Veolia dumps Israel’s waste in Jordan Valley and wins Israeli army contract
By Adri Nieuwhof – The Electronic Intifada – 11/22/2011
Who Profits, a project of the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace, has uncovered evidence that Veolia is involved in dumping Israeli waste at the company’s site in Tovlan in the occupied Jordan Valley. The Israeli Civil Administration confirmed this in response to an application by Who Profits under the Freedom of Information Law.
In a newsletter of 21 November 2011, Who Profits writes that, according to the Civil Administration, eight Israeli companies hold permits to transfer waste to Tovlan landfill, including Veolia subsidiaries TMM Integrated Recycling Services and YRAV Sherutei Noy 1985.
The information provided by the Civil Administration shows that waste from recycling factories in Israel and from the Hiriya site (southeast of Tel Aviv) is transported to Tovlan landfill. The recycling factories are located in the areas of HaSharon, Sgula, Haifa and Afula. Who Profits writes:
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The waste transferred to the landfill consists of municipal solid waste, construction waste, sterilized medical waste and electronic waste. The Civil Administration mentioned that there is no permit for bringing hazardous waste into the site.
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The average amount of waste that originates inside Israel and is permitted to be buried in the site is 19,000 tons a month.
Tovlan landfill is built on stolen Palestinian land. The landfill serves the needs of the Israeli population. Under international law, Israel is prohibited from using occupied land for the sole benefit of its own civilian population. In Resolution 63/201 of 28 January 2009, the UN General Assembly explicitly addressed the issue. It called :
upon Israel, the occupying Power, to cease the dumping of all kinds of waste materials in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan, which gravely threaten their natural resources, namely water and land resources, and pose an environmental hazard and health threat to the civilian populations.
Meanwhile, Veolia digs its heels deeper into the Israeli occupation by offering services to the Israeli army. In mid-August of this year, according to the Who Profits newsletter, Veolia subsidiary YRAV Sherutei Noy 1985 won a contract for waste collection services from the Israeli army bases in the Jordan Valley. … Full article
Israeli police shut down Jewish-Palestinian radio station
By Yossi Gurvitz | +972 | November 19 2011
A small radio station, “Kol Hashalom,” unique in that it was directed jointly by a Palestinian and a Jew, was abruptly shut down by the Israeli police on Thursday.
Kol Hashalom, which roughly means “All for Peace,” had been active for the last seven years. It was a joint venture of the Palestinian NGO Biladi and the Israeli NGO Jewish-Arab Center for Peace, and was directed by former Meretz MK Mossi Raz and Meissa Bransie-Senyura. The station broadcast from Ramallah, under a license granted by the Palestinian Authority to the Biladi company. (Full disclosure: I participated as a co-host in a Kol Hashalom broadcasts about a year ago).
Naturally, the very idea of a Jewish-Palestinian radio was anathema to the Jewish right (can you seriously call it “Israeli” anymore, when its essence is the eradication of Israeli identity?). So, in September, one of the leaders of the campaign for the destruction of Israeli democracy, Likud MK and Sarah Palin fan Danny Danon, demanded (Hebrew) that the station be shut down. Danon claimed the station was “inciting against Israel,” specifically that it was calling upon people “to reject political decisions arrived at democratically.” To wit, to support Palestinian statehood.
On November 4th, the Ministry of Communication sent a letter to Kol Hashalom, saying it is acting illegally and must close down immediately. The managers, having consulted their legal counsel, sent a letter last week denying all those claims. On Thursday, a day later – unheard-of speed for the Israeli police – Raz was summoned for a police interrogation, where he was informed that he was suspected of managing an illegal radio station, and that if he does not order it to shut down immediately, he would be arrested and the police would raid the station’s Jerusalem offices.
In a phone conversation with Raz today, he noted that a threat of detainment over the claim of running an illegal radio station is unprecedented. As far as I recall, in all of the years of the saga surrounding settler radio Channel 7, never were any of its managers arrested – even though its broadcasting interfered with the radio frequencies of the Ben Gurion Airport, and even though it never even claimed to be legal or licensed.
Kol Hashalom, again, is based in Ramallah (the Jerusalem offices serve for its internet broadcast) and has a Palestinian license. Raz says the interrogators presented him with two arguments. One, that the station broadcasts in Hebrew, for a Hebrew-speaking public, which means it is an Israeli station which bypasses the law. Really? I guess the police don’t know that bypassing the law is, by definition, not breaking it. Raz, sarcastically, suggests the police should immediately arrest the anchors of the Persian Voice of Israel: According to the logic of the police, it is an Iranian radio station and the anchors are obviously Iranian spies.
