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What Didn’t Happen To Gilad Shalit

Lawrence of Cyberia – 20 October 2011

Oh please. When did CNN ever run an article like this, on the difficulty of adjusting to daily life for a newly-released prisoner, about any of the three-quarters of a million Palestinians imprisoned by Israel since 1967?

Looking pale, thin and emotional, Gilad Shalit was reunited with his family Tuesday after more than five years in captivity. Now he faces what is likely to be a bewildering few days, weeks and months as he readjusts to a life of liberty.

While no one yet knows exactly what he went through, other captives’ experiences give an insight into his likely state of mind — and suggest that although he has his freedom, other challenges lie ahead…

Let’s get some perspective here. It might be true that “no one yet knows exactly what he went through”, but the mere fact that he was able to walk to freedom after a quick once-over by Israeli doctors gives us a pretty good idea of some of the things he didn’t go through.

For example, we know that he wasn’t tied up by his captors and beaten so viciously that his testicles had to be surgically removed. Benan Oudeh was 15 years old when that happened to him at the hands of Israeli soldiers who accused him of throwing stones, during the first intifada:

The Defense Ministry a few days ago gave NIS 2.4 million to 28 Palestinians who were tortured by the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service. The payment was made after an out-of-court settlement was reached with the plaintiffs, who agreed that suits brought to the Tel Aviv Magistrate and District courts would be turned down.

One of the plaintiffs, Benan Oudeh, 31, of Qalqilya, arrested a few years ago for throwing stones, told Haaretz yesterday that his testicles were beaten so badly in the interrogation room that they had to be amputated…

— Out-of-court deal awards Palestinians NIS 2.4 million; Ha’aretz, 1 Feb 2006..

And we know, for example, that he wasn’t tied up then violently shaken over and over again by captors who thought shaking was a convenient means of torture because it left no marks, but forgot that if done too violently and for too long it leads to brain damage, coma and death. Which is how ‘Abd al-Samad Harizat, one of 8,000** Palestinian prisoners to undergo “violent shaking”, was killed by members of the Israeli General Security Service during the Oslo “peace process”:

‘Abd al-Samad Harizat, a 30-year-old computer expert from Hebron, was arrested around midnight on 21 April 1995 and fell into a coma soon after 4pm on 22 April; he died on 25 April without regaining consciousness. Physicians for Human Rights sent an expert, Professor Derrick Pounder, to observe the autopsy, carried out by two Israeli forensic pathologists. The autopsy found that ‘Abd al-Samad Harizat had died from ”violent shaking” which had caused a sub-dural haemorrhage within the skull. Pressure from the lawyer of the Harizat family later obtained information about his interrogation: he had been shaken 12 times between 4.45am and 4.10pm, 10 times by holding his clothes and twice by holding his shoulders. “There is no doubt whatsoever about the cause of death; it’s very clear he has died from unnatural causes, and that he has died from torture”, said Professor Pounder.

— Amnesty International, Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1 September 1998

And we know for sure that Shalit wasn’t left paraplegic by interrogators from the Israeli General Security Service who systematically tortured him, then told him: “Now you are paralyzed, as we promised”. Which is what happened to Luwaii Ashqar, while he was a prisoner at the Kishon detention facility, during the second intifada:

“We have to make you do a little sports,” the Shin Bet interrogator said, launching four successive days of questioning accompanied by brutal physical torture. The result: Luwaii Ashqar can no longer stand on his feet. He sits in his wheelchair, dressed in a fashionable quasi-military suit, super-elegant, new Caterpillar-brand shoes on his paralyzed feet. ..

Was there a judgment by the High Court of Justice? There was. It banned precisely the types of torture he underwent: the “banana posture,” the “shabah” (body stretching with hands tied to a chair), “invisible” blows and the “frog posture” (being forced to stand for hours on the toes in a crouching position) – all the way to a vicious kick to his chest that bent his body backward while he was tied to a chair with his arms and legs, and which was the probable cause of the partial paralysis of his legs.

Throwing up with the vomit entering his nostrils, losing consciousness and being given only saltwater to drink, relieving himself in his pants, not sleeping or resting – all of that for four consecutive days and nights.

What does the interrogator Maimon tell his children when he goes home? What do Eldad and Sagiv tell their wives about their daily labors before they turn in? That they tortured another helpless prisoner until they turned him into a cripple? That they beat this charming young man brutally and that at the end of the interrogation he was tried for only marginal offenses? And where is the Supreme Court, which in 1999 prohibited precisely the chain of torture that Luwaii Sati Ashqar, 30, who was married three years ago, underwent in the Kishon detention facility?

– Now You are Paralyzed, as we Promised; Ha’aretz, 16 Jun 2007.

