A lawsuit over alleged anti-Semitism at the University of California Berkeley has been dismissed in its preliminary stages.
The case was dismissed after a district judge determined that students had accused the university’s administrators of allowing an “anti-Semitic climate” to develop on campus failed to support their claims.
On 22 December in San Francisco, US District Judge Richard Seeborg ruled in favor of a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. In his ruling, Seeborg stated that “plaintiffs have failed to allege facts supporting a claim that defendants have violated plaintiffs’ legal or other constitutional rights or that they have legal duty to take further action to control the conduct of other persons.”
The lawsuit, which was filed on 18 May 2011 by Jessica Felber, a 2010 UC Berkeley graduate, and Brian Maissy, a current UC Berkeley student, and members of UC Berkeley’s Zionist student organization Tikvah, alleged that the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Student Association (MSA) “threaten and endanger the health and safety of the University of California’s Jewish Students.”
The plaintiffs referred to the MSA, SJP and the Muslim Student Union (MSU) — an organization that actually does not exist on UC Berkeley’s campus — as “the anti-Semitic/anti-Israel MSA, SJP and MSU.”
The centerpiece of the suit was an incident that Felber claimed to have occurred in March 2010. Felber alleged that an SJP member rammed into her with a shopping cart as she demonstrated on the campus’ well-known protest area, Sproul Plaza, during “Israeli Peace and Diversity Week.” The suit went on to invoke a long list of other supposedly similar or related incidents in which the MSA, SJP and other Muslim student organizations from other UC campuses allegedly committed acts of violence and harassed Jewish students and individuals.
No coherent or plausible argument
The lawsuit was dismissed during the motion to dismiss phase, in which the judge rules on the assumption that all information presented by the plaintiff is true, requiring no discussion or investigation of the accuracy of the plaintiffs’ claims.
A portion of the lawsuit was examined under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Seeborg stated in his ruling that nothing in the complaint “shows any deprivation of plaintiffs’ ‘freedom of assembly’ at all. Additionally, from the facts presently alleged, it is far from clear that any person interfered with plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion.”
The judge added, “some courts have allowed public colleges to outlaw harassing speech and conduct that interferes with students’ rights, but schools have no legal duty to do so” (“UC Berkeley students’ anti-Semitism suit dismissed,” San Francisco Chronicle, 26 December 2011).
Another portion of the claims are brought under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. These claims were also dismissed though Seeborg’s ruling allows plaintiffs twenty days to amend (until 11 January 2012). Seeborg’s ruling explains that plaintiffs’ claims fail to show that the events presented in the complaint had indeed interfered with students’ access to educational services.
Overall, the ruling reveals the completely ludicrous nature of the complaint and its frivolous use of the law. However, since the litigation excludes MSA and SJP as defendants in the suit, the organizations are provided no opportunity to respond to the allegations made against them.
Propagating false allegations
In general, the complaint links together the activities of all Muslim student groups as well as California SJP and SJP-National together as if the groups are officially and strategically coordinated with one another. The suit lists occurrences on the UC Berkeley campus alongside incidents on several other University of California campuses as evidence of the administration’s encouragement of SJP and MSA’s “campus terrorist incitements.”
In the official complaint, the plaintiffs claim that the alleged incident in which Felber was assaulted by an SJP member on Sproul Plaza was the product of the defendants’ failure to “effectively discipline the MSA and SJP for their pro-terrorist programs, goals and conduct” on the UC Berkeley campus as well as across the UC system. The complaint repeatedly refers to “the SJP, MSA and MSU,” claiming that the MSA is also known as the MSU, when in fact, there is no official strategic coordination between different chapters of the MSA or MSU nationally.
This tactic of mis-naming and mis-grouping sought to blur the lines of national, cultural, religious, ideological and political association to the end of constructing an imaginary rivalry between Muslims (used in the lawsuit as a “catch-all” including Palestinian solidarity activists of all backgrounds, all people of “Middle Eastern” origin, Muslims of all ranges of religiosity) and Jews.
In the context of this fabricated rivalry, all criticism of Israeli policy is anti-Semitic and therefore illegitimate.
Additionally, the suit alleges that SJP is the “militant arm” of the MSA, while in fact there is no formal coordination between the two groups other than co-sponsorship of some campus events.
Furthermore, SJP itself is not a “Palestinian activist group” as the complaint states. Its members are from a wide range of backgrounds, the majority of which are non-Arab and non-Muslim. In general, the leadership of SJP in the past five and a half years of its existence as a registered UC Berkeley student organization has reflected a majority of non-Arab and non-Muslim individuals, though the demographics shift from year to year.
The suit also conflates “Jewish” with “Zionist” in claiming that “anti-Zionist” equals “anti-Semitic,” disregarding the existence of the anti-Zionist Jewish voice — a voice that has been strong within SJP since its registration with the Associated Students of the University of California in the spring of 2005.
Of course, this abuse of the legal system in suppressing Palestinian solidarity activism both on and off university campuses is nothing new. Only after twenty years were charges against the Palestine solidarity activists dubbed the “LA 8” dropped for allegedly raising money for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In 2001, the US government used the courts to shut down the Holy Land Foundation, formerly the largest Muslim charity in the US, and the group’s founding members remain imprisoned on terrorism charges.
Dr. Sami al-Arian remains under house arrest to this day, awaiting a judge’s ruling on charges of criminal contempt based on his humanitarian relief and advocacy work.
And most recently, the court system has been used to convict a group of students at UC Irvine — known as the Irvine 11 — of conspiracy charges for exercising their most basic first amendment rights when they protested the speech of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in February 2010.
Students not deterred
Despite intimidation, student groups across the country and the around world continue to speak out against injustices and repression at home and abroad. From the efforts of students to realize the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) to the Occupy movement within which the slogan “Occupy (fill in the blank), not Palestine” has arisen.
The endless list of demonstrations and victories for BDS and the Palestinian solidarity movement include numerous student campaigns and actions.
