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Sharon may be dead, but his apartheid legacy taints us all

By Sabrien Amrov | MEMO | January 11, 2014

The shadow of the ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has died aged 85, has always had a peculiar place in my life. He was in part the trigger of my interest in the Palestine-Israel conflict.

I recall sitting in the living room in Montreal on an autumnal September day watching the news with my family as the camera zoomed-in on an elderly, black-suited man with sunglasses. Striding across the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque, he was shepherding a large group of armed men.

“What is he doing,” I asked my dad. “Who is he?”

“That’s Sharon,” he replied. “Apparently, he wants to take a walk on Temple Mount.” He said the last bit begrudgingly.

“But why all those soldiers?” I enquired, through a confused 11-year-old’s eyes.

“Because that is Sharon, and he wants a war,” replied my father in a tone that suggested that the questions should stop there.

I found out later that reports had confirmed that the 11th prime minister of Israel was, in fact, accompanied by more than 1,000 Israeli troops and paramilitary police for a promenade on what Jews calls the Temple Mount and which Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa, home to Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock Mosque.

What began as an altercation between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Al-Aqsa’s grounds escalated quickly into the Second Intifada (uprising) that saw, a couple of days later, the murder of 12-year-old Mohamad Al-Durah as his father tried to shelter him from the Israeli soldiers determined to kill the boy. Al-Durah, who died in the arms of his father, became the emblem of the Second Intifada. From 2000 to 2005, it was a bloody debut to the new millennium in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The death toll was estimated at 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis; all the while, Sharon insisted that all he had wanted was a peaceful stroll on the Temple Mount.

That was my introduction to Sharon; surely, though, there was more to this man.

When politicians die oceans of words usually pour out in memoriam, describing the person as a saint or a sinner. When Nelson Mandela died in December 2013, few dared to utter anything negative about him; a notable exception was Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. On the other hand, when Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic died in his prison cell in The Hague, not many people shed a tear or had much nice to say about him. There are those who died in such confusing and ambiguous circumstances that no one wants to be the first to comment before the autopsy tests are over (and even then there was doubt), as was the case with the late President Yasser Arafat. Sharon is an interesting case because, due to a number of false alarms, commentators were debating how best to remember him once he’d gone.

However, such binaries are counterproductive. For one thing, they tend to depoliticise and de-contextualise the legacy of these public figures: “Mandela was a nice person”; “Saddam was a bad person”; “Arafat betrayed Palestine”. Generic lines such as these fail to provide substantive information to help us understand how and why these personalities mattered and what should be retained from their trajectory to move forward into progressive politics. Second, there is no need to dive into binaries when history provides us with a bookshelf on the life of the late Prime Minister of Israel.

The general and the statesman

Before entering politics, Sharon was regarded as a high-calibre military man. He built a reputation as one of the most experienced and shrewd generals Israel had known. He went by the nicknames “King of Israel” and “Lion of God” (which is in fact, the literal translation of his name). Some of his accomplishments include his role as the mastermind behind numerous operations in which many Palestinian civilians were killed. For example, during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps showcased how sharp and effective Sharon had become in the execution of Palestinians.

There is still no accurate figure for the number of people killed in the massacre. The official Israeli investigation under the Kahan Commission concluded that between 700 and 800 people were murdered. Journalist Robert Fisk, who was one of the first people on the scene after the massacre, concluded that 1,700 people lost their lives. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent estimate was more than 2,000. The research of Amnon Kapeliouk, an Israeli journalist and author of “Sabra and Shatila: Inquiry into a Massacre”, puts the figure between 3,000 and 3,500 dead.

Twenty years later, in April 2002, Sharon also ordered the killings in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. According to the Badil Resource Centre: “…by the time the military assault ended on 11 April it was estimated that more than 50 Palestinians had been killed. Around 10 per cent of the camp, including hundreds of refugee shelters, had been completely levelled.”

No media were allowed inside during the Israeli attack. It was only after 2 weeks that local and international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were allowed inside Jenin. They soon uncovered evidence of serious breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law, including war crimes. With international pressure, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1405, 19 April 2002, calling for an international investigation into the invasion.

In fact, that same year, Ariel Sharon was facing possible war crime prosecutions in Belgium for both Sabra and Shatila and the Jenin massacres under the country’s 1993 law that gives the courts ”universal jurisdiction” to charge individuals over crimes against humanity or war crimes committed anywhere.