So whatever “challenges lie ahead” for Gilad Shalit, we can be sure they’re not challenges of quite the same magnitude as those faced by thousands of Palestinians like Benan Oudeh, ‘Abd al-Samad Harizat, and Luwaii Ashqar, none of whom ever got a sympathetic retrospective from CNN. Because, whatever he endured in captivity, Gilad Shalit at least endured it as an Israeli soldier in the hands of Hamas, and not as a Palestinian prisoner in Israel.

** Eight thousand, according to Israeli former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

October 22, 2011 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | 2 Comments

Gaza child artist responds to the censoring of his artwork

Nora Barrows-Friedman – The Electronic Intifada – 10/22/2011

Following last month’s decision by the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) in Oakland, California, to shut down an art exhibition of drawings by Palestinian children in Gaza, one of the child artists included in the exhibit has illustrated his response to being censored.

The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) has posted this new drawing by 12-year-old Ali Hassan al Baba of Deir el Balah in the Gaza Strip, as well as a short interview with him:

Translated from Arabic in Ali’s picture: “The Exhibit is Closed” written across top. “It’s my right to draw” in child’s speech bubble.

What is your name? Ali Hassan Al-Baba

How old are you? 12 years old

Where do you live? Deir El-Balah, Gaza

How many siblings do you have? Four sisters and three brothers

Please tell us about your drawing:
I’ve drawn the gallery featuring Palestinian children’s artwork. The art shows the bad things that Zionists do to Palestinians, but then the Zionists came and shut it down.

Please tell us about your family:
I am the oldest child of a simple family. My father works and is our only source of financial support. Our home was hit by an air strike but it is now patched up with metallic plates (zingo). It is a small house and the number of my family is big, but I thank God for everything we have.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be an engineer so I can rebuild every house that Israel has destroyed.

Even though the original exhibition was shut down — following sustained intimidation from local and national pro-Israel lobby groups — Ali’s artwork, and the artwork of the other children, has found a new home in a gallery space around the corner from MOCHA in downtown Oakland. The exhibit will be open until the end of November, and MECA has all the information on its website.

October 22, 2011 Posted by | Aletho News, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Israeli forces fire into air by funeral procession, 4 injured

Ma’an – October 22, 2011

JENIN — Four people were injured by fragments of Israeli ammunition after troops fired into the air while a funeral procession passed through a gate in the separation wall in the northern West Bank on Saturday.

Mourners from Dhaher al-Malih, a Palestinian village cut off from the West Bank behind Israel’s separation wall, tried to pass through a gate to bury Fathi al-Khatib in a cemetery near Tura, in the Palestinian West Bank.

The party had permissions, a Ma’an correspondent said, but when they refused an order from Israeli forces to pass through the separation wall checkpoint one-by-one, troops fired into the air.

Four men were injured by shards of ammunition, including three sons of the deceased man.

Abdullah, Muhammad, and Mustapha al-Khatib, as well as Ahmad Qabha, suffered light injuries and received medical attention on the scene, a Ma’an correspondent said.

An Israeli army spokeswomen said the group arrived “four hours ahead of their scheduled crossing time and believed they were barred from crossing.”

“They approached the soldiers in a manner that made them nervous so in line with army protocol the soldiers fired in the air, lightly injuring two Palestinians, who did not need treatment.”

October 22, 2011 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

‘Kagame ordered 1994 plane attack’

Press TV – October 22, 2011

A former aide to Rwandan President Paul Kagame says Kagame ordered the shooting down of the plane carrying former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994.

Theogene Rudasingwa said on his Facebook page that Paul Kagame, “then overall commander of the Rwandese Patriotic Army, the armed wing of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), was personally responsible for the shooting down of the plane,” AFP reported on Friday.

Rudasingwa, who is in exile in the United States, said the truth must now be told, adding that “in July 1994, Paul Kagame himself, with characteristic callousness and much glee, told me that he was responsible for shooting down the plane. Despite public denials, the fact of Kagame’s culpability in this crime is also a public secret within the RPA and RPF circles.”

Kagame has repeatedly denied any involvement in the 1994 attack, saying that the plane was shot down by Hutu extremists.

A former chief of staff of Kagame and a former Rwandan ambassador to the United States, Rudasingwa admitted that he had “enthusiastically sold this deceptive story line, especially to foreigners who by and large came to believe it, even when I knew that Kagame was the culprit in this crime.”

In April 1994, the plane of Habyarimana was shot down. Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was also killed in the plane crash.

The Rwandan genocide, in which about 800,000 to one million people, mainly Tutsis, were killed, began after the crash, when Hutus were incited to commit acts of ethnic violence against Tutsis.

All of the details of the double assassination have never come out and investigations continue to this day.

The genocide of 1994 lasted approximately 100 days and hence is called the “100 Days of Hell.”

“By killing President Habyarimana, Paul Kagame produced a wild card in an already fragile ceasefire and dangerous situation. This created a powerful trigger, escalating to a tipping point towards resumption of the civil war, genocide and the region-wide destabilization that has devastated the Great Lakes region ever since,” Rudasingwa added.