In May of 2010, DePaul University’s Student Government Association passed a resolution to replace Sabra hummus products with an alternative brand in campus dining halls. One co-owner of Sabra provides financial support and supplies to two Israeli military units implicated in human rights abuses, the Golani and Givati brigades.
On 26 October, 2011, a walk-out at the University of Michigan left 15 audience members in the room to hear a speech given by Israeli deputy consul Ishmael Khaldi. And in the UK, the National Union of Students unanimously passed a motion demanding an immediate end to King’s College London’s involvement in an EU-funded research project with the Israeli cosmetics firm Ahava in November of this year.
No less can be expected of university students across the globe in the Spring of 2012 with the upcoming 8th annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), an action that gains presence on more campuses every year. In 2010, the first IAW was organized in the occupied West Bank.
As has been the case throughout history, students will remain at the forefront of movements for change despite attempts to discourage and brutalize. The Palestine solidarity movement is no exception.
Dalia Almarina is a Bay Area native. She is a recent alumnus of Cal Students for Justice in Palestine.
Thousands of Jewish settlers, protected by Israeli soldiers, have filled a Palestinian village in order to perform Talmudic rituals. A spokesman for Kafl Hares municipality said that the soldiers cleared the streets and established guard posts on the roofs of various buildings around the village.
According to Ma’mon Boze, the settlers then arrived in dozens of buses, wandering around the village singing and shouting. The villagers, said Mr Boze, were alarmed and disturbed throughout the night. The number of settlers on this occasion is estimated to have been around 10,000.
The settlers claim that the village contains Jewish shrines, but Mr Boze explained that the only religious sites in Kafl Hares are Muslim shrines linked to important personalities mentioned in the Qur’an. “No Jewish connection has ever been made,” he added, pointing out that Jewish settlers invade the village on a frequent basis – more than 46 times in the past year – and, as the keys for the shrines are held by Palestinians, the Israeli soldiers break the locks and doors every time.
The world’s largest open air prison in the world, with a population of 1.7 million Palestinians, 50% of which are children under the age of 18 years old. 80% of the population living on less than $2 per day with unemployment at 45%. Desperately needed medical supplies not being allowed in. Thanks to Tel Aviv and Cairo, Gazans are denied to get in or out of the strip, not even the mail.
The illegal Israeli siege on Gaza continues to take innocent lives daily. Adham Baroud was the latest casualty. A seven month old baby who died on December 26th in a slow and painful death from renal failure when he could be easily treated.
On December 1, Adham was referred to Israel for emergency treatment by his doctors in Gaza after his condition became terminal following a catheter inserted four months earlier in a previous operation in Israel gets infected. Adham never made it.
Julia Hurley, a New York City area human rights advocate, lecturer, and blogger has posted Adham’s tragic story on her blog, (see here) with this comment:
“This story in particular broke my heart because it was completely avoidable. This is dangerous. This is inhumane. There is NO excuse for denying medical treatment to ANYONE. This, right here, is collective punishment. It cannot, and should not, be tolerated.”
Adding salt to the injury, Israel has, according to a December 28, 2011 issue of the British Guardian, ‘upped’ the ante for those wishing to exercise their right to freedom of movement by requiring them to become informants:
“Palestinian patients and business people hoping to leave the Gaza Strip are being asked to collaborate with Israel in exchange for an exit permit, a leading Israeli human rights organization claims. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) say that 172 people, mostly men aged 18 to 40, were called for interrogation by the Shabak, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, last month. Some who attended interviews were granted exit permits.”
The Guardian story revealed more stunning information about Israel’s typically- ruthless and inhumane method of taking advantage of Palestinians who are seeking medical treatment in Israel. Case in point is the story of Ahmad Hamada, a 20-years-old who has suffered serious head injuries, including memory loss. His father Emad, arranged for him to receive treatment in Israel. He had worked there as a laborer for years and was stunned when a week before the appointment, his son was summoned for an interview with the Shabak on September 19. He was led to an interrogation room deep beneath the Erez crossing terminal north of Gaza where an Israeli officer introduced himself in Arabic. Littering his conversation with Gaza slang, he asked briefly about his medical condition.
“I know everything,” he warned him. “You didn’t fall off a wall did you? Why are all those tubes inside you? Tell me the truth. Is your father Hamas? Who is Hamas in the port? Who in your neighborhood?”
“He became very angry when I kept answering that I didn’t know,” Hamada recalled. “I explained I couldn’t remember much since my fall. I was in pain and I just wanted to go home.”
After an hour of questioning, Ahmad was left alone in a locked interview room. The entire process had lasted four hours and he needed the toilet. As his knocks and calls went unanswered, he was forced to pee on the carpet.
Ahmad was eventually sent home and told he would be called for a second interview. He has not heard from them again but says he will refuse to go if they call. He now has a referral for treatment in Egypt but hasn’t gone due to the turmoil there.
The simple truth is, Israel wanting to continue punishing the people of Gaza for voting for Hamas in democratic elections that took place years ago is inhumane and barbaric. The siege on Gaza is one of the greatest moral travesties of our time and we all have a role we can play in bringing the siege to an end. We have to wake up and educate ourselves and others about this crisis.
If we leave it to the mainstream media and to politicians who take their marching orders from Tel Aviv, this bully of the Middle East will continue oppressing the innocent people of Palestine and defy the rules of civilized nations and those of human decency. In other words, we will continue to read and hear more about needless death and tragic stories similar to those of Adham Baroud and Ahmad Hamada of Gaza, Palestine.
Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy by British investigative journalist and The Electronic Intifada contributor Ben White links the struggle of Palestinians within Israel, who make up 20 percent of the country’s population, with those in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and the global diaspora.
With a foreword by Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), the book provides current and well-documented information on the systematic discrimination facing Palestinian citizens of Israel, the increasingly repressive measures being taken against both Palestinian and Jewish dissenters in Israel, and the ongoing Judaization within Israel, particularly in Galilee and the Negev (Naqab) desert, that is intended to further segregate and isolate Palestinians from Israeli Jews.