Sharon’s track record as a military man who gets the job done pre-dates the state of Israel. Aged 14, he was a member of the Haganah, the Jewish militia which became the “Israel Defence Forces”. At 20, he headed an infantry company in the Alexandroni Brigade during the 1948 War, where Israeli forces drove an estimated 700,000 Palestinians from their land, in what would today be called an act of ethnic cleansing. In August 1953, as commander of the 101 Unit, Sharon led an attack on Al-Bureig refugee camp south of Gaza, killing over 50 people. He repeated the same exercise in several other villages including the infamous Qibya village massacre. In his book “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World since 1948”, Israeli historian Avi Shlaim described the massacre thus: “Sharon’s order was to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses and inflict heavy casualties on its inhabitants. His success in carrying out the order surpassed all expectations. The full and macabre story of what happened at Qibya was revealed only during the morning after the attack. The village had been reduced to rubble: forty-five houses had been blown up, and sixty-nine civilians, two thirds of them women and children, had been killed.”

Later on, in 1972, under the Galilee Protocols, Ariel Sharon “drove off some ten thousand farmers and Bedouins, bulldozed or dynamited their houses, pulled down their tents, destroyed their crops and filled in their wells” to prepare the ground for the establishment of six kibbutzim, 9 villages and the city of Yamit.

As a commander, Sharon knew how to suck the life out of a village effectively. In most operations, he would not only call the shots, but would also join his troops and participate fully.

As for his political career, in mainstream international relations Sharon is often thanked for pushing forward the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2004-2005, which was seen as a great sacrifice and difficult decision for the prime minister to make such “a sign of good will for peace”. Ironically, since the withdrawal, the residents of Gaza have been paying the price under the Israeli-imposed siege of the Strip that has reached an all-time low this year. In fact, Sharon’s coma has been concurrent with the threat of the Palestinians in Gaza. He may have been in a vegetative state, but the people in Gaza must continue to resist the illegal blockade.

Another noteworthy contribution of Sharon the politician is the approval and management of the Apartheid Wall. Started in 2001 it now runs across the West Bank like a snake, separating towns and houses and neighbours from each other, providing resources on one side and collective punishment on the other.

Finally, Sharon has an interesting record of voting against or abstaining from diplomatic initiatives for peace in the region, leaving little leverage to suggest that Sharon was a man of peace. In 1979, in the Begin government, he voted against a peace treaty with Egypt and in 1994 he abstained from the vote for a peace agreement with Jordan. He also voted against a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Southern Lebanon in 1985. During the Madrid peace conference in 1991, he opposed the participation of Israel on the basis that it was not worth the trouble. He did the same with the Oslo agreement in 1993, voting against it in the Knesset.

The individual and the system

Now that he is gone, there is not much left to say about Ariel Sharon. To be fair, he has been gone for quite some time in all but name, but the effect of his deeds carry on. More importantly, we must realise that Sharon is only one face – albeit all-encompassing of the same persistent calamity: Israeli apartheid and colonisation. Perhaps for many Israelis, Sharon served his nation in good and bad times: he wore the suits and ties as well as the military uniforms; he shook hands with politicians and aimed artillery at civilians; and he did this in the name and for the sake of a Zionist state that believes it can strip another people of their rights and integrity for the sake of its own existence. As his track record demonstrates, leaders like Sharon reinforce injustice and oppression for the sake of statehood. They do not undertake these actions alone; they are part of an apparatus that imposes the normalisation of power dynamics based on militarisation, colonisation and apartheid, and expect the world to either follow suit or keep quiet about it.

Thirteen years on, as I see the man that provoked followers at Al-Aqsa Mosque and ignited the Second Intifada pass away after being incapacitated for almost a decade, I can only say the following: Sharon is dead but Israeli apartheid isn’t. That ought to be the focus of discussion about his life and contributions towards “peace”. That ought to be the concern of people interested in ending the conflict on realistic and just terms.

Sabrien Amrov is a Research Assistant, Levant Politics, Foreign Policy Division Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) in Ankara, Turkey

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January 12, 2014 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Greenwald Responds to Critics, Rejects Conspiracism

By Kevin Ryan | Dig Within | January 12, 2014

The story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has dominated the mainstream news for the last seven months. During that time, questions about Snowden and his disclosures have framed the national discussion about domestic surveillance. Those disclosures have not resulted in any changes to U.S. domestic surveillance practices to date. Instead, the U.S. Justice Department has re-certified the programs in question as Americans discuss media talking points like—Is Snowden a traitor or a hero? A growing number of people are looking behind that media-generated framework, however, and are beginning to wonder if the right questions are even being asked.