Rudasingwa said Kagame should “immediately be brought to account for this crime and its consequences.”

October 21, 2011 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Gaddafi death: Envoy slams ‘sadistic’ triumphalism

RT | 21 October, 2011

Russia’s NATO envoy has written in his microblog that the Western elation over the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi could have sadistic grounds.

­“The faces of the leaders of ‘world democracies’ are so happy, as if they remembered how they hanged stray cats in basements in their childhoods,” Russian envoy to NATO and the leader of the Congress of Russian Communities, Dmitry Rogozin, wrote in his twitter status on Friday.

This statement apparently is a reply to the international reaction to the death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed as the forces of the National Transitional Council stormed the town of Sirte on Thursday. […]

On Thursday evening Rogozin told Russian radio Echo of Moscow that NATO was directly involved in the operation to kill the former Libyan leader. “Apparently there were orders that oriented the military servicemen who are in Libya and that directed them to ensure the physical elimination of Gaddafi,” Rogozin said.

October 21, 2011 Posted by | War Crimes | Leave a comment

Libyan League for Human Rights General-Secretary’s Ties to Pro-Israeli Academic

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | October 21, 2011

As Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya pointed out in “Libya and the Big Lie: Using Human Rights Organizations to Launch Wars,”

One of the main sources for the claim that Qaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR). The LLHR was actually pivotal to getting the U.N. involved through its specific claims in Geneva. On February 21, 2011 the LLHR got the 70 other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to sent letters to the President Obama, E.U. High Representative Catherine Ashton., and the U.N. Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon demanding international action against Libya invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine.

According to the Jerusalem Post, however, the 70 “rights groups” were actually organised by UN Watch. UN Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, a key component of the Israel lobby.

In “Libya and the Big Lie,” Nazemroaya also notes another Israeli connection to the Libyan League for Human Rights. Sliman Bouchuiguir, the General-Secretary of the LLHR, appears to be a protégé of an influential American pro-Israeli academic:

Sliman Bouchuguir is an unheard of figure for most, but he has authored a doctoral thesis that has been widely quoted and used in strategic circles in the United States. This thesis was published in 1979 as a book, The Use of Oil as a Political Weapon: A Case Study of the 1973 Arab oil Embargo. The thesis is about the use of oil as an economic weapon by Arabs, but can easily be applied to the Russians, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and others. It examines economic development and economic warfare and can also be applied to vast regions, including all of Africa.

Bouchuguir’s analytical thesis reflects an important line of thinking in Washington, as well as London and Tel Aviv. It is both the embodiment of a pre-existing mentality, which includes U.S. National Security Advisor George F. Kennan’s arguments for maintaining a position of disparity through a constant multi-faced war between the U.S. and its allies on one hand and the rest of the world on the other hand. The thesis can be drawn on for preventing the Arabs, or others, from becoming economic powers or threats. In strategic terms rival economies are pinned as threats and as “weapons.” This has serious connotations.

Moreover, Bouchuiguir did his thesis at George Washington University under Bernard Reich. Reich is a political scientist and professor of international relations. He has worked and held positions at places like the U.S. Defense Intelligence College, the United States Air Force Special Operations School, the Marine Corps War College, and the Shiloah Center at Tel Aviv University. He has consulted on the Middle East for the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department and received grants such as the Defense Academic Research Support Program Research grant and the German Marshal Fund Grant. Reich also was or is presently on the editorial boards of journals such as Israel Affairs (1994-present), Terrorism: An International Journal (1987-1994), and The New Middle East (1971-1973).

It is also clear that Reich is tied to Israeli interests. He has even written a book about the special relationship between the U.S and Israel. He has also been an advocate for a “New Middle East” which would be favourable to Israel. This includes careful consideration over North Africa. His work has also focused on the important strategic interface between the Soviet Union and the Middle East and also on Israeli policy in the continent of Africa.

It is clear why Bouchuiguir has his thesis supervised under Reich. On October 23, 1973, Reich gave a testimony at the U.S. Congress. The testimony has been named “The Impact of the October Middle East War” and is clearly tied to the 1973 oil embargo and Washington’s aim of pre-empting or managing any similar events in the future. It has to be asked, how much did Reich influence Bouchuiguir and if Bouchuiguir espouses the same strategic views as Reich?

October 21, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

Rachel Abrams: Palestinian children are ‘devils’ spawn

By Philip Weiss on October 20, 2011

Eli Clifton reports on Rachel Abrams,wife of Elliott Abrams: “Emergency Committee For Israel Board Member Calls Palestinians ‘Savages,’ ‘Unmanned Animals,’ ‘Food For Sharks’”

Based on Rachel Abrams’s yawp. Be attuned to all the racism here amid the Joycean punctuation:

GILAD!!!!!!!!!! He’s free and he’s home in the bosom of his family and his country. Celebrate, Israel, with all the joyous gratitude that fills your hearts, as we all do along with you. Then round up his captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.