But perhaps the book’s greatest contribution is its dissection of political Zionism, providing a framework to understand why a state that defines itself as Jewish cannot be democratic. A state that defines itself as belonging to one ethnic group, White shows, is inherently wedded to discrimination and inequality, combining elements of both an ethnocracy and a theocracy, but not the kind of pluralistic democracy that guarantees equal rights for all and protections for national minorities.
In her foreword, Zoabi seizes on this very message, noting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be viewed not through “the lens” of Israel’s illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but rather through the lens of equal rights.
“The argument that the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is one of a conflict with a racist settler project that was founded on notions of ethnic purity,” Zoabi writes, “is understood implicitly by all Palestinians. We Palestinians were quick to comprehend the relationship between ourselves – as indigenous inhabitants of this land – and those who came to take our place (in every sense) without even considering a common life with or alongside us, and without acknowledging that which had gone before them.”
Zoabi herself is part of the movement within Israel to redefine the state as a “state for all its citizens.” She notes that the dominant Zionist political parties within Israel diametrically oppose this notion and thus expose their project as essentially antidemocratic.
“The ‘state of all its citizens’ project has forced the ‘Jewish state’ to admit the primacy that it grants to Jewish-Zionist values over democratic values,” she writes, “and to recognize the impossibility of coexistence between the two … After all, what is the recent ‘legislation’ pertaining to the Jewishness of the state, and the escalation of the process of Judaization from the level of policy, if not a direct acknowledgment of the conflict between democracy and Zionism, and the privileging of the latter over the former?”
For White, the insistence of the Zionist parties on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is not a tactic merely to block negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, nor is it solely about the Palestinians within Israel. Instead, as he succinctly puts it, “Israel’s definition as ‘Jewish and democratic’ is the contradiction at the heart of the conflict.” He devotes the first chapter, “Jewish and Democratic?,” to framing the discussion that will follow, showing how this definition of a state inherently results in the privileging of Jews at the expense of non-Jewish citizens of Israel.
Discriminatory patterns
White then carefully documents the discriminatory patterns resulting from this definition. For example, in the chapter titled “The Land Regime,” he notes that the Palestinian population within Israel is six times greater than it was in 1948, yet land privately owned by Palestinians has declined to a mere 3.5 percent of total available land. Furthermore, successive Israeli governments have helped finance and support the creation of more than 700 new Jewish communities since 1948, as compared with none for the Palestinian minority “except for seven townships in the Negev intended to ‘concentrate’ the Bedouin population.”
For this reviewer, White’s chapters on “Judaization and the Demographic Threat” and “Systematic Discrimination” were among the strongest, providing extensive background information on topics that are rarely mentioned in mainstream media coverage in the United States.
White reveals that among Israeli officials there is a preoccupation with the “demographic threat” posed by Palestinian citizens of Israel, a preoccupation that might best be described as the secret discontent underlying every supremacist regime. It has led Israeli governments to colonize largely Palestinian areas within Israel itself — including by demolishing Palestinian homes, a practice that takes place not just in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, but also within Israel itself. Part of countering the “demographic threat” is to make sure there is a Jewish presence in every part of Israel, which White refers to as the “Judaization of space.”
A case in point is Nazareth and Upper Nazareth in the Galilee. White explains that after 1948 the remaining Palestinians within Israel — who numbered slightly more than 100,000 out of a previous population of more than 850,000 — were concentrated largely within the Galilee and the Negev (Naqab). The city of Nazareth was almost entirely Palestinian and was the largest Palestinian city controlled by Israel before it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.
To “‘assert a Jewish presence in the area,’ in the words of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli government created Upper Nazareth as a Jewish settlement. This settlement was allowed to expand and flourish, eventually growing to 50,000 residents and occupying 42,000 dunams [a dunam is a quarter of an acre], whereas in Nazareth, 70,000 Palestinians were “forced into just 14,000 dunams: four times as crowded.” The mayor of Upper Nazareth still regards Palestinians as a “demographic threat” and announced in June 2009 the creation of a new ultra-Orthodox neighborhood “‘to counter Arabs moving in.’”
However, White’s figures are among the most current available. For example, he notes that in 2010, Palestinian citizens accounted for a third of all poor people in Israel and of the 30 communities with the highest unemployment, 27 of them were Arab. Whole sectors of employment are off limits to Palestinians. Israeli government data from 2011 showed that of the more than 2.3 million people employed by 170,000 Jewish-owned businesses, less than 86,000, or only 3.7 percent, were Palestinian citizens. A survey of almost 200 industrial firms in 2010 showed that 41 percent did not “‘employ any Arab college graduates.’”
Discrimination in education
On the topic of education, this reviewer wished that White had provided more background information to explain Israel’s de facto system of segregated education from kindergarten through the 12th grade. White acknowledges that Israel does not have a legally-segregated K-12 school system.
Nevertheless, the system of de facto segregation in education resulted from a deliberate policy. Military rule fenced off Palestinian rural villages from Jewish settlements and rigidly controlled Palestinians’ ability to move freely with a permit system not unlike apartheid South Africa’s notorious passbooks. Military rule ensured a system of segregated schools in rural areas. What is often not appreciated is what happened in the so-called “mixed cities” where Palestinians and Jews lived together, such as Haifa.
There, in 1948, the Haganah (an armed Zionist organization) forcibly removed Palestinians from the Carmel Ridge and “German Colony” areas to concentrate them in a single neighborhood, the Wadi Nisnas, despite objections from Palestinian members of the Knesset (MKs) who noted that the purpose was to create a “ghetto.” As one MK put it at the time, “It’s described as a military action. But in fact it’s a political one. It’s racism!”