Mossi Raz, who is sure that the closing of the station is part of an assault on the media. (Photo: Yossi Gurvitz)
The second argument of the police was dubbed by Raz as the “I’ve murdered my parents, have pity on an orphan” argument: They said that Israel has never granted the Palestinian Authority any frequencies, even though it was obligated to do so in the Oslo Accords. This argument suffers from two problems: Raz noted that the Accords grant the PA the right to grab their own frequencies if Israel doesn’t allocate them within a certain time frame. Secondly, and more importantly, this argument basically says that ALL Palestinians radio stations are, without exception, illegal – yet strangely enough the Israeli police only bother itself with the Jewish-Palestinian one. This can be seen as even more proof of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank: Israel claims the right to shut down a radio station licensed by the so-called autonomous PA.
This stinks to high heaven, and looks suspiciously like – as Raz says openly – a part of the continuing effort of Netanyahu and his right-wing allies to overtake the media and silence their political rivals. Raz, fearing a raid on the Jerusalem offices, ordered the broadcasts to be shut down on Thursday, and now Kol Hashalom is preparing an appeal to the High Court of Justice. Developing.
Israeli army steps up attacks on Palestinian water
By Ben Lorber | Alternative Information Center | 15 November 2011
Speaking to the American Congress in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarked that Israel would maintain a long-term presence in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley. In the months that followed, the Israeli army stepped up its attacks on the water wells of the Palestinians who live there.
The last two months have seen a steady stream of Israeli army attacks on Palestinian Bedouin water wells in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
On October 13, farmers received demolition orders on several water wells in Kufr al-Deek, a village in the town of Salfit near Nablus. On the 8th of September, 50 military jeeps, trucks and bulldozers sealed off Al Nasarayah as a closed military zone, and proceeded to illegally destroy 3 water wells and confiscate the attached water systems, the pumps of which cost $40,000 each to install. Five days later, the IOF returned to Al Nasarayah to demolish 2 more wells, stopping along the way to destroy another well east of Tamoun. The next day, IDF soldiers entered the village of Al- Fa’ara, near Nablus, to photograph and record the GPS coordinates of 6 more wells intended for demolition.
These water wells had permits from the Palestinian Authority, and were operating in the 5% of the Jordan Valley designated after the 1993 Oslo Accords Area A, under full Palestinian civil and military control.
Since the beginning of Israel’s colonization of the Jordan Valley in 1967, local Bedouin have seen the steady drying-up of the once-flowing springs around which they built their villages. They are unable to dig sufficient wells of their own because of crippling Israeli regulations, and have become dependent on the Israelis for access to a basic human right.
According to Ma’an Development Center’s 2010 report ‘Draining Away- the Water and Sanitation Crisis in the Jordan Valley’, 40% of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley consume less water than the minimum global standard set by the World Health Organization, which is set at 100 liters cubed per day. In a striking disparity, 56,000 Palestinians in the Jordan Valley consume an average of 37 Million Cubic Meters (MCM) of water per year, as compared to an average of 41 MCM for only 9,400 settlers.
According to Ma’an Development Center’s 2010 report ‘Draining Away- the Water and Sanitation Crisis in the Jordan Valley’, 40% of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley consume less water than the minimum global standard set by the World Health Organization, which is set at 100 liters cubed per day. In a striking disparity, 56,000 Palestinians in the Jordan Valley consume an average of 37 Million Cubic Meters (MCM) of water per year, as compared to an average of 41 MCM for only 9,400 settlers.
Because of post-Oslo Accords regulations, Jordan Valley Bedouins living in Area C (95% of the Valley) cannot build, or improve, the smallest animal pen, much less a water well, without a permit, which is almost impossible to obtain. The Oslo Accords set up a Joint Water Committee (JWC), composed of Israelis and Palestinians, to grant construction permits.
However, ‘Draining Away’ reports that “around 150 Palestinian water and sanitation projects are still pending JWC approval for ‘technical and security reasons’, while only one new Palestinian well project for the [West Bank] Western aquifer has been approved since 1993. In contrast, Israel is able to construct pipelines to its illegal settlements without going through the mechanism of the JWC. Thus Israel effectively has full control of water resources in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
Even if a project is approved by the JWC, it must then be approved by the Israeli Civil Administration, where, according to Deeb Abdelghafar, Director of Water Resources for the Palestinian Water Authority, “there are more than 14 departments, and each department must approve on the project. So we can never get a project through”.