Jewish children doodle with Transformers, charmingly. Palestinian children are “devils spawn.” Rachel Abrams’s husband once wrote that Jews must stand apart from society in every country that they live in except Israel, and Jews who marry non-Jews should be shunned; and you can see these attitudes in the woman who says Yes I said Yes I will Yes to Abrams. Unreconstructed ethnocentrism. In which one Jewish soldier’s life is valued more than thousands of other people’s lives. Or why a dictatorship in Egypt is rationalized, oppressing 83 million people for decades, in the name of Israel’s security. Or why the Iraq war is justified, the destruction of an Arab society, for Israel’s military advantage, till the next war.

October 20, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 4 Comments

Settlers offer $100,000 “bounty” for anyone who kills two liberated prisoners

Palestine Information Center – 20/10/2011

NABLUS — A Jewish family in Yitzhar settlement near Nablus earmarked the sum of 100000 dollars for anyone killing the two liberated Palestinian prisoners Khuweiled and Nizar Ramadan who have been released in the exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hebrew daily Maariv published the ad in which the family claimed that the prisoners, who were deported one to the Gaza Strip and the other to Turkey, killed two of their relatives 13 years ago.

The ad was published on a website for one of the Jewish fanatic settlers in Hebrew, Arabic, English, and Turkish languages along with a recent photo for the prisoners.

October 20, 2011 Posted by | Aletho News | 1 Comment

A day of joy in Gaza

Rami Almeghari | The Electronic Intifada | 20 October 2011

Gaza City – The sense of joy was palpable in the streets of Gaza on Tuesday. It was a remarkable day in the life of the territory’s 1.6 million Palestinians. During the last five years Israel has levied a heavy price from them for the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian resistance fighters. It has been extracted with Israel’s warplanes, tanks, bulldozers and relentless siege.

At last the people of Gaza could feel a sense of relief. From early morning, thousands lined both sides of Salah al-Din street, a main thoroughfare, as if they were receiving a VIP or a president. But it was prisoners freed under a deal between Israel and Hamas who were the honored guests. A few kilometers away from the main road, thousands more gathered in Gaza City’s al-Katiba Square, where a large stage had been erected and patriotic music played.

Just near the stage, hundreds of women of all ages stood anxiously, some cheering loudly as the song “Palestinians, Palestinians, Determined to Go On” played. Older women ululated joyfully, in a scene reminiscent of traditional Palestinian wedding parties before 1948, the year when many of these women and their families were displaced by Israeli occupation forces from towns and villages that are now over the border in Israel. On this day, Gaza resembled a big Palestinian wedding party for every single Palestinian man and woman.

Looking old and tired among dozens of women, Umm Hazem Hasanin from eastern Gaza City held a portrait of her son Hazem, who was taken prisoner by Israeli forces in 2004 near the Nahal Oz Junction, east of Gaza City.

Hasanin spoke cheerfully to The Electronic Intifada, despite having stood in the sun for several hours. “God willing, my son will be released soon, even tomorrow hopefully. I am here today despite the fact that my son is not listed in the exchange deal,” she said, “I am here to send a message that all Palestinians are looking for freedom and salvation from the Israeli occupation.”

Umm Hazem’s son, now 31, was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

“Proud of heroes”

Farhana al-Ashqar is another elder Palestinian woman, who waited several hours in Tuesday’s heat to welcome the freed prisoners. Her nephew Ibrahim has been imprisoned for one year and two months.

“May Allah bestow victory on the Palestinian resistance in order to achieve further prisoner swap deals that will help those in Israeli jails to be freed. We are proud of these heroes. I left my house today to come here and welcome such heroes,” al-Ashqar said . Others in the area designated for women in al-Katiba Square had relatives of their own listed in the long-awaited prisoners exchange deal.

Fawziya Abu Karsh is the sister-in-law of the released prisoner, Talib Abu Karsh, who was sentenced to four life terms. He has spent 16 years in prison.

“I have been here since 9 AM to welcome him and to see him after these long years of imprisonment. Let me greet the Palestinian resistance for helping release these Palestinian heroes,” Abu Karsh said, while carrying her baby near a portrait of Talib.

At another corner in al-Katiba Square, hundreds of youth gathered, raising Palestinian flags and banners of Hamas, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Islamic Jihad, a mix of colors representing the various political factions, a scene very rarely seen since a national unity government led by Fatah and Hamas, the major parties, collapsed the year after Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured.

“Waiting to hug my brother”

Khaled Hammad was in al-Katiba Square to receive his his freed brother.

“I am waiting here for the arrival of my brother Majdy Hammad, who has spent twenty years of his six-times life sentence. I am waiting for the moment to embrace him, something that I have never experienced for the past twenty years. Whatever I say cannot express my feelings or emotions at this moment.”