Despite the MKs’ objections, the Haganah commander who implemented the forcible creation of a ghetto noted that he wasn’t interested in their views. They were simply to do as they were told, as recounted in the Israeli historian Tom Segev’s 1949: The First Israelis.
Of course, so-called “separate but equal” school systems are anything but. White documents a study conducted in association with the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics which found that for each Jewish student, schools have a budget of around $1,100 a year, compared with a figure of just $191 for each Palestinian student, almost six times less.
Rethinking our approach to Israel
In his concluding chapter, White returns to his theme of why the political Zionist dream of a Jewish state is central to the conflict. “There is an urgent need to rethink our approach to Israel, consistent with the reality on the ground in the West Bank, the reasons for the failure of the ‘peace process,’ and the situation for the Palestinian minority in a Jewish state. It means moving beyond the ‘occupation’ discourse that limits the conflict to policies and phenomena specific to the territories conquered by Israel in 1967. It is time to re-integrate the different elements of the historic conflict, and see the ‘Question of Palestine’ holistically.”
He adds, “it is necessary to see how, as a result of Israeli policies and legislation, one in seven Palestinians is a second-class citizen, a third are under military rule without citizenship, and half of all Palestinians are outside the borders, dispossessed and forbidden from returning. This latter reality is central to the contradiction of the ‘Jewish and democratic’ state, an identification that was only established and can only be maintained, by the expulsion and forcible exclusion of half the Palestinian people.”
By placing the emphasis on human rights and equality, White argues that the struggle must be redirected toward genuine “democratization and de-colonization, based upon the recognition of both Palestinian and Jewish rights.
“Freed from the imperative of maintaining an exclusivist ethno-religious state, issues like water rights or the status of Jerusalem are transformed from the stumbling blocks of tortuous negotiations into opportunities for celebratory affirmations of a common homeland and the mutual protection of both communities’ rights.”
This perspective surely must be taken up by those engaged in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, a global nonviolent movement confronting Israeli apartheid. The great theorist of nonviolence, Gene Sharp, argued that its effectiveness lies in the “delegitimization” of the policies of oppression. Its power comes not from pressuring the powerful or from disrupting the status quo but from making the policies of oppression illegitimate in the eyes of the nation’s citizens and the world.
Thus, the Birmingham, Alabama civil rights protesters who were water-hosed by Bull Connor’s firemen, as seen on nationwide TV, were part of the process of delegitimizing the US South’s system of segregation. Once that occurred, the resulting victories in civil rights legislation became inevitable. So, it is not Israel itself that is being made illegitimate, but rather the policies of privileging one ethnic group over another as summed up in the phrase “the Jewish state.”
Rod Such is a freelance writer and former editor for World Book and Encarta encyclopedias. He is a member of the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign and Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights.
In 1917, Jews constituted 7 percent of the indigenous Palestinian population and owned 1 percent of the land. Britain, as a colonial power and the victor of World War I forced the Palestine Mandate and gave itself the right to grant a homeland to the Jewish people in Palestine in “Balfour Declaration” that facilitated the colonization of the land by foreign Jews.
The 1948 War that led to the creation of Israel over seventy-eight percent of Palestinian territory resulted in the devastation of the Palestinian society. More than 80 percent of the Palestinians who lived in the part of Palestine upon which Israel was established became refugees, their society disintegrated and their lives at the individual, community and national level were changed. The Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem came under the Hashemite regime while those residing in the Gaza Strip came under uncaring Egyptian administration. Then after the 1967 war, Israel brought these regions under its military occupation, and the Palestinians ended as either refugees or under occupation.
Who Are the Palestinians?
They are the descendents of all the groups that inhibited Palestine since the ancient Canaanites and beyond. Palestine was successively conquered by Canaanites, Philistines, ancient Hebrews, ancient Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims, Crusaders, Ayyobies, and Turks. The groups which lived in Palestine fought, inter-married, collaborated and no group was obliterated.
We can’t explore at length several millennia of uninterrupted history of the Palestinians in one article or even in one book, but this narrative is an attempt to review some archeologists’ findings and Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts about the Canaanites, the first inhabitants of Palestine. Ancient Egyptians who had personal contacts with the Palestinians through commerce and military campaigns have been credited for providing partial answers to the question of who were the early Palestinians. Modern archeologists have unmasked evidence from the annals recorded on clay and early bronze pottery that Egypt was involved in Palestinian and Syrian affairs during the First and Second Egyptian Dynasties 3100-2686 B.C.
People lived in Palestine in permanent settlements since the so-called Pre -pottery period 8000 to 5000 B.C. (Before Christ); they developed farming techniques and domesticated animals according to many historians including the Canadian archeologist Donald Redford. But Palestine as a geo-political unit dates back to 3000 B.C. Palestine was called the Land of the Canaanites until the twelfth century B.C.
The topography of Palestine with its mountains dividing the land into upland, valleys, steppe and coast, formed natural barriers among ancient communities and limited the cultivation of large tracts of land. It made it impossible to create large towns or a nation-state in all of its territory as in Egypt or Mesopotamia (Iraq) where the rivers that were easy to navigate allowed a central government to control the lengthy stretches of their banks especially after developing crop cultivation and cattle control.
Unlike their counterparts in Egypt who had the service of the gods as a major factor for the structural form of their towns, security against invaders and wild animals was the Palestinian community’s uppermost concern. In written description of their neighbors in the north, the Egyptians of post-3000 B.C. called the Palestinian cities “unwt” which meant “fortified enclosures”. As an example, the British archeologist Kathleen Kenyon wrote in her book “Digging up Jericho” that the two-thousand people community of Jericho surrounded their town with a stone wall three meters wide and four meters high, interspersed with towers. Jericho is one of the major Palestinian cities to be excavated in the twentieth century.