What we know about Edward Snowden is that he was a Special Forces recruit in the U.S. Army, an NSA employee, an NSA contractor for at least two different companies, and a CIA employee under cover. All of this occurred in a span of only a few years and he was able to command six-figure salaries despite having no education beyond a high school equivalency certification. Of the many positions he held in a period of approximately six years, the most long-lived appears to have been his work with the CIA where this 20-something spy was, in his own words, a “senior advisor.”

When asked about his background and motivations, Snowden said, “I’m just another guy.” He went on to say that his leaking of NSA secrets was what we needed to know, implying that it was all we needed to know, about NSA spying. “This is the truth… This is what’s happening,” he said. The remainder of the story has been presented in stories like those by The New York Times, which paint Snowden in an increasingly favorable light. The Times, which was called a mouthpiece for the Obama Administration by Glenn Greenwald, the reporter chosen by Snowden to reveal his story, has come out calling for clemency for Snowden.

However, the questions about the evolving Snowden story have grown rapidly and continue to present challenges to citizens who are alert to the prevalence of corporate media propaganda. How many stolen documents are there and who has access to them? Why have only a tiny fraction of the documents been released seven months after they were first disclosed by Snowden? Why has Glenn Greenwald made a deal with the owner of Paypal Corporation—the company whose former executives now produce the technologies used for domestic spying?

Emotions and Responses

The biggest hurdle to understanding the Snowden story has been the emotional reaction to asking questions about it. Those who have dared to question the story have been met with ridicule and misplaced condemnation.

Author Naomi Wolf asked some straightforward questions about Snowden’s slick introduction in comparison to other whistleblower stories. Her questions elicited derision from pundits, some even suggesting that if Wolf didn’t buy into Snowden then she must be an NSA operative.

Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ questions were met with ad hominem attacks from Greenwald. Writing that Edmonds was “too stupid and/or crazy to know,“ Greenwald summarily excused the founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition from further dialogue on the issue.

My recent article resulted in mild hysteria from a few who believe that no aspect of the Snowden story should ever be questioned, regardless of how that story evolves in the mainstream media. One such reaction resulted in a hit piece based on the false premise that I was calling Snowden a liar. The author called for a public apology until he realized that it was his own error that required an apology (cue crickets).

Thankfully, Greenwald has offered a few answers at his blog. Unfortunately, the emotional nature of those responses raises more questions. What’s more, the growing rancor and distrust regarding this story is resulting in citizens losing sight of the actual NSA crimes being committed and our decreasing ability to stop or prosecute them.

Greenwald’s answers appeared at his blog in two installments, one in December and another in January. In those posts he goes on at length about the fact that reporters work for money. Although Edmonds has made the point that whistleblowing should not be a profit-making venture for anyone, in general no one denies that reporters work for money. And if Greenwald gets fabulously rich from all of it, that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that Greenwald still hasn’t answered some of the more important questions. For example, has he made any kind of deal with government or corporate representatives with regard to this story or the release of material from Snowden? What are his views on the coincidence that several of Pierre Omidyar’s former Paypal colleagues are strong supporters of NSA spying and are the people developing the technologies for that spying?

Another unanswered question is a simple one. How many documents are there? Estimates have ranged from thousands to nearly two million. Only Greenwald and Laura Poitras have the entire cache, according to Greenwald. But portions of the stolen documents have been distributed to many mainstream news organizations and “tens of thousands of these documents are in the possession of The New York Times, The Guardian, ProPublica, and The Washington Post.” A subset of more than 50,000 of them, focused specifically on the GCHQ (the British version of the NSA), were shared by The Guardian with The Times and ProPublica. Therefore we’re talking about a very large, but still very uncertain, number of documents. Since Greenwald has reported that Snowden “read and very carefully processed every document that he gave us,” curious citizens might wonder how that was possible.

That being said, Greenwald has offered answers to a few of the questions and we can discuss them.

Why are the documents being released so slowly?  Greenwald provided the following answers in his blog posts.