“I and all the Palestinian people are very excited today for this is a joyful day for all the Palestinian people, a day of victory for the Palestinian people, a day that has made all of us united — as you see, banners of all Palestinian factions are fluttering in this place. We hope that this day will bring unity among the people and the factions alike,” Hammad added.

After the long day of waiting, vans carrying the freed prisoners showed up in the back streets and an excited and anxious crowd, largely comprised of young people, rushed quickly to get a look into the buses. Many of them whistled as others set off fireworks.

The Electronic Intifada managed to get through the large crowds and spoke to those who arrived in the square. About 266 freed prisoners, including 136 from the West Bank arrived in Gaza on Tuesday.

“I cannot describe my feelings being among my brothers and sisters in Gaza. This is really a big reception that we did not expect,” Arafat al-Natshi, a freed prisoner from the West Bank city of Hebron, said excitedly. Under the deal, Al-Natshi has been forced to live in Gaza instead of being returned home to Hebron.

Mohammad Abu Awad is another freed prisoner, from the West Bank city of Nablus. “I am extremely happy to be released, something that I had not imagined because I have been sentenced to life. Yet my happiness is marred by the fact that we have left behind many brothers in jail, with whom we have spent more time than we’ve spent with our families,” Awad said.

Resistance “the only path”

Also among those who welcomed the released Palestinian prisoners were factional and governmental leaders, including top figures from Hamas. Jameela al-Shanti, minister of women’s affairs in the Hamas-led government in Gaza, hailed the prisoners’ release by means of the swap deal as a step in the right direction.

“The release of prisoners today is clear proof that the Palestinian resistance is the only path that will resolve the problems of the Palestinian people including Israeli settlement activities and the Israeli siege on Gaza,” al-Shanti told The Electronic Intifada as she stepped up onto the stage, “I would like to emphasize that we are taking this path until all our prisoners are released from Israeli jails and Palestine is liberated from the Israeli occupation.”

On Tuesday, Israel and Hamas, through Egyptian officials and with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross, facilitated an agreed prisoners’ exchange. The agreement came after five years of talks, brokered by Egypt and Germany. Israel agreed to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including women and minors, in exchange for the Israeli soldier.

Right after the soldier’s capture, Israel carried out a massive attack on Gaza, killing and injuring hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children and causing a great deal of damage to infrastructure, including power and water networks. Since then, Gaza’s 1.6 million residents have suffered power cut-offs, almost on a daily basis.

While carrying her baby in one hand and a picture of her freed brother-in-law in the other, Fawziya Abu Karsh praised Palestinian resistance fighters. She said, “May God help them all to capture ten more Israeli soldiers, so that our beloved prisoners are released from the Israeli occupation’s jails.”

Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.

October 20, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Cambridge students to begin vote on company with Israeli settlement ties

Palestinian academics and Cambridge lecturers join call for boycott

Press Release – 10/20/2011

Students at Cambridge will start voting Friday in a referendum calling on the University to cut ties with a company implicated in Israeli human rights abuses.

The referendum, scheduled for 21-24 October, calls on CUSU (Cambridge University Students Union) to campaign to have the University cut ties with Veolia, a company involved in infrastructure projects in Israeli settlements, and employed by the University on a waste disposal contract.

This week, the campaign received letters of support from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, and from a group of more than 25 Cambridge academics.

The letter from Palestinian academics said:

“As Palestinian academics, we are aware that universities are never separable from their political circumstances. Palestinian universities are regularly attacked by the IDF. Israeli universities directly contribute to the occupation through military research and development. By retaining a contract with Veolia, Cambridge is also implicated in Israel’s crimes. Dropping the contract would not be an inappropriate political intervention, but a rectification of one. Cambridge can live up to its reputation as an internationally leading institution by refusing ties with Veolia, leading the way against Israeli organizations that trample Palestinian human rights.”

The letter from Cambridge academics said:

“In choosing to employ Veolia for its waste management, the University poses a serious ‘reputational risk’ to itself. The University’s employment of Veolia for waste management makes dubious its claims of being committed to ethical conduct.”

Veolia’s activities in the West Bank include bus and light rail services and the Tovlan Landfill site, all serving illegal Israeli settlements. In recent years, the international community has targeted Veolia as a company profiting from the Israeli occupation. Veolia has lost contracts worth more than €10 billion since 2005,2 including, just a few months ago, a £300 million contract in Ealing, London. The actions against Veolia are part of a broader international campaign following the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli companies and institutions.

The Cambridge Campaign has detailed information on its website, including a point-by-point rebuttal to the No Campaign’s “falsehoods, insinuations made in bad faith, and sleights of hand.”

For more information, see: http://cambridgebinveolia.wordpress.com/
Contact: cambridgebds@hotmail.co.uk

October 20, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Connect the dots: In ’02, NYPD began training in Israel; 9 years later, spying against NYC Muslims exposed

By Alex Kane | Mondoweiss | October 20, 2011

In 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported:

Five New York City police investigators are in Israel for a symposium on suicide bombers. The officers are apparently the first members of a U.S. police department to receive training from Israeli counter-terrorism experts.