According to the historian Donald Redford, contemporary archeologists from Britain, the US and Australia estimated that in the Early Bronze age, Palestine had a population of about 150,000 living in twenty large settlements that each can be characterized as a town and scores of small communities that were within a day’s walk distance from the closest major town. The towns came into being as they grew slowly over the years from small settlements into larger communities. Palestinian towns were surrounded by very thick brick and stone walls with gates and towers. Town people engaged in agriculture and trade with each other and with their neighbors in Egypt in the south and Byblos in Syria to the north. The international letters written in the Semitic Accadian language on clay tablets that had been sent by Canaanite officials to the Egyptian government officials in Amarna City during the 18th Dynasty rule sheds more light on the Canaanite’s relations with the Egyptians.
Most of the settlements were in three geographic locations that have water supplies and fertile soil, the northern coastal plain, upper Jordan valley and the Valley of Jerzeel (Marj Ibn Aamer). Archaeological records show settlement in the Palestinian desert of Negev and there were well traveled roads from northern Egypt to the region of southern Palestine. Miscellaneous artifacts discovered in the ruins of Arad town located north east of Beer Sheba in the Negev desert surrounded by two dozen satellite villages suggest town was a center of trade commerce. Arad was a prosperous 3rd millennium BC Canaanite town, built as a fortress surrounded by a stone wall with towers. And since there were no under-ground water springs in the town’s vicinity, its planners built reservoirs to capture the winter rain run off.
Ancient Canaanite tribes, the first identified ancestors of the Palestinians, ruled all Palestine and Jordan until around 1150 B.C. when the Philistines settled in the southern coastal area. Ancient Egyptian texts described Canaan as land that encompassed the eastern coast of the Mediterranean which includes modern Palestine, the western part of Jordan, parts of southern Lebanon and parts of south west Syria. Sometimes, the Canaanite City of Gaza was referred to by the Ancient Egyptians as Canaan due to its close proximity and its commercial relations with Egypt.
Historians postulate that the 15th Egyptian Dynasty, known as the “Hyksos”, who ruled north Egypt from 1650-1550 B.C. was Canaanite. When Egypt’s central government under the 13th and 14th Dynasties was too weak to defend the country, Canaanite invaders from the north (Palestine) conquered several small kingdoms in Egypt’s Delta and established the “Hyksos” rule over north Egypt. Their capital was the city of Avaris in the Eastern Delta, at Tell ed-Dab’a on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. Egypt’s trade under the “Hyksos” reached the Euphrates in the north. They were the first to introduce the horse and chariot into Ancient Egypt, and as time passed, their kings gradually became more and more Egyptianized. They built temples and cemeteries like those of the Egyptian pharaohs but the architectural layout was of Canaanite style. The “Hyksos” temples’ architect, burial custom, pottery and weapons in Egypt were not different from those found in the contemporary Middle Bronze II period in Palestine. This supports the claim that the “Hyksos” were Canaanite in origin according to the Egyptologist, William Gillan Waddell.
The Land of Canaan fell under Ancient Egyptian rule in around 1480 BC, not for the last time in history. Under Pharaoh Thutmose II of the 18th Dynasty, the Egyptians conquered the Land of Canaan up to the banks of the Euphrates River. After their experience with the Hyksos invaders, the Egyptians began to value the Land of Canaan for its strategic location vis-à-vis foreign powers in the north who might challenge Egypt again. After expelling the Hyksos elites, the vengeful Egyptians destroyed their monuments and Thutmose II extended Egypt’s frontiers and turned the Land of Canaan into a buffer zone.
Canaan had always been valued for its resources and its two transit corridors, one along the coast and the other crossing the Jordan River. The Egyptians appointed local magnates at local principalities as their own vassals. Egypt took stringent measures to retain its hold on Palestine for its proximity and its resources that included copper mines, olive oil, wine, grapes and figs. Business boomed up and down the coast from Gaza in Palestine to Ugarit (Latakia today) in north Syria and commerce resulted in extensive exchange of merchandize, workers and ideas.
The Philistines, Indo-European tribes referred to as the “Sea People”, settled in the coastal plain of Canaanite Land around 1,150 B.C. Waves of the Philistines settled in Palestine during the early rule of Egypt’s 20th Dynasty. Excavations suggest that their material culture was Mycenaean Cypriote besides the Canaanite and Egyptian.
Less than a century after their arrival, the Philistines moved to establish themselves independent of the aegis of Egypt. According to the University of Chicago archeologist R. H. Dornemann, the Philistines broadened their area of influence beyond their fortresses by controlling towns in the south formerly belonging to the Egyptian administration. And in the north, their settlements began to appear in the Valley of Jerzeel and in the Jordan Valley.
Some contemporary Palestinian families claim to be descendents of one ancient Palestinian group or another. When Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, Hamdi Canaan, whose family claims to be descendant from the ancient Canaanites, was the Palestinian mayor of Nablus, one the ancient cities in Palestine. His family has been in the soap manufacturing business for hundreds of years, using the Palestinian olive oil as the main ingredient.
The Palestinians today not only have to suffer living under military occupation or as refugees, but to add insult to injury, Newt Gingrich, an American politician who will do anything including selling his soul to get a vote [or campaign funding] , said “the Palestinians are an invented people.” The archeologists’ findings and Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts suggest the Palestinian People existed a long time before the Americas were discovered [by Europeans] and while Newt Gingrich’ European ancestors were living in caves. [Editorial comments by Aletho News]
– Hasan Afif El-Hasan is a political analyst. His latest book, Is The Two-State Solution Already Dead? (Algora Publishing, New York), now available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
Twelve Jewish extremists involved in “price tag” arson attacks on Palestinians in recent weeks have escaped jail time, but will instead be barred from the West Bank for up to a year, Israel’s military revealed in a statement on Tuesday.
Referring to the men as “activists,” the statement said that one man has been banned for one year, while the others will not be able to enter the occupied Palestinian territory for varied periods between three and nine months.
Israel’s military said these men were suspected of involvement in violence targeting Palestinians and Israeli forces, and described the orders issued as a “preventative measure to remove the threat by the activists in the area.”
