothers to complain, and the mothers who were lucky to escape death are preoccupied by other concerns like finding some clean water to drink, or finding a way to visit a half burned child at hospitals, and what piece of furniture to burn next to boil some roots to eat after 19 months of siege and after Israel forces have blown up all the UN buildings that used to have some stored food. All the pictures we received are still excellent evidence that all the dishes that used to capture the signals from TV stations are on the ground half buried under the rubble with the dead bodies. What kind of false media message is Al Arabiya trying to send the world?
This is clearly a desperate attempt to dilute the pain and misery of the people of Gaza for they have committed the sin of choosing Hamas as their political representative which is considered as an anti-USA.
The mothers and children of Gaza are claimed to complain of airing their need and despair and the injustice fallen upon them, but it seems that no Palestinian mother is complaining about the collaboration of the Arab states against them and siding with the Israel and USA.
Since when Al Arabiya has worried about the emotions of women in Gaza or been concerned that the children can’t sleep? How else would the people around the world would know the scale of cruelty and destruction caused by the Israeli state, and how ugly the war was? Is Al Arabiya advising us to create an entertainment program backed with animation and soft music when we scream about such a huge scale of massacres? 60 years of occupation and massacres had no effect on the international conscience because of the media manipulations Al Arabiya and other media adopting Western agenda means of reporting, by considering the dead are no longer important, and only worrying about the preferences of the fragile sensitive emotions of the living. I bet Al Arabiya would prefer a little entertainment instead to wash away the blood of hundreds of children killed without any crime committed but being born Palestinians. Al Arabiya has been reporting about the handmade rockets that fell on Sderot killing nobody but injuring a worktop of a kitchen, but not once it has mentioned that Sderot was the original home for those who were desperately firing homemade rockets more like fireworks because they were desperate after 19 months of siege and being forced to live packed like sardines and pickled in their own sweat together in the most populated area in the world.
Al Arabiya claimed that Palestinian women (generalising as usual) do not want any pictures of the massacred, let’s see who they have claimed they were representing the Palestinian mothers in Gaza and how did they came up with such report, and who were there references….?
They mention two persons, this was not the Gaza mothers point of view, but one person (a male) not a mother as claimed by the article, and one journalist.
So… how can Al Arabiya lie and claim something the mothers of Gaza never said? The manipulations of the media seem to underestimate the intelligence of the viewer and insult Palestinian women who are still mourning their lost ones in the shadows of their wrecked homes, holding tight to bits and pieces of their lost ones, sniffing the scent of their children’s bodies mixed with the smell of white phosphorus.
the article in question: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/02/02/65521.html
No Dancing on Gaza's Graves – Boycott and Protest Batsheva Dance Company
Posted: 02/02/2009 by editormary in Culture and Heritage, Music, Poetry, Events, Newswire, Palestine, Resistance, ZionismTags: Activism, Batsheva Dance Company, BDS campaign, Boycott Israel, gaza, Israel, Omar Barghouti, PACBI, Palestine, solidarity
WRITTEN BY Michelle J. Kinnucan
An Israeli apartheid dance troupe started its North America tour in Houston on Wednesday, January 28, 2009. Between then and March 1, 2009 it will go to fourteen more American and Canadian cities. That troupe, the Batsheva Dance Company, is currently scheduled to perform in Purchase, NY on January 30-31 and then it’s on to (in order): Princeton, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Chicago, IL; Columbus, OH; Ottawa, ON; Ann Arbor, MI; Minneapolis, MN; Vancouver, BC; Santa Barbara, CA; San Diego, CA; Los Angeles, CA; and New York, NY.
As I wrote in The Electronic Intifada last November, the Batsheva Dance Company has been a recipient of Israeli public financing since the 1990s. According to a report in The Independent of London, the dance company has no Arab performers and is “proud to be considered Israel’s leading ambassador.” As I also wrote, “Ohad Naharin, the dance company’s current Director, served in the Israeli army. In a 2005 interview with a Canadian newspaper, Naharin stated that ‘I continue to do my work, while 20 km from me people are participating in war crimes … the ability to detach oneself from the situation — that is what allows one to go on.’ Needless to say, the victims of Israeli ‘war crimes’ cannot avail themselves of the luxury of detachment.” It is particularly egregious that the Batsheva Dance Company is scheduled to perform in Vancouver, British Columbia as part of the 2009 Cultural Olympiad in the run up to the 2010 Olympic Games. Since when is polishing the image of a violent, racist state part of the Olympic spirit?
As Omar Barghouti, a Jerusalem-based freelance choreographer, cultural analyst, and founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (www.PACBI.org) said last month in The Dance Insider: No Israeli dance company “has ever taken a position calling for an end to the occupation, not to mention recognizing UN-sanctioned rights of the refugees or ending racial discrimination against the state’s ‘non-Jewish’ citizens … none of [the dance companies] has ever challenged reserve service in the occupation army, despite the fact that punishment for doing so is minimal in Israel (unlike Germany in the ’30s, say). … Those same dancers are part-time occupation soldiers, manning roadblocks, protecting colonies, evacuating homes and demolishing them, killing children and letting pregnant women die at checkpoints by preventing ambulances [from passing through], letting young bleeding youth bleed to death without medical aid, etcetera. What a bunch of liberal dancers! And what do their institutions do? Nothing.”
I urge American and Canadian Palestinian solidarity activists to use letters, petitions, leaflets, demonstrations, signs, and other nonviolent means to encourage cultural organizations and their patrons to boycott the Batsheva Dance Company and to raise awareness of Israel’s crimes and the BDS campaign to liberate the Palestinian people. Local campaigns are already well underway in Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and other cities, plus the newly formed U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel is spreading the word, too. As Desmond Tutu used to say during the struggle against South African apartheid–which also employed BDS, including cultural boycotts–it’s time join the winning side, the side of justice. Today, that side is the side of the Palestinian people.
For more details on the dance company’s performance schedule please go here or check the web site of their North American booking agent, H-Art Management, at www.h-artmanagement.com/calendar.html.
Michelle J. Kinnucan is a member of Middle East Task Force of Ann Arbor. Click here to contact her. Her writing has previously appeared in CommonDreams.org, Critical Moment, Palestine Chronicle, Arab American News, and elsewhere. Her 2004 investigative report on the Global Intelligence Working Group was featured in Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Seven Stories Pr., 2004) and she contributed a chapter to Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise (Peter Lang, 2006).
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