The 2009 World Bank report ‘Assessment of Restrictions on Palestinian Water Development: West Bank and Gaza’ quotes an anonymous NGO donor: “the first thing we request is a letter from PWA approving the project. Then we go to the JWC. But then we have to go to the Civil Administration – and there delays of 2-3 years are normal. In fact, we have no positive outcomes for Area C.”
Because of the impossibility of laying infrastructure, NGOs focus, says Abdelghafar, on “civil emergency intervention- by delivering small water tankers, by supplying them with water tanks, by constructing rainwater cisterns- it’s emergency humanitarian relief.” While important, this aid is temporary, able only to alleviate the symptoms, not cure the disease.
The Israelis, Abdhelgafar makes clear, “are trying to establish control over the Valley, by preventing or destroying permanent water infrastructure…they want to clear Area C of Palestinians”.
Israeli forces demolish homes in Jericho
Ma’an – 15/11/2011
JERICHO — Israeli forces on Tuesday demolished four homes west of Jericho in the central West Bank.
Palestinian security officials said over 30 army vehicles and 100 soldiers deployed in the Ein al-Duyuk al-Tahta area early Tuesday morning and declared a closed military zone, before bulldozers started demolishing homes.
Families did not have a chance to remove their furniture and belongings, security officials added.
Majed al-Atawneh said Israeli civil administration officers ordered him to leave his home but he refused and sat on the roof with his family. He told Ma’an he preferred that the army demolished his home “over his head” than to become homeless.
Israeli forces demolished homes belonging to Musbah Ali Mutur, Amar al-Fakhory, Mohammad Ali al-Haaj and Ali al-Dallam.
Two of the families were forced to evacuate their homes and the other two were not at home. One of the homeowners is in Saudi Arabia after performing the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage, a Ma’an reporter said.
A spokesman for Israeli authorities in the West Bank told Reuters the homes were razed because they were built without proper permits.
Palestinian security officials told Ma’an that 30 homes in the area were under threat of demolition because they lacked Israeli permits.
The homes are in Area C, a zone encompassing 62 percent of the West Bank which is under full Israeli military and civil control.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA notes that under Israel’s zoning policy, Palestinians can only build in 1 percent of Area C, on land which is already heavily built up. Meanwhile, more than 94 percent of Palestinian permit applications have been rejected in recent years.
“Sadly, the number of people affected by demolition continues to grow. The UN estimates that between 28 and 46 per cent of Palestinian homes could be at risk of demolition, leaving people living under a cloud of anxiety,” UNRWA says.
After the demolitions on Tuesday, Israeli soldiers fired stun grenades to stop residents from returning to the rubble, witnesses said.
Palestinian-UN Bid Rejected By White Nations
Russia, sole European nation favoring application
By Alaa Ashkar | IMEMC & Agencies | November 11, 2011
UN Admission Committee, specialized for recognizing new states’ applications, submitted its report to the UN Security Council on Friday, reading that the Palestinian-UN full membership has been rejected after discussions regarding the Palestinian bid.
The committee’s secretary, the Portuguese ambassador to the UN Gabriel Jose Blaba said that “The UNSC member states would continue their discussions regarding the upcoming Palestinian steps of the Palestinian application at the UN.”
Eight members voted in favor of the Palestinian-UN bid, which are Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Niger, Gabon and Lebanon while 7 other members voted against the bid including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Columbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Portugal has abstained.
It is worth mentioning that the committee’s stand has been leaked out few days ago which cause the Palestinian Minister Foreign Affairs, Riyad Al-Maliki, confirming the Palestinian bid for full membership at the UN. He further stated that the Palestinians would continue their attempts in order for Palestine to be a full member at the international body.
How Ireland helps Israel’s war industry
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | November 10, 2011
Mainly due to our long experience of colonisation, many Irish have been staunch supporters of the dispossessed and oppressed Palestinians. In 2009, Ambassador Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, singled out Ireland as one of the few Western nations to vote for the UN resolution supporting the Goldstone Report detailing Israeli war crimes in Gaza. In June this year, the Irish Ship to Gaza (ISG) campaign claimed that their vessel, the Saoirse (Freedom), was sabotaged by Israel while berthed in the Turkish port of Gocek. And only last Friday, Israeli commandos boarded the Saoirse in international waters off Gaza and detained an Irish Member of the European Parliament on board.