“Obviously after 9/11 everyone’s world changed,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said. “We have to be as prepared as we can be for any eventuality.”

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has a detective “based in Israel” who reports back to department head Ray Kelly.  The relationship continues.

Fast-forward to the present, where in recent weeks a steady drip of outrageous revelations about the NYPD’s indiscriminate spying on Muslim New Yorkers continues to be published by the Associated Press.

Israeli “counter-terror” tactics rely on a racist dragnet that labels every Palestinian a threat to Israeli security, much in the same way the NYPD’s operation reveal that the department believes every Muslim guilty until proven innocent.

The NYPD, of course, needs no help in learning the tactics of racial profiling when it comes to policing communities of color.  But the close relationship between the NYPD and Israel on counter-terrorism merits a closer look.  Just what insight is the NYPD gathering from Israeli security?

Is the NYPD’s spying operation on Muslim New Yorkers yet another example of, as Scott McConnell put it, “anti-Muslim bigotry” becoming embedded in the U.S. due in part to Israeli-centric ideas about counter-terrorism?

Alex Kane is a freelance journalist and blogger based in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

October 20, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Plumbing the Depths of Deception: Naomi Scola Ignores the H2Occupation of Palestine

“[It is] of vital importance not only to secure all water resources already feeding the country, but also to control them at their source.”

– Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organization and the first President of Israel, at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference

“And when I talk about the importance to Israel’s security, this is not an abstract concept… It means that a housewife in Tel Aviv can open the tap and there’s water running to it, and it’s not been dried up because of a rash decision that handed over control of our aquifers to the wrong hands.”

– Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, May 17, 1998

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”

– Toni Morrison

Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | October 19, 2011

On October 18, The Atlantic published a lengthy article by Nancy Scola exploring the possible rationale for Texas Governor and terrible GOP Presidential nominee Rick Perry’s deep and abiding affinity for Israel. Scola, after citing potential reasons such as “the religious affinities of a conservative Christian” and “a shared fighting spirit” (in addition to “oil”, which is odd considering there’s no oil in Palestine) for Perry’s affection and admiration, suggests a different explanation:

In 2009, Perry told the Jerusalem Post that part of the Texas-Israel “connection that goes back many years” included the reality that “Israel has a lot we can learn from, especially in the areas of water conservation and semi-arid land.” It raised the possibility that at the root of Perry’s deep commitment and professed connection to Israel doesn’t lie in what Texas has in abundance — oil, faith, orneriness — but what it lacks: water.

Scola goes on to explain that, when he was Texas agriculture commissioner in the 1990’s, “Perry helped to lead the Texas-Israel Exchange, a program that aims to transfer knowledge between the two lands, where farming is a way of life but the water to do it with is often difficult to come by” and draws an environmental and hydrogeological parallel between the two regions. “Texas’ mountain aquifers have their equivalent in Israel’s karst aquifers,” she writes, before quoting UT professor and water expert David Eaton as saying, “Israel doesn’t have enough water, but they’ve figured out how to succeed.”

Among the ways Scola describes Israel’s victory over water scarcity through “a variety of technologies to try to squeeze the maximum possible water from dry land” are “projects focused on water reclamation — that is, using treated waste water, including sewage, to irrigate, cool, or in manufacturing processes.”

What Scola omits – and considering she devotes considerable space (nearly 2,000 words) to this issue, the omission can not be anything but willful and deliberate – is Palestine. In fact, the word itself is never uttered once in the entire article, nor is the 44-year occupation and blockade that controls their lives each and every day.

The reason this omission is so glaring is because over 60% of Israel’s fresh water supply comes from Palestinian aquifers in the West Bank, illegally seized in 1967 after a conflict instigated by Israel and subsequently controlled exclusively by the Israeli government and military in occupied Palestine.

An October 2009 report by Amnesty International entitled “Troubled Waters – Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water” notes that, in 1967, “Israel forcibly took control of water resources and imposed significant changes in the area’s water sector. This included extracting large quantities of groundwater and diverting surface water for its own benefit, while preventing access by the local Palestinian population to these same resources.”

In 1982, then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon transferred all West Bank water systems to the Israeli national water company Mekorot for the nominal price of one shekel. A decade later, the Oslo accords established a (so-called) Joint Water Management Committee, granting Israel a veto over all water resources, facilities and infrastructure in the West Bank.

Amnesty reveals that “[d]uring more than four decades of occupation of the Palestinian territories Israel has overexploited Palestinian water resources, neglected the water and sanitation infrastructure in the OPT, and used the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] as a dumping ground for its waste – causing damage to the groundwater resources and the environment” and that “Israeli policies and practices in the OPT, notably the unlawful destruction and appropriation of property, and the imposition of restrictions and other measures which deny the Palestinians the right to water in the OPT, violate Israel’s obligations under both human rights and humanitarian law.”