Israeli media reports said the settlers named in the orders lived at four Jewish enclaves built in the territory Israel captured in a 1967 war which Palestinians seek for a state.
The measures follow a pledge by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month to crack down on Jewish extremism in the West Bank and prevent further violence.
A number of Palestinian properties have been attacked in previous weeks, including mosques, homes, and vehicles.
The latest “price tag” attack occurred only yesterday when Jewish extremists burnt Palestinian cars, and scrawled anti-Arab graffiti in Hebrew.
Israeli settlers routinely harass and attack Palestinians in the West Bank, with their crimes rarely punished as Israeli security forces often turn a blind eye.
By contrast, Palestinians are frequently detained and suffer from tight daily restrictions imposed by Israeli occupation forces.
On Tuesday, undercover Israeli forces abducted and briefly detained a six-year-old Palestinian boy in Jerusalem.
Israeli troops interrogated the child in the hope he would reveal the names of stone-throwing Palestinian youths.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, but construction continues in defiance of the international community and to the detriment of the indigenous Palestinian population.
Israel has maintained a military occupation of the West Bank since 1967.
“The world had witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all (except to please Israel). Had the Iranian not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy,” Martin Van Creveld, Israeli military historian, New York Times, August 21, 2004.
On Friday, China said new US sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank and its ability to sell petroleum abroad won’t affect its business dealings with Tehran. Iran’s oil exports to China last year was 547,000 barrels per day or 25% of all its oil exports, and growing: If the daily averages of China’s imports for the last two or three months are maintained (with many expecting them to actually rise), then in 2012 China will be importing nearly one-third of all of Iran’s oil exports.
Even after 31-years of western sanctions, independent international economic reports indicate that Iranians have more disposable income than ever before, and are enjoying the modern amenities of life, such as housing (63%), education (78%), medicare (70%), automobiles (37%) and mobile phones (88%). They are, however, spending more than their income, probably as a result of rising inflation, with less saving.
Iran’s recent Velayat-90 Military Maneuvers and its success in producing and testing Iranian-made uranium fuel rods – a major step toward Iran’s independence in developing a complete domestic nuclear fuel cycle to power the country’s power-generating nuclear plants – have made the US and western Israeli poodles go bananas. The US, France, Britain, Canada and EU have all threatened Iran with further sanctions and military action if Iran tries to block the Strait of Hormuz.
With more Israeli wars expected in the Muslim East; beginning with Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Pakistan – the economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative.
“The US economy will fall into recession in 2012 and the “jobless recovery of 2011” will be replaced by a steep increase of unemployment in 2012. In fact, the entire labor force will shrink as people losing their unemployment benefits will fail to register. Faced with equally limited political choices, the electorate will react by voting out incumbents, abstaining and via spontaneous and organized mass movements, such as the “occupy Wall Street” protest. Disatisfaction, hostility and frustration will pervade the culture. Democratic demagogues will scapegoat China, the Republican demagogues will blame the immigrants. Both will fulminate against “the islamo-fascists” and especially Iran.”
The 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and their “Israel First” followers in Congress, State, Treasury and the Pentagon will push for war with Iran. If they are successful it will result in a regional conflagration and world depression. Given the extremist Israeli regimes’ success in securing blind obedience to its war policies from the US Congress and White House, any doubts about the real possibility of a major catastrophic outcome can be excluded.
Within the US, Obama has laid the groundwork for a new and bigger war in the Middle East by relocating troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating them facing Iran. To undermine Iran, Washington is expanding clandestine military and civilian operations against Iranian allies in Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela and China. The key to the US and Israeli bellicose strategy toward Iran is a series of wars in neighboring states, world- wide economic sanctions, cyber-attacks aimed at disabling vital industries and clandestine terrorist assassinations of scientists and military officials. The entire push, planning and execution of the US policies leading up to war with Iran can be empirically attributed to the Zionist power configuration occupying strategic positions in government, mass media and ‘civil society’. A systematic analysis of policymakers designing and implementing economic sanctions policy in Congress finds prominent roles for mega-Zionists like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman; in the White House, Dennis Ross and Jeffrey Feltman in State; Stuart Levy and his replacement David Cohen in Treasury. The White House is totally beholden to Zionist fund raisers and takes its cue from the ‘52’ Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. The Israeli-Zionist strategy is to encircle Iran, weaken it economically and attack its military. The Iraq invasion was the US’s first war for Israel; the Libyan war the second; the current proxy war against Syria is the third.
These wars have destroyed Israel’s adversaries or are in the process of doing so. During 2011, economic sanctions, which were designed to create domestic discontent in Iran were the principle weapon of choice. The global sanctions campaign engaged the entire energies of the major Jewish-Zionist lobbies. They also faced no opposition in the mass media, Congress or the White Office. The Zionist power configuration(ZPC) faced virtually no criticism from any of the progressive, leftist and socialist journals, movements or grouplets – with a few notable exceptions. The past year’s relocation of troops from Iraq to the borders of Iran, the sanctions and the rising Big Push from Israel’s fifth column in the US means War in the Middle East. This likely means a “surprise” aerial and maritime missile attack by US forces. This will be based on a concocted pretext of an “imminent nuclear attack” cooked up by Mossad and transmitted by the ZPC to the Congress and White House for consumption and transmission to the world. It will be a destructive, bloody, prolonged war for Israel. The US will bear the direct military cost by itself but the rest of the world will pay a dear economic price. The Zionist promoted US war will convert the recession of early 2012 into a major depression by the end of the year and probably provoke mass upheavals.
A French court will be looking into the case of Mohammad Ad-Dorra, 12, who was killed after being repeatedly shot, on September 30, 2000, while seeking shelter from Israeli military fire in his father’s lap; the father was also shot by several rounds.
Eleven years ago, French reporter, Sharl Anderlan, was present at the shooting, and, along with his Palestinian Cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma, videotaped the incident. Anderlan was later accused of fabricating the video, despite the fact that the shooting took place in broad daylight in front of several persons, and reporters, who were also witnesses to the incident.
