The turmoil that has beleaguered the Middle East for decades has been described many ways. On the 5th of June, however, the terminology turned vulgar. This enduring conflict was publicly characterized as a ‘war between the civilized man and the savage’. Boldly announced with a plea to ‘support Israel/defeat Jihad’, the full page advertisement ran in the New York Post’s special section covering the city’s ‘Celebrate Israel’ parade.
Declaring the Muslim people ‘savage’ is, of course, just a school-yard taunt from Islamaphobe Pamela Geller, who gleefully takes credit for the advertisement. Had her rant been limited to her own blog, we might easily dismiss it. The problem lies in its acceptance into mainstream discourse. The Post may be tabloid journalism, but its paper edition remains the seventh most popular paper in America. And this sort of crude advertisement for a political cause panders to a public comfortable with the mind-set of ‘don’t bore me with the details’.
But the details are critical if we are to consider a conflict that has taken thousands of lives. How can we, for instance, reconcile the concept of ‘civilized’ with the reality of shooting unarmed protesters? The advertisement asks us to accept Israel as ‘civilized’; yet as these very words were first read, Israeli soldiers were shooting into a crowd of Syrian-Palestinians, killing 24 and injuring another 350.
Even if we were to set aside troublesome issues of borderlines and occupation zones, lethal violence hardly qualifies as a civilized response to what was unmistakeably only a symbolic demonstration. It had been loudly announced in advance. Had the protesters indeed posed a physical threat, then they might have been easily overpowered and arrested by the Israeli military on hand. But that would have been a sensible—a civilized—means of containing the situation.
The deadly violence chosen by the Israeli forces on the 5th of June mirrors the same used just three weeks prior, during the Nakba demonstrations. And these echo hundreds and hundreds of instances when Israeli forces have brazenly attempted to destroy anything and anyone deemed inconvenient. Perhaps the most egregious example, though, happened 29 years ago during the first week of June 1982.
In a defiant escalation of the Zionist occupation of Southern Lebanon in place since March 1978, the Israeli government and military flagrantly snubbed the ruling of the United Nations. Using brute force, the Israeli forces intensified efforts to gain territory and to obliterate any resistance to their project. Despite the presence of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) as international peacekeepers, the Israelis insisted on their own form of deadly control.
On 4 June 1982 Israel conducted air raids in and around Beirut.* Together with its mercenary militia, Israeli ground forces also engaged in intense artillery fire in Southern Lebanon. Both the Secretary General of UNIFIL and the President of the UN Security Council issued urgent appeals to ‘adhere strictly to the cease-fire that had been in effect since July 1981 and to refrain immediately from any hostile act likely to provoke an aggravation of the situation’.
By way of answer, the next day Israeli forces amplified their intent. They multiplied air strikes. They increased artillery fire on the ground with added naval artillery power. Again, UNIFIL reiterated its call for a simultaneous cessation of hostilities. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 508, calling for all parties ‘to cease immediately and simultaneously all military activities within Lebanon and across the Lebanese-Israeli border’.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) agreed. The Israeli Representative, however, stated the Resolution would have to be brought before the Israeli Cabinet.
Despite UNIFIL’s continued efforts throughout the night of 5 June, Israeli air strikes resumed shortly after 0600, the morning of 6 June—precisely the deadline given in Resolution 508 to cease fire.
The Chairman of the PLO informed UNIFIL that ‘in spite of heavy Israeli air-strikes after the scheduled time of the cease-fire, he had given orders to all PLO units to withhold fire for a further, unspecified period’. When UNIFIL then met later that morning with the chief of the Israeli military forces, the agenda was the implementation of Resolution 508.
Instead, UNIFIL was informed that Israel was launching a military operation into Lebanon within half an hour. UNIFIL was warned to stay out of the way. UNIFIL protested, to no avail:
Israeli ground forces, including a very large number of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, moved into Lebanese territory in strength. . . . UNIFIL troops attempted to prevent the entry and advance of the Israeli forces. On the coastal road, for example, Dutch soldiers planted obstacles before advancing Israeli tank column; one tank was damaged; the obstacles, however, were pushed aside, as was the Dutch guardhouse. Tank barrels were pointed at UNIFIL soldiers during the entire encounter, likewise, in the other battalion areas, obstacles were forcibly removed and bulldozed. At Khardala Bridge, a small Nepalese position stood its ground for two days, despite harassments and threats. On the morning of 8 June, their position was partially destroyed/and some 100 Israeli tanks began to cross the bridge. Despite the efforts of UNIFIL, from the start of the invasion, the overwhelming strength and weight of the Israeli forces precluded the possibility of stopping them, and UNIFIL positions in the line of the invasion were thus overrun or by-passed.
Later that day, the UN Security Council met again and unanimously adopted Resolution 509, demanding the withdrawal of Israeli military forces and cessation of all military activities.
Contrary to the Resolution, on 7 June, Israeli forces—comprising more than two mechanized divisions, with full air and naval support—expanded their positions northward and waged intense fighting.
On 8 June, the Security Council met again, but no resolution was adopted, because of the negative vote from the US. At the same time, Israeli forces resumed their pattern of blocking movement of UNIFIL forces and took prisoner 62 Lebanese Army soldiers who were serving under the operational command of UNIFIL. When UNIFIL demanded their return, the Israeli military released them to its mercenary militia instead. This common ruse was vigorously protested. Again to no avail.
And so this pattern of lawlessness continued, bringing years of violent rampage through Lebanon. There was nothing civilized about it. Just as there was nothing civilized in the recent shooting of protesters in Lebanon and Syria. When advertisement-maker Pamela Geller suggests otherwise, the facts fail to substantiate her claim.
In her review of the Celebrate Israel parade, she refers several times to the event in religious terms. God was smiling on the paraders, she tells us, providing them with sunshine for their pro-Jewish rally. Syrians and Palestinians, on the other hand, she classifies as interchangeable Muslims, Jew-haters, Nazis upon whose Nakba bund rallies God frowned upon with torrential rains. The celebration, it seems, had little to do with a political entity, and much to do with being a so-called chosen people. A so-called civilized people.
But in civilized society, we might counter, we co-exist not by the rule of force, but by the rule of law. In civilized society, God—whether we accept ‘God’ as a concept or as a reality—represents justice and righteousness. It is a gross distortion of civilized thought to imagine God laying down bets on his favourite football club and then fixing the game for a good laugh. No, in a civilized society, we take responsibility for our actions.