The report’s introduction states:

Lack of access to adequate, safe, and clean water has been a longstanding problem for the Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Though exacerbated in recent years by the impact of drought-induced water scarcity, the problem arises principally because of Israeli water policies and practices which discriminate against the Palestinian population of the OPT. This discrimination has resulted in widespread violations of the right to an adequate standard of living, which includes the human rights to water, to adequate food and housing, and the right to work and to health of the Palestinian population.

The inequality in access to water between Israelis and Palestinians is striking. Palestinian consumption in the OPT is about 70 litres a day per person – well below the 100 litres per capita daily recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) – whereas Israeli daily per capita consumption, at about 300 litres, is about four times as much. In some rural communities Palestinians survive on far less than even the average 70 litres, in some cases barely 20 litres per day, the minimum amount recommended by the WHO for emergency situations response.

Access to water resources by Palestinians in the OPT is controlled by Israel and the amount of water available to Palestinians is restricted to a level which does not meet their needs and does not constitute a fair and equitable share of the shared water resources. Israel uses more than 80 per cent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the only source of underground water in the OPT, as well as all of the surface water available from the Jordan River of which Palestinians are denied any share.

The stark reality of this inequitable system is that, today, more than 40 years after Israel occupied the West Bank, some 180,000 – 200,000 Palestinians living in rural communities there have no access to running water and even in towns and villages which are connected to the water network, the taps often run dry. Water rationing is common, especially but not only in the summer months, with residents of different neighbourhoods and villages receiving piped water only one day every week or every few weeks. Consequently, many Palestinians have no choice but to purchase additional supplies from mobile water tankers which deliver water at a much higher price and of often dubious quality. As unemployment and poverty have increased in recent years and disposable income has fallen, Palestinian families in the OPT must spend an increasingly high percentage of their income – as much as a quarter or more in some cases – on water.

In the Gaza Strip, the only water resource, the southern end of the Coastal Aquifer, is insufficient for the needs of the population but Israel does not allow the transfer of water from the West Bank to Gaza. The aquifer has been depleted and contaminated by overextraction and by sewage and seawater infiltration, and 90-95 per cent of its water is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Waterborne diseases are common.

The report also documents how “[s]tringent restrictions imposed in recent years by Israel on the entry into Gaza of material and equipment necessary for the development and repair of infrastructure have caused further deterioration of the water and sanitation situation in Gaza, which has reached crisis point,” causing both “water shortages and poor sanitation services” throughout occupied Palestine.

“Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967,” Amnesty reports, “it has denied its Palestinian inhabitants access to the water resources of Jordan River, preventing them from physically accessing the river banks and diverting the river flow upstream into Lake Kinneret/Tiberias/Sea of Galilee.” Furthermore, “As well as depriving the Palestinians of a crucial source of water, the drying up of the Jordan River has had a disastrous impact on the Dead Sea, which has seen the fastest drop in its water level to an unprecedented low.”

Consequently, without access to the Jordan, the Mountain Aquifer is the only remaining source of water for Palestinians in the West Bank. Still, despite having two other main water resources (Lake Kinneret/Tiberias/Sea of Galilee and the Coastal Aquifer), Israel “limits the amount of water annually available to Palestinians from the Mountain Aquifer to no more than 20 per cent, while it has continued to consistently overextract water for its own usage far in excess of the aquifer’s yearly sustainable yield. Moreover, much of Israel’s over-extraction is from the Western Aquifer, which provides both the largest quantity and the best quality of all the shared groundwater resources in Israel-OPT.”

Clearly, the miracle of Israeli ingenuity that so enamors Rick Perry and impresses Naomi Scola is not so much technological advancement as it is illegal military occupation and heavily-armed dominance over Palestinian land and resources.

Yet, Israel not only appropriates and exploits Palestinian water supplies (“regardless of the consequences that this disproportionate and unfair division has for the Palestinian population in the OPT and its impact on Palestinians’ human rights,” says Amnesty) through its past and continual colonization, illegal annexation of land via the Apartheid Wall (which has isolated at least 39 groundwater wells from their Palestinian communities with more wells threatened for demolition in the Wall’s “buffer zone”), and ethnic cleansing of indigenous populations, it also deliberately destroys what resources Palestinians still have.

During Israel’s three-week Gaza massacre in the winter of 2008-9, the Israeli military “destroyed more than 30 kilometres of water networks – the equivalent of more than double the width of the strip at its widest – and 11 water wells,” reports the Emergency Water Sanitation and Hygiene group (EWASH), a coalition of 30 leading humanitarian organizations operating in occupied Palestine.

