Year: 2011

July 19, 2011December 11, 2020

Human Rights Solidarity Trumps the Indefensible Zionist Nightmare

Balad Party MK, Palestinian Haneen Zoabi, has been suspended from Knesset discussions till the end of the summer session in fascist Israel’s latest move to punish those who speak out against its injustices. The Kafkesque Knesset ‘Ethics’ Committee decided upon this action, which Haneen will appeal.

Ms Zoabi, a vociferous critic of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians, was a passenger on the Mavi Marmara, attracting fury in Israel. She was branded a traitor by colleagues and stripped of some parliamentary privileges. But the latest move to sanction her demonstrates the extent to which the flotilla affair still rankles in Israel. The Knesset’s ethics committee voted to bar Ms Zoabi from parliamentary debates until the current session ends next month, declaring that her actions had “harmed national security and were inconsistent with the legitimate conduct of a lawmaker”.

Haneen responded honestly to the spurious ‘Ethics’ Committee decision:

“This was not an Ethics Committee decision, it was the decision of an automatic racist, right-wing majority in this committee. Therefore, it was a completely political decision.”

“Who decides what is politically legitimate? The right-wing majority that makes up the government? A political majority? Then what is the meaning of my immunity, which is meant to protect me from the tyranny of the majority?”.

“I upheld my human, moral and political obligation by participating in the struggle to break the illegitimate and inhumane blockade on Gaza”.

In arresting and persecuting those whom it perceives are leaders of the non-violent resistance against its crimes, Israel can’t understand the nature of its ‘adversary’ – human rights supporters aren’t a hierarchy, but a broad-based global Palestinian-led movement for justice.

At Nabi Saleh demonstrations against the illegal Israeli occupation, Nariman Tamimi films and documents along with providing medical aid to those whom the Israeli occupation forces injure:

Definitely, the protests have caused a lot of awareness and the evidence is that we have Palestinian youth coming from different districts in the West Bank who are committed to going to Nabi Saleh every week. Activists from Israel and the international community are part of the popular resistance that is key to forming the awareness that leads others to denounce Israel as an occupying force and a military state, which is why our war is against the media.

It is a good sign to see more and more people getting convinced and exposing Israel’s crimes and atrocities in a way in which the world can understand them. This current resistance is inclusive of all the members of society, much like the first intifada, which was a true popular uprising, and I do believe that the current protests will spread because of their result of undermining the state of Israel and attracting international responses. The more that increases, the better it is for us.

Israel is continuing its outrageous crimes against Palestinians with construction of another 336 illegal Jews-only settlement dwellings in the Occupied West Bank.

Meanwhile, the French vessel, Dignite-Al Karame, with 10 human rights activists on board prepares to face the Israeli forces at sea, on its attempt to break the illegal Israeli blockade on Gaza.

Thomas Sommer-Houdeville, a French national and flotilla spokesperson, said Sunday the boat was carrying a message of peace, hope and solidarity with the people in Gaza. He hoped the Israeli Navy would not intercept the boat and let it complete its civic mission. He believes that the boat must get near as possible to the destination, as it represents the “determination and will” of the people who were on board other boats and all those who have been involved in raising awareness about the blockade on Gaza.

Ali Abunimah: “The difference now between us and zionists … is that we can put forth a positive vision based on universal values without betraying any Palestinian rights. Our vision is rooted in one that views all human beings as equal. Their vision is rooted in one that sees some human beings as garbage.”

‘I expected that activists will challenge the anti-Boycott law and chant for BDS or call for Settlement boycott as well as chanting for a Palestinian state, I was wrong. It turned out to be a march organized by Zionist leftists calling for a legitimate Palestinian state next to the state of Israel.’

Where are the Palestinians?
Palestinian students tell South African counterparts: Boycott Israeli tour on your campuses

We urge our South African peers to boycott and challenge this intended tour of South African universities in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, which we view as a part of a campaign launched to whitewash the crimes of Israel’s apartheid policies.