Salem-News, Ed Hunt – A year after the bloody Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza, I am reminded of an earlier Israeli attack on another ship that took place several decades ago.
The 8th of June marks a little noticed anniversary date that should live in infamy in the annals of modern US history. It was the day, during the 1967 war, that the Israel attacked the US spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast of Egypt. Thirty four US servicemen were killed and one hundred seventy two were wounded in this well documented, unprovoked attack.
“Accidental” is what Israel, and her defenders proclaim. It was an Egyptian ship, they “mistakenly” thought. Specifically, an out-of-service Egyptian horse carrier, the Israeli government later explained, with the most ‘heartfelt regret.’ It’s their story and they’re sticking to it. How many Egyptian vessels were flying an oversized US flag (riddled with bullet holes from Israeli weapons fire) the Israelis are at a loss for words.
According to the ‘Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Attack on the USS Liberty’, this accidental air and naval attack lasted two hours “during which time unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the Liberty’s bridge, and fired 30mm cannons and rockets, causing 821 holes, more than 100 of which were rocket size; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes which were jamming all five American emergency radio channels.”
This ‘accident’ happened after only eight, yes eight, hours of aerial surveillance, on the Liberty, which had unmistakable American markings.
Amazingly, the response of the US government to this attack has been unprecedented. The Johnson White House recalled a Sixth Fleet military rescue en route toward the scene while the attack was still in progress. The victims, the survivors and their families were betrayed by their government. Surviving crew members were threatened with “court-martial, imprisonment or worse” if they revealed the truth, and the USS Liberty “incident” was the subject of an official cover-up by the Johnson administration. Every US administration since has given Israel a free pass on the attack and no standing administration, including the Obama administration, has even uttered a word publicly about it.
The truth about this attack and cover-up continues to be officially concealed from the American people, although many of those who have since retired from political, military and diplomatic circles have acknowledged it. However, to no ones surprise, the mainstream media to this day have largely maintained an unofficial blackout policy on the subject. [See American Media Miss the Boat]
Now is the time for speaking truth to power. It is a very opportune moment to revive the issue. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to press the US government to come clean and to hold the Israeli government accountable.
Due to the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, the White House and/or the Congress, no matter which party is in charge, have continued to shield Israel, from any measure of accountability. Perhaps it’s time to turn up the volume, and turn on the spotlight, in a very public way.
We’ve armed Israel, provided billions of dollars in aid and shielded them diplomatically for decades. US taxpayers have been subsidizing the occupation of the Palestinian Territories since the beginning.
President Barack Obama’s statements about returning to the 1967 borders were dismissed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the recent AIPAC (American Israeli Public Action Committee) Convention. It seemed clear as always, that no voice in the US with the capability of speaking out will ever find the task of helping Palestine to be a simple one. In the meanwhile, Jerusalem continues to be the scene of ever expanding settlement construction.
I suspect that there is far greater diversity of opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict among the US public than is tolerated in the US Congress. I would venture to predict that if the details of the USS Liberty case were be placed before the US public, we might see a drastic rise in opposition to the billions in US aid that Israel rakes in every year. It might be just what the Congress needs to find its backbone and the courage to snub the powerful pro-Israel interests that continue dictate US Middle East policy.
On this occasion of the 44rd Anniversary of the Israeli attack on the Liberty, I will be contacting my US Senators and my Congressperson. I will bring them up to speed on the Liberty case, so that they cannot claim lack of knowledge of this atrocity.
Materials to distribute about Liberty
I will make clear that their failure to support the re-opening of the Liberty case will be an affront to the memory of the victims of Israel’s murderous assault. Politicians love to posture as to how much they love the troops. With your help, we can break down what has seemed like an insurmountable obstacle: Israel’s untouchable status in US politics. In the process, perhaps we can get a little recognition and justice for the crew and families of the Liberty, as well as justice for the Palestinians, who have been denied a homeland for far too long.
Yehud, Israel-based Magal Security Systems on 31 May was awarded a contract to provide security for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) football championships. The $35.5 million contract covers a surveillance system developed for and deployed at several Israeli West Bank settlements and is just the latest military and security contract for Israeli firms in the President Teodoro Obiang’s Equatorial Guinean dictatorship. The contract also marks another example of the integration of Israel’s “Pacification Industry” – the export of the tools and techniques of Palestinian dispossession – with the securitization of international ‘mega-events’ such as the World Cup and Olympics.
Magal is contracted to provide its Fortis surveillance system to the stadiums and team housing for the 2012 AFCON continental football championship in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. According to WhoProfits.org , the same Fortis system is deployed in the illegal West Bank settlements of: Ariel, Alfei Menashe, Karnei Shomron, Shilo, Giva Binyamin, Tzofim, Shaked and Givat Ze’ev. Further, “the company won 80% of the bids published by the Israeli Ministry of Defense for the installation of intrusion detection systems” along the wall of separation built throughout the West Bank. Magal also “supplied the perimeter intrusion detection system for fences around the Gaza Strip.”
Magal is the second Israeli firm this year to get a contract with the Obiang regime in Equatorial Guinea after Israel Shipyards’ $100 million contract for Saar-4 naval corvettes. Israel has developed a close military relationship with Obiang over the past decade despite over thirty years of his rule having some of the world’s worst human rights and corruption records. Transparency International routinely ranks Obiang’s government as one of the world’s ten most corrupt, and the United Nations working group on mercenaries, Amnesty International, and others have documented crackdowns on press freedom, arbitrary detentions, unfair trials, extrajudicial executions, forced evictions, systemic torture and more. None of this has stopped Israel – nor France, Russia, USA and Ukraine – from supplying Obiang’s military and security forces with arms and surveillance equipment. Israeli arms firms such as Aeronautics Defense Systems and Israel Military Industries have won contracts for tens of millions of dollars, often brokered through Yardena Ovadia, an Israeli businesswoman who is also Equatorial Guinea’s honorary consul to Israel.