Sadly, some of Ireland’s most prominent institutions appear to be less principled. David Cronin, the author of Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation, has written an important piece in Politico.ie detailing the complicity of one of Ireland’s EU Commissioners, many Irish universities, and Ireland’s “newspaper of record” with Israel’s war industry:
Ensconced in Brussels, the only controversy Máire Geoghegan-Quinn has been embroiled in over the past few years related to her bloated income. While she has displayed remarkable chutzpah in seeking to draw down both a European commissioner’s salary and Oireachtas and ministerial pensions, her personal greed is of little consequence compared to her abetting of Israel’s crimes against humanity.
Israel is the most active non-European participant in the EU’s multi-annual scientific research programme, which Geoghegan-Quinn administers. According to the European Commission’s own data, Israel is currently involved in 800 EU-financed research activities with a total value of €4.3 billion. What the Commission is less eager to spell out is that the beneficiaries of this largesse include weapons manufacturers and technology firms that supply Israel with the tools of repression and occupation.
The Irish Times regularly publishes columns on the EU’s research activities by Conor O’Carroll from the Irish Universities Association. Because the seven universities O’Carroll represents receive funding from the EU’s science programme, he has a direct interest in presenting that programme in a positive light. Although the Irish Times is nominally committed to informed debate, its editors have told me on several occasions that they would not have space on their pages for an article explaining how Irish academics cooperate with Israel’s war industry.
Trinity College Dublin, for example, is taking part in a €14.5 million EU-financed project called Total Airport Security System (TASS), under which new surveillance equipment will be installed in Heathrow Airport ahead of next year’s Olympic Games in London. Among the other participants in the TASS consortium are Elbit, a company that has helped install surveillance equipment in the apartheid wall that Israel is building in the West Bank. Elbit was also one of two makers of the pilotless drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs) with which Israel attacked Gaza in 2008 and 2009.
When ruling that the West Bank wall was illegal, the International Court of Justice stated in 2004 that public authorities throughout the world had an obligation not to render any aid or assistance to its construction. Norway – a country outside the EU – has taken that verdict sufficiently seriously to order that its state-owned pension scheme divest from Elbit. Yet Geoghegan-Quinn and her officials continue to subsidise that same company.
The University of Limerick is involved in a €70 million project called Maaximus for developing “more affordable” aircraft than those currently in use. Other participants in this project include Israel Aerospace Industries, another firm that has worked on the West Bank wall and provided warplanes used to kill civilians in Gaza.
University College Cork, meanwhile, is trying to give credence to the Israeli myth that it is saving the world from terrorist attacks. UCC is the official coordinator of an EU-funded project called CommonSense, which is focused on developing sensors for detecting bombs containing radioactive materials. This project also involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Israeli Institute for Technology in Haifa. Better known as the Technion, that institute has been responsible for such innovations as a remote-controlled bulldozer, explicitly intended for use in demolishing Palestinian homes.
Zionist plan to build 60,000 settlement units in Jerusalem
Palestine Information Center – 06/11/2011
NAZARETH — Hebrew media sources revealed a strategic plan of the occupation municipality in Jerusalem which aims to build more than 60,000 new settler residential units in Jerusalem over the next 20 years.
Maariv said on Sunday that a Jerusalem municipality document shows that of 60,718 new residential units, most (53,000) will be built in settlements in East Jerusalem.
24,000 units have already been approved by the planning committee, only 3,500 of them will be built in West Jerusalem. Planning applications have been submitted for another 13,500 more units awaiting approval. Plans for another 23,266 more units are being prepared.
According to data in the document the land on which these units will be built lies in north eastern Jerusalem, such as Besgat Zeiv settlement, Nevieh Yacub settlement and Arab suburbs: Beit Hanian and Shefat. The building of more than 10,000 units will start straight away, planning permissions for half of them have already been obtained and the other half still awaiting permission.
According to municipality data, 10,934 units will be built, half of them approved and they will be built in Silwan and in the old city.
Anata falls victim to militarized, illegal settlement once again
By Jenna Bereld | International Solidarity Movement | 26 October 2011
West Bank – When Mohammad woke up on Tuesday, he still did not know about the Israeli forces or the bulldozers that were on their way to uproot his trees and demolish his entire farm. But before the day was over, all of his property was erased and one could hardly guess that there had ever been a building there.