Mohammad Jamal Ad-Dorra was born on November 22, 1988, and was shot dead on September 30, 2000. He and his father were walking in Salah Ed-Deen Street, in Gaza.
When the shooting started, they tried to take shelter behind a concrete barrel and the father started waving to the soldiers, trying to indicate that he was a civilian with a child, but the shooting did not stop.
The father could not fully shelter the child, and both of them were shot by several rounds of live ammunition.
Two weeks after the shooting, France 2 cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, signed an affidavit stating that Israeli soldiers deliberately opened fire at the child and his father.
He further stated that the soldiers were firing towards the child, “not once, but several times”. He also said that the soldiers were also firing at Palestinian policemen, and at a Palestinian police station 30 meters away.
Ad-Dorra was shot and killed just days after the second Palestinian Intifada started. The uprising began after former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, conducted a provocative visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, along with his armed body guards.
France 2 reporter Sharl Anderlan and his Palestinian Cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma, conducted a thorough investigation of the shooting, and stood by their original footage which showed that ad-Dorra and his father were shot by Israeli soldiers.
The video’s stark image of a father sheltering his child, and then being shot, became well-known internationally as representative of the Israeli military’s tendency to target civilians.
In response to the international outcry brought about by the video, Israel repeatedly claimed that the shots that killed Ad-Dorra did not come from the direction where the military was stationed, and some Zionist lobbyists even went on to claim that the video and the pictures were fabricated.
In 2004, Philippe Karsenty, the head of “Media Ratings” published several counter reports and videos dedicated to denying the deadly shooting of the child, including a claim that the child “was not killed and that he was seen in a market in Gaza buying tomatoes”.
In 2007, a lawsuit was filed against France 2, alleging that the video was fabricated. In response, the French channel said that the lawsuit is an attempt to divert the world attention from real humanitarian suffering.
In November same year, France 2 sued Karsenty for libel, after he openly accused the agency of “broadcasting a hoax”, France 2 won the suit but Karsenty filed an appeal and the court demanded to see the full footage.
France 2 readily submitted an 18-minute video footage of the deadly shooting, but the appeals court did not examine the contents of the video and other evidence of the shooting, despite having requested the footage.
Instead, the Appeals court dismissed the charge of libel, saying that Karsenty had “practiced his right to criticism, and did not abuse these rights”.
France 2 appealed the dismissal, and the issue will be deliberated by the court this coming February.
Pappe, an Israeli historian and a senior lecturer at Haifa University, has written a superb account of the Israeli expulsion of the Palestinians from their land in 1948. He quotes David Ben Gurion, leader of the Zionist movement from the mid-1920 until the 1960s, who wrote in his diary in 1938, “I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it.” This contradicts the Zionists’ public claim that they were seizing a land without a people.
Pappe writes of the Israelis’ March 1948 plan for evicting the Palestinians, “The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be employed to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and, finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning.”
Between 30 March and 15 May 1948, i.e. before any Arab government intervened, Israeli forces seized 200 villages and expelled 250,000 Palestinians. The Israeli leadership stated, “The principal objective of the operation is the destruction of Arab villages … the eviction of the villagers.” On 9 April, Israeli forces massacred 93 people, including 30 babies, at Deir Yassin. In Haifa, the Israeli commander ordered, “Kill any Arab you encounter.”
This all happened under British rule in Palestine, where Britain had 75,000 troops: Britain’s Mandate did not end until 14 May. The Labour government connived at the Israeli onslaught, although the British state was legally obliged as the occupier (and also by UN resolution 181) to uphold law and order. Yet the Labour government announced that it would no longer be responsible for law and order and it withdrew all the British policemen. It also forbade the presence of any UN bodies, again breaching the terms of the UN resolution. The government ordered British forces to disarm the few Palestinians who had weapons, promising to protect them from Israeli attacks, then immediately reneged on this promise.
On 24 May 1948, Ben Gurion wrote, “We will establish a Christian state in Lebanon, the southern border of which will be the Litani River. We will break Transjordan, bomb Amman and destroy its army, and then Syria falls, and if Egypt will still continue to fight – we will bombard Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. This will be in revenge for what they (the Egyptians, the Aramis and Assyrians) did to our forefathers during Biblical times.” These ravings of an insane warmonger hardly betrayed any genuine fear of a `second holocaust’. The Palestinians were suffering massive expulsion, not trying to destroy the Jewish community.
Pappe summarises, “When it created its nation-state, the Zionist movement did not wage a war that `tragically but inevitably’ led to the expulsion of `parts of’ the indigenous population, but the other way round: the main goal was the ethnic cleansing of all of Palestine, which the movement coveted for its new state. A few weeks after the ethnic cleansing operations began, the neighbouring Arab states sent a small army – small in comparison to their overall military might – to try, in vain, to prevent the ethnic cleansing. The war with the regular Arab armies did not bring the ethnic cleansing operations to a halt until their successful completion in the autumn of 1948.”
Overall, the Zionist forces uprooted more than half of Palestine’s population, 800,000 people, destroyed 531 villages and emptied eleven urban neighbourhoods of their inhabitants. Pappe concludes that this was “a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity.”
The National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS) has become a full-time partner in the Israeli government’s efforts to spread its propaganda online and on college campuses around the world.
NUIS has launched a program to pay Israeli university students $2,000 to spread pro-Israel propaganda online for 5 hours per week from the “comfort of home.”
The union is also partnering with Israel’s Jewish Agency to send Israeli students as missionaries to spread propaganda in other countries, for which they will also receive a stipend.
This active recruitment of Israeli students is part of Israel’s orchestrated effort to suppress the Palestinian solidarity movement under the guise of combating “delegitimization” of Israel and anti-Semitism.