International ‘mega-events’ have long histories of unjust practices. Over 9,000 homeless persons, primarily ethnic minorities, were arrested during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. 720,000 residents were evicted from their homes in Seoul to make way for the 1988 Olympics. Over 1.25 million people were displaced due to urban redevelopment for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Hundreds of Roma were displaced in Athens prior to the 2004 Olympics. More recently many thousands were evicted in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and elsewhere prior to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Since February of this year demolitions have begun in Rio de Janeiro favelas in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics (though most displacement in Rio will likely be through skyrocketing housing costs during the mega-event real estate bubble). Barring political changes, this trend of evictions and mega-events will continue in Equatorial Guinea. The Obiang regime has evicted many hundreds of families in recent years, especially in the port city of Bata, without providing compensation or alternative housing.
Stifling or hiding resistance to these mass displacements is only one aspect of the securitization of mega-events. The memories of the 1972 Munich Games and the 1996 bombing in Atlanta are combined with the US-led “War on Terror” to reinforce the idea that extensive security preparations are necessary for a ‘successful’ event. Israel’s decades of experience in combating Palestinian resistance – armed and unarmed – to dispossession have made it the ‘go-to’ destination for the expertise seen as necessary. Ben Gurion University professor Neve Gordon calls Israel the world’s “homeland security capital.”
In addition to Magal, many other Israeli firms have been involved in securing mega-events. Israeli drones were deployed at the 1996 G7 conference in Paris, 2006 G8 summit in Moscow, 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, and have been procured by the Rio de Janeiro Federal Police to surveil the favelas and secure preparations for the World Cup and Olympic Games. Private security firm International Security and Defense Systems won security contracts for the 2000 Sydney, 2004 Athens, and 2008 Beijing Olympics. Controp won surveillance contracts for the 2004 Athens Olympics and Israeli National and Border Police helped to train Athens and Beijing police in “counter-terror” and crowd control prior to their Olympic spectacles. The list goes on and on.
In November 2010 Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Brazil’s Chief of Security in the Defense Ministry Amir Kain signed a security cooperation agreement. The Israeli daily Ma’ariv noted the agreement was signed “mainly in order to secure the 2014 Football World Cup that will be held there, as well as the 2016 Olympics.” Like Magal, the main Israeli arms and security contractors in Brazil – Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems – have expertise based in the occupation, in pacifying Palestinian resistance.
In the case the Beijing Olympics there was a spate of protests by Tibetans, Tibet- solidarity activists, religious Christians, and most prominently, by those displaced for the Games. Evictions – and protests against evictions – have already begun in Brazil where the security infrastructure is being progressively more integrated with that of Israel and Obiang’s regime was notorious for forced displacement even prior to preparations for the 2012 AFCON. The crowd control training done for Athens and Beijing was based on Israeli experience suppressing Palestinian demonstrations. The surveillance systems to be deployed in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are those that guard land confiscated from Palestinians to build Israeli settlements and the Apartheid Wall. Brazil and Equatorial Guinea are not just importing security training and technology, they are importing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and dispossession of the Palestinian people. These products of Israel’s Pacification Industry are becoming an inseparable part of mega-events, including AFCON. No matter who wins on the pitch, it is clear that the losers will be Palestinians and the displaced and evicted in Equatorial Guinea and Brazil.
~
Jimmy Johnson is the founder of Neged Neshek – a project documenting the Israeli arms industry – and is former International Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He lives in Detroit, Michigan and can be reached at jimmy@negedneshek.org
A number of notable events took place in the past week which underscore the U.S.’s continued failed policies in Latin America. And of course, these notable events were almost totally ignored by the mainstream of the U.S. press.
First, Joel Hernandez Godoy, the Finance Secretary of the SITRABI union in Guatemela, was murdered by two gunmen on motorcycle. Mr. Hernandez is the second SITRABI unionist killed this year in Guatemala. SITRABI represents Del Monte banana workers, and, along with the AFL-CIO, is a party to a pending labor complaint against Guatemala filed under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This labor complaint involves serious claims of labor abuses in Guatemala — now the second most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists after Colombia which has held the number one spot for years. Among the labor abuses charged in this CAFTA complaint is the murder of another SITRABI leader, Marco Tulio Ramirez.
Guatemala had promised, as a condition of CAFTA, to deal with the problem of anti-union violence within its borders and had even brought the union murder rate down to zero for the two consecutive years leading to CAFTA approval. However, as USLEAP has noted, once CAFTA was passed, the rate skyrocketed again, with 9 unionists killed in 2008 and 16 unionists killed in 2009.
This should be a lesson to those hoping for Colombia to ensure protection for unionists once the Free Trade Agreement with that country is passed.
Meanwhile, in Colombia, at least a dozen unionists have been killed in that country so far this year, with two union teachers killed within recent days, including one in the city of Cali. Another unionist, Carlos Arturo Castro, an engineer, was also killed in Cali on May 23. Mr. Castro was with the union SINTRAEMCALI, a union of public sector workers in the city of Cali. A couple of weeks before Mr. Castro was killed, a lawyer for SINTRAEMCALI, Hernan Dario, was himself shot five times in the city of Cali. Sadly, Mr. Dario passed away in the hospital from these wounds on June 2.
While the Colombian Embassy in Washington, desperate for the Colombia FTA, is attempting to write off the three (3) labor-related killings in Cali as somehow unrelated and as the product of random or even drug-related violence, it is well-known that unions in Cali, and the SINTRAEMCALI union in particular, have been a special target of intensive military/paramilitary harassment and threats for years. Most famously, SINTRAEMCALI has been the target of a harassment and assassination program known as “Operation Dragon” — a joint military/paramilitary operation which targeted 150 social, political and labor leaders, including the SINTRAEMCALI union.
One of the masterminds of this operation was Lieutenant Colonel Julian Villate Leal who was trained at the School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia. As the Associated Press (AP) reported in an April 2007 article entitled, “Alleged Assassin Worked at U.S. Embassy in Colombia,” when the “Operation Dragon” plot was uncovered, Mr. Villate came under criminal investigation, and, needing a place to hideout, found refuge as an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota where he worked until receiving employment, upon a positive reference by the U.S. Embassy, at the Drummond Coal Company. See also, Washington Post (April 30, 2007). I was told by a reliable source in the Colombian DAS (the analogue of the U.S. FBI) that “Operation Dragon,” was never called off, and that those on the hit list are still targets of the Colombian security forces. The recent assassinations may be proof of this.