“I’m very sad because of the farm”, Mohammad said.
The soldiers claimed that the buildings were illegal, referring to the Israeli Civil Administration. ”This is the land from my grandfather, and I have no other land,” Mohammad says.
Mohammad lives in Anata in the West Bank with his wife and twelve children. The village is trapped by the Separation Wall around Jerusalem to the west, and Area C and the planned expansion of the settlement Ma’ale Adumim to the east. The village has no possibility to expand without building permits from the Israeli Civil Administration. The process is expensive, and for Palestinians, the application is rejected in 95% of the cases. From 2000 to 2007 almost 5,000 demolition orders against Palestinian buildings were issued.
In a separate incident, a four year old Palestinian child from Anata was shot in the neck around noon. Asil Arara’s wounds have left her in serious condition and may cause paralysis. The illegal Israeli settlement of Anatot, also home to settlers who recently violently attacked Israeli peace activists, is home to a military training camp from where it is said the shot that struck Arara was fired.
Cambridge students vote to break contract with Veolia
By Ben White – The Electronic Intifada – 10/25/2011
From the Cambridge Bin Veolia campaign:
58% of students vote to break contract with company implicated in Israeli human rights abuses
Students at Cambridge have voted to call on the University to cut ties with a company implicated in Israeli human rights abuses.
The vote 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. The referendum, which closed yesterday, passed with a majority of 58% to 41%: there were 898 votes yes, 637 votes no, and 21 ballots spoilt. While a strong majority was in support, the referendum was inquorate: 7.2% of the student body voted, short of the 10% required.
Students involved in the campaign pledged to continue the campaign to ensure that Veolia’s contract, which expires in September 2012, is not renewed.
As previously reported on the blog, student campaigners had been boosted in the lead up to the referendum with letters of support from Palestinian trade unionists and students, as well as a list of Cambridge academics.
While voter participation was too low to make the motion automatically become CUSU policy, the students behind the push to cut the University’s ties with Veolia are encouraged:
Daniel Benjamin, a student involved in the campaign, said: “With this vote, Cambridge students make a strong statement against Veolia’s criminal actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We won’t stop fighting until Veolia is off campus, but this vote itself is a fantastic show of support in the broader campaign for Palestinian human rights through boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli companies and institutions.”
Owen Holland, a student involved in the campaign, said: “The impressive turnout shows significant student support for the campaign. We are concerned with a number of irregularities in the vote, such as lies in the ‘no’ flysheet that went uncorrected, a lack of ballot boxes in colleges, and a number of students who found themselves unable to vote online. Though the referendum did not meet the threshold to become CUSU policy, we will be campaigning to have CUSU adopt it anyway and push the University to drop its contract with Veolia.
The “lies” of the ‘No’ campaign, referred to by Owen Holland, can be read here (and they are rebutted here). The ‘No’ flysheet prepared by members of the Cambridge University Jewish Society described “the wider BDS movement” as “antisemitic”, even if the motion in question “is not explicitly” so. Despite such smear tactics, the majority of Cambridge students who voted backed the call for the University to cancel its contract with Veolia, and the campaign continues.
Erekat: Freeze on govt settlements ‘false distinction’
Ma’an – October 22, 2011
BETHLEHEM — PLO official Saeb Erekat has rejected the distinction between government and private construction in Israeli settlements, the premise of Israel’s “offer” for a partial building freeze reported by Israeli media on Friday.
As all settlement building on Palestinian lands is illegal under international law, differentiating public and private-led expansion is a “false distinction,” a statement from the former chief negotiator said on Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed to freeze government settlement construction in an offer put to President Mahmoud Abbas by Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin on Wednesday, the Israeli daily Haaretz and a Palestinian official said.
Private construction constitutes around 80 percent of settlement activity, according to recent studies.
“Looting is not made legal under any circumstance,” Erekat said. “Attempting to draw such false distinctions exposes the true intentions of the Israeli government.”
Diplomats are trying to renew direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials as the UN Security Council considers Palestine’s application for full membership of the global body, which Israel and the US have vowed to scupper.
A Quartet proposal aired on Sept. 23 — as Abbas handed the bid to UN officials — has faltered as the deadline it set for a preliminary meeting within one month passed without an appointment.
Days later, Netanyahu told Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post that Palestinian insistence on a settlement halt was a “pretext” to avoid talks, and implied that a new settlement freeze was unlikely.