1. Releasing the documents all at once would “violently breach … our agreement with our source.”
2. “Large media institutions, even the ones with the best journalistic intentions, have all sorts of constraints – financial, legal, cultural – that produce fear and timidity, and that has sometimes slowed down or diluted our ability to publish the way we wanted to.”
3. There exist “very real legal risks for everyone involved in this process, beginning with Snowden, who already faces 30 years in prison and is currently protected only by 9 more months of temporary asylum in Russia. Everyone involved in the publication of these materials has already undertaken substantial legal risk.”
4. “These documents are complex. Sometimes they take a good deal of reporting to fill in some of the gaps.”
5. The documents might contain the names of people who are surfing for pornography or are suspected of being terrorists, or they might contain “raw chats” or other specific internet activity, and these things might threaten the reputations or lives of those people. The documents might also help teach (less ethical?) states how to spy on their own citizens.

The first of these answers is the strongest. The public does not have access to the agreement and the implication is that future whistleblowers might be dissuaded from coming forward if they thought that they could not trust the people to whom they reveal information.

The second answer points more to the problem than the answer. Large media institutions are often vehicles for propaganda (remember the aluminum tubes) and that is why these kinds of questions arise in the first place.

The third answer is understandable but weak. Nobody should expect whistleblowing to be safe.

The last two answers are not believable considering what we know about answers Greenwald has given to other questions, and the distribution of the documents. For example, Greenwald knows enough about all the documents that he can definitely say that Paypal and its past and present executives are not implicated. And someone knew enough about the documents that they could be distributed to different major media corporations, presumably without carelessness, so these documents are not total unknowns. Can Greenwald tell us how the documents were categorized or sorted before distribution to the media outlets and how that was done to avoid the risks he emphasizes on his blog now?

Ultimately, the answer to why the documents have not been released boils down to that it is part of the agreement with Edward Snowden. Will Greenwald release his agreement with Snowden to verify that? Does the agreement apply to all the media outlets to which documents have been distributed? Who decided that these establishment mouthpiece media outlets were suddenly so honorable and would not report the information haphazardly or for the benefit of the powers that control them?

Conspiracy Theories

Greenwald’s December response indicated that he felt the questions about why the documents were not being released right away were good questions. He wrote, “I respect that critique” and even stated that he would ask the same questions. As an attorney, Greenwald might have wondered if withholding documents about ongoing crimes is a crime in itself.

Now, however, Greenwald labels those who question why the documents are being held back as “conspiracy theorists.” In Greenwald’s response, he rants about “people who cook up conspiracy theories” and how  “deranged those theories are.” These comments reflect the position of Greenwald’s new media partner Jeremy Scahill with regard to questions about the official account for the 9/11 attacks. Scahill has publicly said that he believes questions about 9/11 are “insulting to the people who died on 9/11.” Scahill claims to be educated on such questions but apparently still doesn’t know that it was the 9/11 victims’ families who initiated such questioning and who continue to lead the search for answers.

The irony is that Greenwald was, just prior to becoming the mouthpiece of our New York Times-supported whistleblower hero, a major conspiracy theorist with regard to terrorism. In fact, Greenwald has espoused some of the most interesting conspiracy theories regarding U.S. government involvement in the manufacture of false terrorism.

In a series of articles at Salon, Greenwald went into great detail on the FBI’s ongoing efforts to manufacture terrorism. In one case, he wrote that the FBI “created a plot [and] it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped [a hapless loner] to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a ‘Terrorist plot’ which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI’s own concoction.”

If that’s not a conspiracy theory, I don’t know what is.

Greenwald went on to write that, “Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out—only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.”

According to Greenwald this vast FBI plot is intended “to justify this Endless War on civil liberties (and Terror).” At the time, in 2010 and 2011, Greenwald was astounded by the lack of skepticism about the completely uncritical reporting on terrorist stories that were used to justify the War on Terror. Today he is astounded by the growing skepticism about the completely uncritical reporting on the Snowden story. Apparently the difference, and his newfound reliance on the Conspiracy Theorists™ slur, has to do with him being a central character in this story.

Overall, the government’s handling of questions about domestic surveillance has been very similar to its handling of questions about 9/11. It’s all about The Terrorists and things that would never be allowed in other circumstances, like lying to Congress and withholding documents, are perfectly OK. The Anglo-American establishment media control the flow of information and questions are not allowed. Those daring to question are met with ridicule. Heroes and demons are offered up to focus the story on personalities instead of facts. What’s different here?

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January 12, 2014 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

All in the Family: David Cameron’s Jewish Roots and the Coreligionists Who Brought Him to Power

EmpireStrikesBlack | January 7, 2014

While speaking to a 500-strong group of Jewish lobbyists in London in 2007, UK Prime Minister David Cameron declared,⁽¹⁾ “I am a Zionist.” He went on to add, “I’m not just a good friend of Israel but I am, as you put it, good for Jews.”