Further, Amnesty International has just released a report concluding that, despite the stated good intentions of Colombian President Manuel Santos – who, as Defense Minister of Colombia oversaw Colombia’s “false positive” program pursuant to which the Colombian military murdered over 3,000 civilians and then passed them off as guerillas to guarantee further aid from the U.S. — paramilitary groups are on the rise in Colombia and are continuing to receive aid and support from the U.S.-backed Colombian military. Meanwhile, according to the well-respected human rights group CINEP, extra-judicial killings by the U.S.-backed Colombian military skyrocketed in 2010, with an almost 70% increase in the number of victims of such killings. CINEP has also concluded that there have been 38,000 “forced disappearances” in the past three years, and that such disappearances have only accelerated under the current administration of President Juan Manual Santos.
In short, Colombia remains a death squad state – with the full support of the U.S. — a “Genocidal Democracy,” in the words of renowned Colombian human rights advocate Father Javier Giraldo. That Colombia is nonetheless the closest ally of the U.S. in the Hemisphere, however, should not be surprising as the U.S. has never seen a death squad government in this Hemisphere that it hasn’t liked or sponsored. Indeed, the violence happening in Guatemala today is a continuation of the violence that the U.S. unleashed decades ago when, at the urging of United Fruit (now Chiquita), it overthrew the democratic government of President Arbenz and installed a military dictatorship which proceeded to kill around 200,000 civilians in the succeeding years.
Against this background, Secretary of State Clinton announced this past week that she is certain that the Colombia FTA will be introduced by the Obama Administration in the very near future. Bill Clinton’s own confession before the Senate last year that such free “trade policies have failed everywhere they have been tried,” should ring in Secretary Clinton’s ears and in the ears of President Obama. And, recent events in Guatemala prove how such policies have been a failure in guaranteeing labor and human rights. Still, the Administration seems doomed by its own ideological dedication to free trade and free market principles to push through another bad trade deal with Colombia – a deal which will ratify Colombia’s continued gross violations of human and labor rights.
Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh.
Hundreds of Palestinian and Syrian refugees marched yesterday from Syrian-controlled territory to the occupied Golan Heights to mark Naksa Day.
Refugees in Palestine and elsewhere marked the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Egyptian Sinai and Syrian Golan Heights. On the frontier with the occupied Golan Heights, hundreds were injured and more than twenty were killed when Israeli soldiers opened fire with live ammunition on the unarmed demonstrators.
Salman Fakhreddin is a political activist and the public relations officer of Al-Marsad, the Arab Center for Human Rights in the Golan (golan-marsad.org). Originally from the occupied Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams, where he still lives today, Fahrideen described to The Electronic Intifada what he saw yesterday, what the real threat to Israel is regarding popular demonstrations, and what message the demonstration sent to residents of the Golan Heights who are resisting the Israeli occupation.
Jillian Kestler-D’Amours: Talk a bit about what happened yesterday near Majdal Shams.
Salman Fakhreddin: Yesterday, hundreds of refugees from Syria — Palestinians and Syrians — marched to the ceasefire line near Majdal Shams in a place called the Valley of Tears. We usually use this place for families [living opposite of the ceasefire line] to meet each other and to speak to each other with loudspeaker on all days of the year. Yesterday, it was a demonstration in memory of the war of ‘67 and the occupation of the Golan, West Bank and Gaza and Sinai. When these people reached the ceasefire line, the Israeli forces were well prepared with snipers. They were there already and they began firing live bullets and they killed and injured hundreds of people. Twenty-three people were killed yesterday.
It is a blood harvest of the Israeli army. I think first they began shooting to kill and during the afternoon and at beginning of the night, they began firing tear gas and rubber bullets. It means that the Israeli army yesterday was standing on its head and thinking with its feet. They dealt with the issue in the opposite of a humanitarian way. They decided to kill people in order to frighten them not to continue with this demonstration because they are afraid of the delegitimization of the state of Israel and the Israeli policy in the international community.
On the other hand, the demonstration yesterday and the demonstration of Nakba Day [on 15 May] is trying to develop a culture of nonviolence in the area, in the struggle against the Israelis, or what’s called the popular resistance. In Israel, they want to stop that because they are afraid it will reach the knowledge of the international community and the internal Israeli community will join this struggle as a peaceful struggle against colonialism and apartheid in this place of the world.
I think the idea was to stop that and because of that, they chose this way: to kill people first and then to shoot them with tear gas.
JKD: Israel has claimed that the protesters were a “security threat” to Israel, despite the fact that they were nonviolent and unarmed. What is the real threat, in your opinion, of these marches?
SF: The real threat is [that the demonstrations will hurt] Israeli legitimacy in the international community. This was [why the demonstrators chose a] nonviolent march and struggle. In Israel, they are afraid all the time of this illegitimacy because all their existence is illegal. They made with their own hands ethnic cleansing in Palestine and the Golan during the wars of ‘48 and ‘67. By their own hands, they changed the population of the place and they are putting settlers everywhere. By their own hands, they are confiscating the lands and they are trying to dismiss the culture and presence in the place. They are afraid all the time.
They use apartheid. They use ethnic cleansing, and they are using discrimination and inequality inside the State of Israel itself. In Israel there are 300,000 displaced Palestinians. They are Israeli [citizens]. They are carrying Israeli papers. They are carrying Israeli passports, but because they are Arabs, they are forcibly displaced from their own villages. They are internal refugees and until now, Israel didn’t recognize its responsibility for the refugees and the ethnic cleansing and the apartheid that is functioning in Palestine. They have to recognize that.
We have enough bloodshed in this place. We paid a high price of blood in this place. Yesterday [5 June], we paid a very high price of blood. It’s a psychological disease of the Israelis: to fire at people [with] snipers, you are seeing his face and you are trying to kill him because he is 100 meters from the fence. And it is not their land. The Golan is the Syrian territory.
JKD: Yes, many news reports stated that the shootings took place on the Israeli “border” with Syria, but the Golan Heights is Syrian, not Israeli, territory.
SF: Yes. I don’t say that, international law says that the Golan is Syrian territory. The Israelis fired at people in a Syrian territory and they killed them. All the war, all the killing yesterday, took place in the operation area of the United Nations.
JKD: How did residents in Majdal Shams feel when they saw the demonstration and the violence that ensued?