“We already gave at the office,” Netanyahu told the Post, referring to a 10-month partial settlement freeze that Israel refused to renew in late September 2010, leading to the breakdown of direct talks launched weeks earlier.
Palestinian officials say they cannot negotiate with Israel while it builds on lands needed for the viability of a future Palestinian state.
On Sept. 27, Israel approved the construction of 1,100 new homes in Gilo settlement, and in early October started building 11 units as part of a 300-home project in Pisgat Zeev settlement, both in East Jerusalem.
An Israeli peace group also revealed in October that Israel has formally submitted plans to build 2,610 homes near Gilo, including new neighborhood Givat Hamotos, which will cut off Bethlehem and the West Bank from East Jerusalem’s southern sector.
East Jerusalem was annexed by Israeli in a 1967 war, in a move never recognized by the international community. Israel claims Jerusalem as its undivided capital, while Palestinians say the occupied east must be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
“Might does not make right. We will not compromise our positions based on the power politics of the day,” Erekat said Friday. “International law has been, and will continue to be, the basis for our positions on this and all other issues.”
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
Forced Israeli curriculum violates Palestinians’ education rights
By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours – The Electronic Intifada – 17 October 2011
Jerusalem – Thousands of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem face crowded, sub-standard classrooms while Israel attempts to censor Palestinian identity in school.
Palestinian activists, parents and students are fighting against the Israeli authorities’ recent push to impose an Israeli curriculum on East Jerusalem schools, which they say threatens the city’s Palestinian culture and identity.
“Through the move of distortion in the Palestinian curriculum, the Israeli occupation authorities are willing to complete the project of achieving total domination over both the Palestinian land and the Palestinian human while depriving him from his culture and his history, thus tampering with the collective identity of Palestinians,” said Abdel Karim Lafi, the head of the Parents’ Committee Union, during a press conference in East Jerusalem in September.
“Our Palestinian curriculum expresses our past, present, and future. It fulfills what we need as an occupied Arab Palestinian community, and any [meddling] with that curriculum by the occupation influences it negatively,” he added.
In March of this year, the Jerusalem municipality sent a letter to private schools in East Jerusalem that receive allocations from the Israeli authorities. The letter stated that at the start of the 2011-2012 academic year, the schools would be obliged to purchase and only use textbooks prepared by the Jerusalem Education Administration (JEA), a joint body of the municipality and the Israeli ministry of education.
The move to introduce the Israeli curriculum came after Israeli parliament (Knesset) member Alex Miller from the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, who heads the Knesset’s education committee, stated that in East Jerusalem, “the whole curriculum should and must be Israeli.”
In addition to using Israeli textbooks, the Israeli ministry of education requested that the Israeli Declaration of Independence be on display in both public and private schools in East Jerusalem.
“That means that they are trying to promote the Israeli story at the expense of the Palestinian story. If we talk about Jerusalem, Jerusalem is occupied like any other part of the West Bank so what’s going on is illegal and Israel is trying to promote the annexation of Jerusalem,” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civil Coalition to Defend Palestinians’ Rights in East Jerusalem.
“The Jerusalem municipality and Israeli ministry of education are trying to promote Israeli politics and culture and identity. That’s what the Declaration of Independence is talking about. They are trying to spread these ideas among the Palestinian students at school. This is at the expense of the people [who] don’t have the right to express their identity, their culture,” Odeh told The Electronic Intifada.
Lack of resources crippling education
After Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, Palestinians in the city followed the Jordanian educational system. Then, shortly after the signing of the Oslo II agreement, schools in East Jerusalem began using the curriculum of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Today, four different authorities govern the education system in East Jerusalem: the JEA, the Islamic Waqf, the private sector, and UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees.
According to 2010-2011 statistics provided by the East Jerusalem Education Directorate, the JEA runs 50 schools in East Jerusalem, which are attended by 38,785 students, or 48 percent of the total number of Palestinian students in the city. An additional 22,500 Palestinian students attend 68 different private schools in East Jerusalem.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Jerusalem-based organization Ir Amim released a report on the education system in East Jerusalem last year (“Failed Grade: Palestinian Education System in East Jerusalem 2010,” August 2010).
The report found that more than 4,000 Palestinian children living in East Jerusalem were not enrolled in school, and that over 1,000 classrooms were missing. Additionally, East Jerusalem schools suffered from a systematic lack of resources and facilities, which negatively influenced the desire and motivation of Palestinian students to complete their studies, the report found.