The involvement of the official Israeli student union as well as Haifa University, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University and Sapir College in these state propaganda programs will likely bolster Palestinian calls for the international boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
Paying students to spread Israeli propaganda online
This is our opportunity, as Israeli students, to provide hasbara [state propaganda] that is correct and balanced, to help in the struggle against the delegitimization of the State of Israel and against hatred of Jews in the world.
The project seeks to take advantage of the fact that “Many students in Israel master the Internet and are proficient at using the Internet and social networking and various sites and are required to write and express themselves in English.”
The paid scholarship will allow them to get training and then work from home for five hours per week for a year to “refute” what it calls “misinformation” about Israel on social networking sites.
Among the stated goals of the scholarships is “to deepen and expand hasbara activities of students in the State of Israel.” The document explains:
The Internet allows uncontrolled access to content from marginal groups and therefore can influence many audiences who are exposed to such information, particularly young people who are more easily influenced.
The Internet, then, is used as a major tool for the dissemination of anti-Semitism, hatred of Israel and of Jews and thus the Internet is also the place to battle against such sites, pull the ground from under them and to provide reliable and balanced information.
Work from the “comfort of home”
The NUIS program document explains:
After training, the student will begin his activities. The student will do the activities in the comfort of his home, where every week he will be obligated to about 5 hours of activities for a period of one calendar year (not academic year). Students will be paid a total of NIS 7,500 [$2,000] to perform the tasks of the project, at least 5 hours weekly for a total of 240 hours of activities under the project umbrella.
What is completely missing from the program is any indication that criticism of Israel could be valid. Rather the National Union of Israeli Students apparently seeks to indoctrinate Israeli students that every criticism of Israel is “hate” and “anti-Semitism” and that the Internet should be seen as a battlefield on which they are foot soldiers.
Using e-learning tools for government propaganda
An interesting aspect of the NUIS program is that it uses the common open source virtual learning environment Moodle as its interface with program participants. This interface can be found at students.digitalchange.co.il.
Whereas Moodle was designed for education – to spread mind-opening learning beyond the constraints of geography – the Israeli innovation here is to use it for mind-narrowing propaganda: getting students to be uncritical, to not think for themselves, but rather to spread Israel’s state-sponsored propaganda.
See the world, spread more propaganda
NUIS has also partnered with the Jewish Agency, the Israeli state body that encourages Jews from around the world to settle on stolen Palestinian land, to spread propaganda on college campuses around the world.
For the first time in Israel – a unique, world-encompassing scholarship, in cooperation between the Student Union and the Jewish Agency.
Every year the Jewish Agency of Israel sends approximately 150 emissaries to various places around the world – North America, England, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Italy and South America, who engage in Jewish education and hasbara in three main streams – Hillel emissaries (to campuses around North America), community emissaries and youth movement emissaries.
Training for these overseas missions for successful applicants will take place at Haifa University, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University and Sapir College, after which the would-be missionaries “will set off for a one-year mission in the various Jewish communities around the world, and will also receive a scholarship of up to NIS 5,000 [$1300].”
Applications are open to Israeli citizens who have lived in the country for three years, those who have completed service in the Israeli army, and those who speak foreign languages, among other criteria.
A student union in the service of the state
In most countries student unions often find themselves at odds with state authorities, fighting for the rights of students. But it would appear that Israel’s “student union” does not so much represent students and fight for their rights, but represents the state in the state’s efforts to recruit students to do its political bidding.
In this sense, the NUIS functions in a very similar way to Israel’s “trade union” the Histadrut.
I have a bone to pick about your coverage of Ron Paul and the five racist comments that appeared in his newsletter a generation ago.
First, contrary to what you say, the rest of the MSM does publish the exact words of the statements – in fact they appear ad nauseam in semi-official publications like the NYT.
Second, as you surely know, Paul has said he did not write those statements, did not read them or know of them at the time and DISAVOWS them. You did not mention that.
Third Ron Paul is against the death penalty and mandatory minimum sentences in part because they are racist – and he has said so. You did not mention that.
Fourth, the head of the NAACP in Austin who has known Ron Paul for 20 years says that the man can in no way be considered a racist. You did not mention that.
Fifth, in an interview with Bill Moyers Ron Paul specifically says that Libertarianism is incompatible with racism. You do not mention that.
I think you have a duty to tell the whole truth on the matter because a half truth is a full lie – as the saying goes.
Finally, I might ask which is more racist: bombing people of color all around the world as Obama has done, for example in the war on Libya for which your constant guest CIA “consultant” Juan Cole was a cheerleader – or five statements written by someone else a generation ago which have now been repudiated by Paul?
Have you forgotten that your program is subtitled the War and Peace Report? My friends in NYC have taken to calling it HypocrisyNow! I hope that soon it can reclaim its older tradition of principled and consistent anti-interventionism and report the full truth on antiwar candidates like Ron Paul, the only anti-imperialist and peace candidate in the race.
It is becoming a trend among influential GOP candidates to call out the Palestinian people as “invented” or even “non-existent”. First we had Republican candidate Newt Gingrich calling the Palestinians an “invented people”. Another rising star, Republican candidate Rick Santorum, has also said “There is no Palestine”. But I won’t really bother to give any of them dimwits any more attention than they deserve. Their case is a hopeless miserable case after all.
On this occasion I’d like to share with you this, video footage taken in Palestine back in the year 1896. We see Palestinians; we see Jews, Christians, and Muslims living in peace. We see a Jewish man praying at the Western Wall without having to show IDs to any authority, unlike what we see in Jerusalem today. We see neighbors, friends, families, and a society just like that in Cairo or Damascus, as the commentator says. If we look today, we don’t see much of the same thing. Not so much freedom of religion, not so much freedom of life.
The film was recovered by Lobster Films, a film preservation company based in Paris, in February 2007.
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy by British investigative journalist and The Electronic Intifada contributor Ben White links the struggle of Palestinians within Israel, who make up 20 percent of the country’s population, with those in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and the global diaspora.
Aletho News