SF: We had two buses yesterday. We had a field hospital to treat injured people in case there were any. At the end of the day, we received a lot of tear gas and several people were injured and treated by our crews in the occupied Golan. It was sad to see others killed in front of us while we cannot give a hand to help or to support, except for political support. We felt very depressed. It’s very sad to see.
People here are Syrians and they want to be back in Syria. Or rather, they want Syria to be back in the Golan. It’s not a question because it’s Syrian territory. [It should be given back] in a peaceful way, not in war.
JKD: Can you talk about daily life in the Golan Heights and what challenges residents face there?
SF: The Israelis occupied the Golan in 1967. They forced people to leave their homes. The Syrians from the Golan number 500,000 refugees now. The Israelis [imposed on] them with 18,000 settlers who monopolize the resources of the Golan — the minerals of the Golan, the landscape of the Golan, the atmosphere of the Golan — which is against international law and international humanitarian law.
The Israelis divided the resources and the minerals of the place in a division of one to ten. This means I am an indigenous person of the Golan, I was born here and this is my land. I share ten percent of what we have in the Golan, if it’s water, if it’s land, if it’s landscape, if it’s health, if it’s education. And 90 percent is given to the settlers in the Golan.
This is what I say by apartheid and colonialism together. Colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in one place.
JKD: What impact do you think the demonstrations on Naksa Day and Nakba Day will have on the residents of the Golan and elsewhere who are fighting for their rights under Israeli occupation?
SF: We have been trying for several years with the ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to develop a culture of nonviolence, to develop a popular struggle against Israeli colonialism here. This is the way to invite others to join, to demonstrate against the Israelis in their embassies, in their companies. In many cases, we can invite others to stop investing in Israel or to pull investments from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Golan.
This is the only way to gather an international struggle in peaceful ways. This is our duty as human beings and this is the duty of other free people in this world. To feel free, people have to help others to be free.
Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jkdamours.com.
Israel’s announcement today that it is “allowing between 210 and 220” trucks into Gaza with humanitarian aid is a direct response to the pressure that the upcoming Freedom Flotilla II is creating. Since July 2007, Israel has kept the number of allowed trucks at 25% of what the pre-blockade numbers were and of what is required by Gaza residents. To date, Israel has not responded to calls by human rights organizations or the UN to increase the numbers. Only as a result of the mounting pressure from the Freedom Flotilla has Israel altered its policy. However, today’s allowance still falls 35% short of what is needed in Gaza.
Letting in more trucks is not enough. More trucks with food and medicine are only meant to give the appearance of an open Gaza. More trucks does not mean freedom; more trucks does not mean rebuilding the hundreds of homes and buildings that the Israeli military destroyed during Operation Cast Lead (only 12 of the trucks being allowed in contain construction material for UN projects); more trucks does not mean Gaza is not occupied and its residents subjected to collective punishment; more trucks does not mean that Israel has ended its cruel blockade; more trucks does not mean that Palestinians are any less imprisoned.
More trucks do, however, mean that Israeli farmers and merchants make money off the occupation. as most international agencies bringing aid into Gaza are forced to buy their supplies from Israel.
Freedom Flotilla II will sail at the end of June to press Israel and the international community to end the occupation of Palestine and to ensure freedom for Palestinians – just as any other people in the world have the right to be free. Instead of pressuring countries to stand in our way, or coming up with ways to bribe governments to stop our ships, the UN, the United States and the rest of the international community should recognize the power of this non-violent civilian effort to pressure Israel to change its policy. With Israel’s change in policy after Freedom Flotilla I, and now these moves to pre-empt our flotilla, it seems we are succeeding where the international community continues to fail.
Tamimi, who has been held in custody for over two months, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and held a defiant speech explaining his motivation for organizing civil resistance to the Occupation. (Full statement below)
After more than two months in custody, the trial of Bassem Tamimi, a 44 year-old protest organizer from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, finally commenced yesterday. Tamimi, who is the coordinator for the Nabi Saleh popular committee, pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against him.
In a defiant speech handed before a crowded courtroom, Tamimi proudly owned up to organizing the protest in the village saying, “I organized these peaceful demonstrations to defend our land and our people.” Tamimi also challenged the legitimacy of the very system which trys him, saying that “Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws […] that are enacted by authorities which I haven’t elected and do not represent me.” (See Tamimi’s full statement at court bellow).
Tamimi was interrupted by the judge who warned him that it was not a political trial, and that such statements were out of place in a courtroom. Tamimi was cut short and not allowed to deliver his full statement.
After Tamimi finished reading his shortened statement, the judge announced that the hearing’s protocol has been erroneously deleted. However he refused to submit the full written statement to the stenographer. She went on to dictate a short summary in her own words for official record.
The indictment against Tamimi is based on questionable and coerced confessions of youth from the village. He is charged with’ incitement’, ‘organizing and participating in unauthorized processions’,’ solicitation to stone-throwing’, ‘failure to attend legal summons’, and a scandalous charge of ‘disruption of legal proceedings’, for allegedly giving youth advice on how to act during police interrogation in the event that they are arrested.
The transcript of Tamimi’s police interrogation further demonstrates the police and Military Prosecution’s political motivation and disregard for the suspect’s rights. During his questioning, Tamimi was accused by his interrogator of “consulting lawyers and foreigners to prepare for his interrogation”, an act that is in no way in breach of the law.
Tamimi’s full statement:
Your Honor,
I hold this speech out of belief in peace, justice, freedom, the right to live in dignity, and out of respect for free thought in the absence of Just Laws.
Every time I am called to appear before your courts, I become nervous and afraid. Eighteen years ago, my sister was killed in a courtroom such as this, by a staff member. In my lifetime, I have been nine times imprisoned for an overall of almost 3 years, though I was never charged or convicted. During my imprisonment, I was paralyzed as a result of torture by your investigators. My wife was detained, my children were wounded, my land was stolen by settlers, and now my house is slated for demolition.
I was born at the same time as the Occupation and have been living under its inherent inhumanity, inequality, racism and lack of freedom ever since. Yet, despite all this, my belief in human values and the need for peace in this land have never been shaken. Suffering and oppression did not fill my heart with hatred for anyone, nor did they kindle feelings of revenge. To the contrary, they reinforced my belief in peace and national standing as an adequate response to the inhumanity of Occupation.