These comments can easily be explained merely as fawning attempts to placate and appease the Jewish lobby – a necessary step for any who wish to assume high office. One has to ask the question though: why does ‘Anglican’ David Cameron conceal his own Jewish identity?

David Cameron is not merely of Jewish descent; he hails from a bloodline that can fairly be described as Jewish royalty, yet he claims never to have known this. As he spoke to the Movement for Reform Judaism in 2010 he described his learning of his Jewish ancestry⁽²⁾ as the “highlight” of his year.

While studying the Cameron family tree in 2009,⁽³⁾ Dr Yaakov Wise – a University of Manchester historian who specialises in Jewish history – found that David Cameron is descended from a highly distinguished Jewish family line (emphases added):

And according to Dr Wise, who has been using archival material to examine the Cameron family tree, the Tory leader could also be a direct descendent of the greatest ever Hebrew prophet, Moses.

Cameron is a descendent of banker Emile Levita, who came to Britain as a German immigrant in the 1850s. Emile Levita was himself a descendent of Elijah Levita, who lived from 1469-1549.

During the last years of his life Elijah Levita produced, among other works, two major books: the 1541 Translator’s Book, the first dictionary of the Targums or Aramaic commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.

His lexicon of 1542 explained much of the Mishnaic Hebrew language and was a supplement to two important earlier dictionaries.

Elijah Levita also wrote what is thought to be the first ever Yiddish novel – called the Bove-bukh (The Book of Bove) written in 1507 and printed in 1541.

The book is based on an Italian version of an Anglo-Norman tale about a queen who betrays her husband and causes his death.

Emile Levita, who was granted citizenship in 1871, is Cameron’s great great grandfather.

Cameron’s great-great grandfather, Emile Levita was a German Jewish financier who emigrated to Britain and obtained British citizenship in 1871. Levita was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which in 1969 became Standard Chartered Bank. Levita himself is descended from Elijah Levita, a Jewish scholar of out-and-out luminary status whose writings included not only a dictionary explaining much of the Talmudic Hebrew language (or ‘Mishnaic Hebrew’), but the first ever Yiddish novel (Yiddish, meaning literally “Jewish” is a language of German Ashkenazi Jews written in the Hebrew alphabet).

Considering the sheer historical eminence of his ancestors, it would take real gullibility to believe that David Cameron ‘found out’ about his roots one year before he assumed office. The question is not ‘why did Cameron have no knowledge of his Jewish roots’, but rather, why would he conceal his Jewish identity?

A 2006 report by the Jewish Chronicle⁽⁴⁾ cited here by Stuart Littlewood⁽⁵⁾ perhaps goes some way in explaining this. The report titled ‘Team Cameron’s big Jewish backers‘ is a laundry list of powerful members of the Jewish community who donated over £1 million to David Cameron, explaining his inexplicable rise to power after a relatively mundane and unremarkable political career.

The biggest Jewish donor to the party while Mr Cameron has been leader is gaming magnate Lord Steinberg, who has donated £530,000, plus a loan of £250,000. Hedge-fund owner Stanley Fink has donated £103,000, even though he was a declared supporter of Mr Cameron’s leadership rival, Liam Fox. A further £250,000 has been loaned by philanthropist Dame Vivien Duffield.

During Mr Cameron’s campaign to lead his party, Jewish figures gave his team (as opposed to the party) additional donations of more than £60,000. According to the JC’s inquiries, direct donations to “Team Cameron” in the leadership battle came from philanthropist Trevor Pears (around £20,000), Bicom chair Poju Zabludowicz (£15,000 plus £25,000 to the party), Next chief executive Simon Wolfson (£10,000 plus £50,000 to the party), former Carlton TV boss Michael Green (£10,000) and Tory deputy treasurer and key Cameron fundraiser Andrew Feldman (£10,000 through his family firm, Jayroma).

Aside from these donations from powerful Jewish figures, a ‘small but influential’ group of Jewish Conservative officials and politicians were also ‘key players’ in Cameron’s campaign for leadership, the Jewish Chronicle report goes on to mention.⁽⁴⁾

In the aforementioned piece,⁽⁵⁾ Stuart Littlewood makes an observation about the extent to which Jews are over-represented in the British parliament (emphases added):

While nobody is suggesting, I hope, that Jews have no place in our law-making, it is not unreasonable to wish the number to reflect their presence in the population. Three years ago the Jewish Chronicle published a list of Jewish MPs in Britain’s Parliament, naming 24. The Jewish population in the UK at that time was – and probably still is – around 280,000 or just under 0.5 per cent. There are 650 seats in the House of Commons so, on a proportional basis, Jews could expect three seats. But with 24 they were eight times over-represented. Which meant, of course, that other groups were under-represented.