“Thousands of children do not attend school, and even those who attend school, do so in crowded and substandard classrooms, where the academic level is poor. The school dropout rate is 50 percent and only a few graduates go on to attain higher education. Only a true policy change accompanied by appropriate budgeting can bring about the necessary change and offer the children of Jerusalem a better future,” the report stated.
Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are entitled to receive access to public education since they live under Israeli control in what is considered under international law to be occupied territory.
“The compulsory education law requires Israel to provide education services to all Palestinian children in East Jerusalem from kindergarten to 12th grade. The ministry of education and the municipality of Jerusalem recognize this duty and have even clearly stated it themselves during various legal proceedings over the past decade,” the “Failed Grade” report found.
“However, an overview of the policy of the ministry of education and the municipality of Jerusalem on this issue shows that their recognition of this commitment is not translated into actual policy.”
Protected under international law
Palestinians in East Jerusalem are protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that, “the Occupying Power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.”
Article 13 of the International Convention on Economic and Social Rights also specifies that states must “undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents … to choose for their children schools … [and] ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.”
In February of this year, the Israeli high court gave the education ministry and Jerusalem municipality five years to improve the level of state education in East Jerusalem. The court also ordered the Israeli authorities to bear the cost of tuition for students attending “recognized but unofficial” schools due to the shortage of classrooms.
“It appears that the right of many children in East Jerusalem to receive an official education for free is not being fulfilled and at this point the authorities are not fully meeting their legal obligation to give every child in Israel a free official education,” wrote Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch in the ruling, as quoted in a report by Ir Amim and ACRI (“The East Jerusalem School System — Annual Status Report,” September 2011).
“The violation of the right to equality in education in East Jerusalem is not the plight of a few. It is the plight of a significant portion of an entire sector of the population, which is not able to exercise a basic right it is afforded by law and the constitutional values of Israeli law,” Beinisch continued.
According to Zakaria Odeh, the Israeli authorities have done little so far to improve the system, and devastating restrictions remain in place.
“The municipality doesn’t allow Palestinians to build new schools, so there has been no increase in the [number of] Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem. There has been a restriction on building, so the schools are using buildings, which were meant to be for housing, for residential [purposes]. Especially in the Old City, most of these buildings are more than 100, 200 years old. They need renovations. They are not appropriate for education,” Odeh said.
Odeh explained that the Jerusalem municipality and Israeli ministry of education are using the fact that they provide funding to private schools in East Jerusalem to impose the Israeli curriculum on those schools. To prevent this from happening, he said that the PA should step in and support the Palestinian education system in East Jerusalem.
“We talked to the [PA’s] education minister and the PA prime minister’s office in order to try to ask them to provide some support because the Israelis are targeting the private schools because these schools get financial support from the municipality,” he said.
“The PA has a responsibility to provide financial support for the education system, for the schools in East Jerusalem.”
Israeli curriculum threatens Palestinian identity
In June, Ir Amim sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denouncing the government’s plan to force an Israeli curriculum on Palestinian private schools.
“The right of the children of East Jerusalem to an education by their culture and national identity is also consistent with the basic right to education recognized in Israeli law and their right to equality in education, freedom and defense of their identity. Israel is obligated not only to avoid violating those rights but also has the positive obligation to support their realization,” the letter stated.
According to Abdel Karim Lafi, Israel’s attempt to introduce its own curriculum against the will of Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem reflects the larger goal of using education to harm Palestinian culture and identity.
“We call upon all the student frameworks and parents’ committees in all neighborhoods to unite, organize and take a fast action to stop this threatening plan, which forms the most dangerous battle against our Jerusalemite culture,” Lafi said.
He urged the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its obligations of providing education and resources to Palestinian Jerusalemites. He also called on Arab states, the US and Europe to protect Palestinians from attempts to alter the curriculum in East Jerusalem.
“This protection must include preserving Palestinians’ rights, culture, and civilization, consequently their right to confront the attempts to ‘Israelize’ the Palestinian curriculum in the schools of the city, as these attempts violate the most basic human rights of this nation, particularly their right in education which comes along with their needs and aspirations,” he said.
“This is [also] a message to the Israeli society and the Israeli leaders that we the people know how to maintain our curriculum and save the Palestinian face of Jerusalem.”
~
Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jkdamours.com
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Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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