International law guarantees the right of occupied people to resist Occupation. In practicing my right, I have called for and organized peaceful popular demonstrations against the Occupation, settler attacks and the theft of more than half of the land of my village, Nabi Saleh, where the graves of my ancestors have lain since time immemorial.
I organized these peaceful demonstrations in order to defend our land and our people. I do not know if my actions violate your Occupation laws. As far as I am concerned, these laws do not apply to me and are devoid of meaning. Having been enacted by Occupation authorities, I reject them and cannot recognize their validity.
Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws which lack any legitimacy; laws that are enacted by authorities that I have not elected and do not represent me. I am accused of organizing peaceful civil demonstrations that have no military aspects and are legal under international law.
We have the right to express our rejection of Occupation in all of its forms; to defend our freedom and dignity as a people and to seek justice and peace in our land in order to protect our children and secure their future.
The civil nature of our actions is the light that will overcome the darkness of the Occupation, bringing a dawn of freedom that will warm the cold wrists in chains, sweep despair from the soul and end decades of oppression.
These actions are what will expose the true face of the Occupation, where soldiers point their guns at a woman walking to her fields or at checkpoints; at a child who wants to drink from the sweet water of his ancestors’ fabled spring; against an old man who wants to sit in the shade of an olive tree, once mother to him, now burnt by settlers.
We have exhausted all possible actions to stop attacks by settlers, who refuse to adhere to your courts’ decisions, which time and again have confirmed that we are the owners of the land, ordering the removal of the fence erected by them.
Each time we tried to approach our land, implementing these decisions, we were attacked by settlers, who prevented us from reaching it as if it were their own.
Our demonstrations are in protest of injustice. We work hand in hand with Israeli and international activists who believe, like us, that had it not been for the Occupation, we could all live in peace on this land. I do not know which laws are upheld by generals who are inhibited by fear and insecurity, nor do I know their thoughts on the civil resistance of women, children and old men who carry hope and olive branches. But I know what justice and reason are. Land theft and tree-burning is unjust. Violent repression of our demonstrations and protests and your detention camps are not evidence of the illegality of our actions. It is unfair to be tried under a law forced upon us. I know that I have rights and my actions are just.
The military prosecutor accuses me of inciting the protesters to throw stones at the soldiers. This is not true. What incites protesters to throw stones is the sound of bullets, the Occupation’s bulldozers as they destroy the land, the smell of teargas and the smoke coming from burnt houses. I did not incite anyone to throw stones, but I am not responsible for the security of your soldiers who invade my village and attack my people with all the weapons of death and the equipment of terror.
These demonstrations that I organize have had a positive influence over my beliefs; they allowed me to see people from the other side who believe in peace and share my struggle for freedom. Those freedom fighters have rid their consciousness from the Occupation and put their hands in ours in peaceful demonstrations against our common enemy, the Occupation. They have become friends, sisters and brothers. We fight together for a better future for our children and theirs.
If released by the judge will I be convinced thereby that justice still prevails in your courts?
Regardless of how just or unjust this ruling will be, and despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation, we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion or ethnicity; embodying thus the message of the Messenger of Peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy.” With love and justice, we make peace and build the future.
Background Bassem Tamimi is a veteran Palestinian grassroots activist from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah. He is married to Nariman Tamimi, with whom he fathers four children – Wa’ed (14), Ahed (10), Mohammed (8) and Salam (5).
As a veteran activist, Tamimi has been arrested by the Israeli army 11 times to date and has spent roughly three years in Israeli jails, though he was never convicted of any offence. He spent roughly three years in administrative detention, with no charges brought against him. Furthermore, his attorney and he were denied access to “secret evidence” brought against him.
In 1993, Tamimi was falsely arrested on suspicion of having murdered an Israeli settler in Beit El – an allegation of which he was cleared entirely. During his weeks-long interrogation, he was severely tortured by the Israeli Shin Bet in order to draw a coerced confession from him. During his interrogation, and as a result of the torture he underwent, Tamimi collapsed and had to be evacuated to a hospital, where he laid unconscious for seven days.
As one of the organizers of the Nabi Saleh protests and coordinator of the village’s popular committee, Tamimi has been the target of harsh treatment by the Israeli army. Since demonstrations began in the village, his house has been raided and ransacked numerous times, his wife was twice arrested and two of his sons were injured; Wa’ed, 14, was hospitalized for five days when a rubber-coated bullet penetrated his leg and Mohammed, 8, was injured by a tear-gas projectile that was shot directly at him and hit him in the shoulder. Shortly after demonstrations in the village began, the Israeli Civil Administration served ten demolition orders to structures located in Area C, Tamimi’s house was one of them, despite the fact that it was built in 1965.
Legal background On the March 24th, 2011, a massive contingent of Israeli Soldiers raided the Tamimi home at around noon, only minutes after he entered the house to prepare for a meeting with a European diplomat. He was arrested and subsequently charged.
The main evidence in Tamimi’s case is the testimony of 14 year-old Islam Dar Ayyoub, also from Nabi Saleh, who was taken from his bed at gunpoint on the night of January 23rd. In his interrogation the morning after his arrest, Islam alleged that Bassem and Naji Tamimi organized groups of youth into “brigades”, charged with different responsibilities during the demonstrations: some were allegedly in charge of stone-throwing, others of blocking roads, etc.
During a trial-within-a-trial procedure in Islam’s trial, motioning for his testimony to be ruled inadmissible, it was proven that his interrogation was fundamentally flawed and violated the rights set forth in the Israeli Youth Law in the following ways:
Despite being a minor, he was questioned in the morning following his arrest, having been denied sleep.
He was denied legal counsel, although his lawyer appeared at the police station requesting to see him.
He was denied his right to have a parent present during his questioning.
He was not informed of his right to remain silent, and was even told by his interrogators that he is “expected to tell the truth”.
Only one of four interrogators present was a qualified youth interrogator.
While the trial-within-a-trial procedure has not yet reached conclusion, the evidence already revealed has brought a Military Court of Appeals to revise its remand decision and order Islam’s release to house arrest.
Over the past two months, the army has arrested 24 of Nabi Saleh’s residents on protest related suspicions. Half of those arrested are minors, the youngest of whom is merely eleven.
Ever since the beginning of the village’s struggle against settler takeover of their lands in December of 2009, the army has conducted 71 protest related arrests. As the entire village numbers just over 500 residents, the number constitutes approximately 10% of its population.