The UK’s Muslim population is about 2.4 million or nearly 4 per cent. Similarly, their quota would be 25 seats but they had only eight – a serious shortfall. If Muslims were over-represented to the same extent as Jews (i.e. eight times) they’d have 200 seats. Imagine the hullabaloo.

David Cameron appointed the UK’s first Jewish ambassador⁽⁶⁾ to the Zionist regime, Matthew Gould.

Succeeded by David Cameron, the previous leader of the Conservative party, Michael Howard, is also Jewish,⁽⁷⁾ as is the current leader of the UK Labour party, Ed Miliband.⁽⁸⁾ Not bad going for a group that constitutes less than 0.5% of Britain’s population.

If the British public were to consider Cameron’s very real pursuance of Zionist policies in the context of his rise to power on the back of Jewish money, there would be a public awakening (which would no-doubt be labelled as ‘anti-Semitism’). In light of this, the decision to conceal his Jewish identity can easily be understood.

It is not democratic for a holder of high office to be put in place by the money of powerful political pressure groups. Nor is it democratic for one ethno-religious group to be grossly over-represented within the corridors of power.

If the interests of the Zionist regime and the powerful Jewish community were to conflict with those of the United Kingdom, who would David ‘I’m a Zionist‘ Cameron really represent? If the recent wars on Libya and Syria are anything to go by, this question need not be asked.

Notes

(1) ‘Cameron declares himself a Zionist’ – The Jerusalem Post, 13 June 2007.
(2) ‘David Cameron Speaks to the Movement for Reform Judaism’ – Written by Movement for Reform Judaism, 12 April 2010.
(3) ‘Illustrious Jewish roots of Tory leader revealed’ – The University of Manchester, 10 July 2009.
(4) ‘Special report: Team Cameron’s big Jewish backers’ – Bernard Josephs and Leon Symons – The Jewish Chronicle, 12 October 2006.
(5) ‘David Cameron’s “Torah” government: Britain’s unbearable shame’, by Stuart Littlewood.
(6) ‘Interview: The UK’s new Jewish ambassador to Israel’ – The Jewish Chronicle, 10 December 2009.
(7) ‘Britain’s Conservative Party To Elect First Jewish Leader’ – The Jewish Federations of North America, 6 November 2010.
(8) ‘The Jewishness of Ed Miliband: Labour’s first Jewish leader bravely faces up to the Left’s anti-Semitic streak’ – The Telegraph, 25 May 2012

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January 8, 2014 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Report: Israeli occupation authorities seized 14,204 dunums of Palestinian land in 2013

Palestine Information Center – 06/01/2014

RAMALLAH — The land research center in Bethlehem said that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) had seized 14,204 dunums of Palestinian lands in 2013 in the occupied territories of Jerusalem and the West Bank and registered them in the names of Jewish settlers, settlement groups and companies.

In a report, the research center stated that during last year the IOA had demolished 371 Palestinian-owned facilities and structures and issued demolition orders against 510 others in addition to the demolition of 246 homes accommodating 1,200 Palestinian citizens, including 650 children.

The center noted that the IOA issued demolition orders against 3,131 homes during the reporting year.

According to the report, the IOA and its settlers under military protection uprooted and destroyed 19,083 Palestinian-owned fruitful trees in different areas of the West Bank.

The IOA had also finished the building of 625 settlement units, approved the construction of 7,000 units and declared plans to build 25,000 others.

In a related context, Palestinian specialist in settlement affairs Khaled Ma’ali stated on Sunday that the Israeli commander of the central region Nitzan Alon had given orders to turn the illegal outpost of Brochan into an official settlement under the jurisdiction of the regional settlement council, pointing out that Alon had already declared the building of 550 new housing units in this colony.

Ma’ali added that Palestinian farmers and eyewitnesses reported that settlement construction is already in the works in this outpost.

He noted that the name of this settlement is derived from the Palestinian village Bruqin and the settlers made changes to the real name in order to delude themselves into believing that they have a historical claim on the area.

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January 6, 2014 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

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