Israeli forces also “carried out a strike against a wall of one of the raw sewage lagoons of the Gaza wastewater treatment plant, which caused the outflow of more than 200,000 cubic metres of raw sewage onto neighbouring farmland,” reportedthe UN Fact-Finding Mission. The Goldstone Report continued,

The circumstances of the strike suggest that it was deliberate and premeditated. The Namar wells complex in Jabaliyah consisted of two water wells, pumping machines, a generator, fuel storage, a reservoir chlorination unit, buildings and related equipment. All were destroyed by multiple air strikes on the first day of the Israeli aerial attack. The Mission considers it unlikely that a target the size of the Namar wells could have been hit by multiple strikes in error. It found no grounds to suggest that there was any military advantage to be had by hitting the wells and noted that there was no suggestion that Palestinian armed groups had used the wells for any purpose.

The Mission determined that this assault (“carried out…unlawfully and wantonly”) on water facilities constituted “a violation of the grave breaches provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” explaining, “Unlawful and wanton destruction which is not justified by military necessity amounts to a war crime” and that such deliberate destruction “was carried out to deny sustenance to the civilian population, which is a violation of customary international law and may constitute a war crime.”

Nearly three years after the bombardment of Gaza, the consequences of such war crimes are still devastating.

In March 2011, EWASH notes, “the Khuza’a municipality warehouse was hit by an airstrike destroying a large quantity of essential water and sanitation materials and spare parts to the value of over US$ 60 000. In April, the Al-Mintar water reservoir in Al-Quba area of Gaza City was hit leaving 30 000 people in eastern Gaza city with no water for three days.” In mid-July 2011, “an Israeli airstrike destroyed an agricultural well in the eastern part of Beit Hanoun,” injuring seven civilians including four children and three women. “The strike also caused damage to nine water tanks belonging to five households in the adjacent neighbourhood, serving 59 people,” the report continues.

Whereas the destruction of water facilities in Gaza is the result of Israeli policies of deliberate deprivation and collective punishment, Israeli military actions in the continually colonized West Bank serve a different purpose. Amnesty reports, “[t]he Israeli army’s destruction of Palestinian water facilities – rainwater harvesting and storage cisterns, agricultural pools and spring canals – on the grounds that they were constructed without permits from the army is often accompanied by other measures that aim to restrict or eliminate the presence of Palestinians from specific areas of the West Bank.”

In the past two years, EWASH has documented “the destruction of 100 water, sanitation and hygiene structures, 44 cisterns, 20 toilets and sinks, 28 wells. This year alone, 20 cisterns have been destroyed,” The Guardian reports. “Most of this is happening in Area C, which is under full Israeli military control.” Israeli Occupation soldiers routinely shoot at vitally-needed Palestinian water tanks.

In March 2011, AFP reported that “Israeli troops have destroyed three water wells belonging to Palestinian villagers living near a sprawling Jewish settlement outside Hebron.” Later that same month, Israeli authorities destroyed “an ancient water well and reservoir southeast of Bethlehem used by Palestinian Bedouin shepherds as their main sources of water.”

On July 5, 2011, it was reported that “a convoy of Israeli Army, civil administration, and border police arrived in the Palestinian village of Amniyr accompanying a flat bed truck with a front end loader and a backhoe. Israeli settlers having a picnic at the settlement outpost next to the Susiya archaeological site looked on as the army destroyed nine large tanks of water and a tent.” It was the fifth time this year.

Just one week ago, WAFA, the Palestinian News and Info Agency, reported, “The Israeli authorities Thursday handed a number of Palestinian farmers demolition orders of several water wells and green houses and stopped construction work of rehabilitating an agricultural road in an area in Kufr Al-Deek, a town in Salfit,” according the town’s mayor.

Drilling new wells and rehabilitating existing wells is prohibited in the West Bank without the authorized consent of the Israeli occupiers. Meanwhile, as Palestinians are “denied access to an equitable share of the shared water resources and are increasingly affected by the lack of adequate water supplies, Israeli settlers face no such challenges – as indicated by their intensive-irrigation farms, lush gardens and swimming pools. The 450,000 Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in
violation of international law, use as much or more water than the Palestinian population of some 2.3 million.”

In her Atlantic column, Naomi Scola addresses none of these issues. Instead, she notes that many state governments in the U.S. have business partnerships with the State of Israel, noting that “the exchange between the state of Texas and the state of Israel is generally considered the oldest such relationship, and it is certainly one of the most robust.”

Scola also quotes from a 1996 op-ed Rick Perry wrote for the Austin American-Statesman, in which he “bragged about teaming up with Israel, ‘a country known for using technology to turn a desert into an agricultural oasis of productivity.'” This pernicious myth of “Desert-Bloomism“, while articulated by Perry, is allowed to stand on its own, unchallenged, in Scola’s article.

While Scola suggests Rick Perry’s love affair with Israel may be based on a shared lack of water, it is abundantly clear that the common ground between the Texas governor and the Israeli government has far more to do with a shared lack of humanity.

October 20, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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