Tamimi’s arrest corresponds to the systematic arrest of civil protest leaders all around the West Bank, as in the case of the villages Bil’in and Ni’ilin.
Only recently the Military Court of Appeals has aggravated the sentence of Abdallah Abu Rahmah from the village of Bilin, sending him to 16 months imprisonment on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. Abu Rahmah was released on March 2011.
Under the auspices of the drug war, the United States is returning to its historical pattern of using Central America and the Caribbean for its own military and strategic purposes.
Even as a growing chorus of voices throughout Latin America argue that military responses to drug trafficking are ineffective against the narcotics trade and exacerbate existing human rights abuses and official corruption, the U.S. military presence in the region is growing.
U.S. military construction in Central and South America has more than doubled in the last two years, while a U.S. buildup on military bases in Colombia continues, despite a Colombian court ruling last summer that struck down an agreement for U.S. use of the bases.
Construction of military facilities is slated for this summer in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Belize, funded from an account for “counter-narco-terrorism” operated by the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), the Pentagon’s operations arm for Latin America, according to the Army Corps on Engineers plans. But the biggest Pentagon investments are in Panama and at the U.S. air base in Soto Cano, Honduras. [see interactive map for details]
The surge in U.S. military investment in the region parallels statements by SouthCom commander Douglas Fraser that the triangle formed by Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala “is possibly the most violent place on Earth today.”
Congress approved a $25 million expansion of barracks for enlisted troops at the U.S. base in Soto Cano, Honduras, located 50 miles north of the capital in Tegucigalpa. The base houses about 500 U.S. troops, as well as support personnel, and served as a way-station for the aircraft that whisked President Manuel Zelaya out of Honduras during the June 2009 military coup, according to Zelaya and a leaked State Department cable. Zelaya had proposed making the base intro a commercial airport in 2008. Now, a new operating center for U.S. Special Forces troops is being built on the base.
The U.S. has also funded military base construction at Caratasca on the Atlantic Coast, which is described in Pentagon contracts as a “forward operating location,” and in April disclosed another base that is being built on Guanaja Island, on Honduras’ Caribbean coast, which will be a counter-narco-terrorism operations center and barracks. The amount of Pentagon contracts for activities in Honduras signed in the six months after the coup ($19.2 million) was more than double the amount from the same period two years earlier.
The Pentagon is also constructing bases, especially naval bases, elsewhere along the Central American coast, and conducting extensive joint military exercises and training in the region. Even in El Salvador, where center-left Mauricio Funes is president, the United States will lead a massive Special Forces exercise in June, with the participation of troops from 25 nations. The Pentagon is also designing and building a $665,000 “shoot house” for U.S. Special Forces troops in El Salvador, to be completed in August.
In Guatemala, the United States last year conducted training and renovated barracks for the infamous Kaibiles special forces units, which have a base in the remote Petén department. The participation of Kaibiles in Guatemala’s attempted genocide was well documented, and more recently former Kaibilies were reported to have worked with the Zetas in Mexico, former soldiers who serve drug cartels as hired killers.
U.S. construction of a base does not necessarily mean that the United States will have title to the base or keep personnel there. But it is an intelligence asset to know in detail another nation’s military base, and it contributes to “interoperability” —that is, integration—of armed forces.
Remilitarizing Panama
Although the Panama Canal Treaties required closure of U.S. bases in that nation in 1999, the Pentagon has had an increasing presence in Panama in the last decade, as indicated by more than 700 contracts signed by Defense Department agencies for projects there since 1999. These include the construction of five different military bases on Panama’s coasts. [see map]
In April, Panama announced the establishment on a former U.S. military base of the Regional Security Operations Center, which will host military troops from the rest of Central America and the Dominican Republic and be linked to a Southern Command surveillance base in Florida. The center echoes an unsuccessful 1990s proposal to establish a “Multinational Counternarcotics Center” on U.S. bases on the canal, as a way to maintain a U.S. military presence there. Panama hasn’t yet disclosed if the new center will include a U.S. presence.
In June, Central American leaders will gather in Guatemala, where the United States, the Inter-American Development Bank, and other nations will be urged to pitch in nearly a billion dollars to support a largely military regional security plan. The United States has committed $200 million as part of its own Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), not including Pentagon funds. Yet “officials from nearly every Central American nation maintain that the region was not sufficiently involved in the formulation of …CARSI,” the Congressional Research Service reported in March.
Cycles of U.S. Military Presence, Retreat and Advance
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the United States frequently intervened militarily in Central America and the Caribbean, it did so primarily from the sea, using gunboats to impose its will during a period when it lacked fixed military bases in the region. The installations it established were often coaling stations to supply its naval power. That changed with the establishment of bases in Panama, Cuba, and Puerto Rico in the early twentieth century and World War II. Panama became the regional hub.
In the 1950s, the United States built up the Panama National Guard, which morphed into a more nationalistic and militarized force in the 1960s and 70s. In the wake of the 1989 U.S. invasion that dismantled Panama’s armed forces, the country constitutionally abolished the military.
The implementation of the Panama Canal Treaties in 1999, the expulsion of the U.S. military from Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003 and from Ecuador in 2009, the anti-imperialist influences on many regional governments, and the rise of Brazil and China as superpower players in the hemisphere, have placed U.S. military activities in Latin America on a more defensive footing.
Most of the military bases being constructed in Central America are naval bases, while the 2008 activation of the Fourth Fleet to deploy in Latin America has increased the tempo of naval exercises. The United States military, again, is coming mostly from the sea.
The projects bankrolled by the Pentagon for Panama include the use of drones in Panama by Stark Aerospace, a division of Israel Defense Industries, as well as an upgrade to firing ranges. Stark is a small firm based in Mississippi whose primary business is producing drones, including both unarmed surveillance vehicles and an armed “Hunter” drone that has been used for bombing missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The firing ranges being upgraded became a thorn in canal treaty implementation in the late 1990s because of the tens of thousands of explosives left behind on live fire areas on the banks of the canal.
Plan Colombia, Continued
The U.S. military buildup in Central America runs parallel to similar developments in Colombia. There, the United States and Colombia signed an agreement in October 2009 that would have given the United States military use of seven bases in Colombia for ten years.
Last August, Colombia’s Constitutional Court struck down the agreement, because it was never submitted for Congressional approval or judicial review. Yet, even after the agreement was declared “non-existent” by Colombia’s highest court, the Pentagon initiated unprecedented amounts of new construction on bases in Colombia, including for an “Advanced Operations Base” for U.S. special forces.
U.S. military agencies in September 2010 signed contracts for construction worth nearly $5 million at three bases, according to official U.S. documents. U.S. military contracts for Tolemaida in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, were larger than the four previous years combined.
The contracts included two for an “Advanced Operations Base” for the U.S. Southern Command special operations unit in Tolemaida, a training base located south of Bogota. The special operations unit, known as SOCSOUTH, has as its mission “the use of small units in direct or indirect military actions that are focused on strategic or operational objectives,” including “provid[ing] an immediately deployable theater crisis response force.”
“It is a flagrant violation of sovereignty,” according to former Constitutional Court magistrate Alfredo Beltrán Sierra. “Remember that the government already tried to justify the establishment of U.S. troops with a disguised agreement that the Court finally overturned,” he said.
The base agreement also provoked strong regional opposition in 2009 after Pentagon planning and budget documents referred to “anti-U.S. governments” and the use of “full spectrum operations” in the region, indicating that the Pentagon seeks to project military power in South America. The construction now of a U.S. “advanced operations base” in Colombia raises similar concerns.
Besides the new contracts naming military bases, there were also military contracts for $2.5 million in construction at unnamed locations in Colombia signed in September. Another military construction contract described as being for “Talemaida Avaition” [sic] for $5.5 million was signed in October 2009, just days before the United States and Colombia signed the base agreement. Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) obtained the contract information from a public website that posts federal contract information, including where the contracts will be carried out.
There is a growing chorus of voices, including former Latin American presidents, as well as Mexicans fed up with the war paradigm, who assert that military responses to drug traffickers are only making the problem worse. The question is, how will civil society in Latin America and the United States respond to the growing U.S. military buildup?
John Lindsay-Poland is research and advocacy director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and author of Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama (Duke).
David Brooks admitted everything yesterday. Monstrous column. Who will call him on these belligerent attitudes? He said that the peace process is in essence the pacification of Arab countries. And so it required the invasion of Iraq and, prospectively, getting rid of Qaddafi, Assad, and Hamas. Not a word about the occupation, not a word about 25-to-1 ratio of water used, Jews to Palestinians in the West Bank. This is the neoconservative mind: the only issue is Israel’s dominance in the region, and our support for it. Be thankful to Brooks for admitting it.
In fact, the current peace process is doomed because of the inability to make a categorical distinction. There are some countries in the region that are not nice, but they are normal – Egypt,Jordan,Saudi Arabia. But there are other governments that are fundamentally depraved. Either as a matter of thuggishness (Syria) or ideology (Hamas), they reject the full humanity of other human beings. They believe it is proper and right to kill innocents. They can never be part of a successful negotiation because they undermine the universal principles of morality.
…There won’t be peace so long as depraved regimes are part of the picture. That’s why it’s crazy to get worked into a lather about who said what about the 1967 border. As long as Hamas and the Assad regime are in place, the peace process is going nowhere, just as it’s gone nowhere for lo these many years.
That’s why it’s necessary, especially at this moment in history, to focus on the nature of regimes, not only the boundaries between them. To have a peaceful Middle East, it was necessary to get rid of Saddam’s depraved regime in Iraq. It will be necessary to try to get rid of Gadhafi’s depraved regime in Libya. It’s necessary, as everybody but the Obama administration publicly acknowledges, to see Assad toppled. It will be necessary to marginalize Hamas. It was necessary to abandon the engagement strategy that Barack Obama campaigned on and embrace the cautious regime-change strategy that is his current doctrine.
This is unreconstructed neoconservatism, transplanted to the Arab spring, and signalling that the Palestinians must never have self-determination, unless it’s in Jordan. Notice the “universal principles of morality” — which Brooks, who has visited Israel a dozen times and was raised as a Jew to be “gooey-eyed” about the place– fails to apply to Israel’s occupation. No, the neoconservative principle is that Arabs must be bludgeoned by a superpower into accepting the presence of Israel. As Ed Koch used to say, How’m I doing??
Note as well that Brooks says “cautious regime change” is Obama’s policy. Well Brooks is a favorite of Obama, and it’s hard to imagine him saying anything like that without a signal from the White House. So Obama is pushing for the removal of Assad and Gaddafi.
Miko Peled is a peace activist who dares to say in public what others still choose to deny. Born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family, his grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His Father, Matti Peled, was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Sinai.
Miko’s unlikely opinions reflect his father’s legacy. General Peled was a war hero turned peacemaker.
Miko grew up in Jerusalem, a multi-ethnic city, but had to leave Israel before he made his first Palestinian friend, the result of his participation in a dialogue group in California. He was 39.
On September 4, 1997 the beloved Smadar, 13, the daughter of Miko’s sister Nurit and her husband Rami Elhanan was killed in a suicide attack.
Peled insists that Israel/Palestine is one state—the separation wall notwithstanding, massive investment in infrastructure, towns and highways that bisect and connect settlements on the West Bank, have destroyed the possibility for a viable Palestinian state. The result, Peled says is that Israelis and Palestinians are governed by the same government but live under different sets of laws.
At the heart of Peled’s conclusion lies the realization that Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace as equals in their shared homeland.
Yacoub Odeh, a Palestinian who fled from Lifta, west Jerusalem in 1948, shows film-maker Mat Heywood around his deserted home village, now under threat from Israeli plans to build a luxury resort.
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … 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.
Israel’s announcement today that it is “allowing between 210 and 220” trucks into Gaza with humanitarian aid is a direct response to the pressure that the upcoming Freedom Flotilla II is creating. Since July 2007, Israel has kept the number of allowed trucks at 25% of what the pre-blockade numbers were and of what is required by Gaza residents. To date, Israel has not responded to calls by human rights organizations or the UN to increase the numbers. Only as a result of the mounting pressure from the Freedom Flotilla has Israel altered its policy. However, today’s allowance still falls 35% short of what is needed in Gaza.
Tamimi, who has been held in custody for over two months, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and held a defiant speech explaining his motivation for organizing civil resistance to the Occupation. (Full statement below)
Aletho News