BDS activists to TIAA-CREF: We divest from Israel’s occupation

Eva Bartlett reports on the way Israel’s collective punishment extends to exports from Gaza, denying its citizens economic security.
Flotilla activist: ‘The people of Gaza just want their freedom’ Michael Coleman:

‘“I just hope we can shift public opinion in Australia and that [the government and media] stop being so apologetic towards Israel. My detention in Greece got more news in Greece than it did here — where criticism of Israel seems to be ‘off limits’ to a lot of the media.

“I spent two to three months in Nablus, in the Occupied West bank in 2008-2009. I received a lot of support [for the flotilla protest] from my friends in Nablus. They and the people of Gaza don’t want hand-outs: they just want their freedom.”’

13th July – and yes, still in prison – UK citizen Pippa Bartolotti writes on her stint at the Israel entity’s request in Givon prison for the terrible crime of wanting to visit the West Bank :

Why does my government allow me to be held for 5 days without papers, or explanation, or charges?

Why does my country accept Israel as a sovereign state when it has no borders?

Why does the UK and EU give Israel special rights when its Human Rights position is untenable?

Why can Israel sing in the Eurovision Song Contest and take part in UEFA football champioships whilst being an apartheid state?

Why are British police ordered to act on Israeli paranoia and lies and interrogate British citizens before they go to Israel?

Why were the British the last to leave Givon prison?

Why did the British Consul allow our conversations to be recorded?

Why does the British Consul in Israel say that no visitors are allowed to visit the West Bank, when the FCO website says no such thing?

Why does the British Government collude in the inhumane and cruel treatment of the Palestinians?

How can we leave when we have never been?

Sheikh Raed Salah is released but gagged – Israel’s vile influence on its British political shills appear to be behind his attempted ban from the UK.

‘The Home Office listed as another example of “unacceptable behavior” an interview with MEMO in which Salah advocated the Palestinian right of return and the boycott divestment and sanctions movement’.

Zioshill Glick argues that Israel should annex ‘Judea and Samaria’ or else the Palestinians will form another ‘terror state’. Of course, the real terror state is Israel.
Israel and Israeli weapons in Karachi
Former State Department spokesman: Israel will not attack Iran anytime soon
Israel’s nuclear spies: Hollywood producer gave Israel sketches of centrifuges for Dimona nuclear reactor’

Turkey Links

Report: Turkish firm to sign gas deal with Iran
Iran seizes bases belonging to PKK offshoot in Iraq

July 19, 2011December 11, 2020

Aboriginals Are 13 Times More Likely To Be Incarcerated

Prison rates down, but not enough

Australia’s prison population is decreasing. But it’s a little too early to break out the champagne. The huge regional differences reveal that imprisonment is not based on the crime you commit, but the preferences of your local politicians.

The latest statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that 4% fewer people are locked up now than last year.

At first sight, this finally looks like some good news, as the general trend since the mid-eighties has been one of relentlessly rising imprisonment rates. But we need to take stock of the mad ride we have been on over this period in which the number of people behind bars increased exponentially from 86 per 100,000 adult population in 1984 to 165 in 2011.

A costly and unequal policy

And it’s an expensive business: according to the Productivity Commission, the real net operating expenditure per prisoner per day was $207 in 2009-10. There seems to have been no brake on the enthusiasm for imprisonment and it has sometimes been argued that rich western countries like Australia simply imprison as much as they do because they can.

And there seems to be no substantial sign of good news on one of the most important and intractable problems in regard to imprisonment in Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners remain grossly over-represented making up a quarter (26%) of all prisoners while they only constitute 2% of the total Australian population.

Australia is not alone in this dangerous imprisonment spending spree – we are part of a global wave spreading across most of the developed world with only a few exceptions.

Around the world

The US is the unconquerable winner of this race: the rate of imprisonment in the US has increased seven fold since 1973 and stands at present at 743 per 100,000 of the total population. From here on we will use this more standard measure of imprisonment rates which uses total population as the denominator (and not just adult population).

Increases have also been substantial in other Anglo-Saxon countries such as England and Wales (152), and New Zealand (199). The Australian rate when measured per 100,000 population is 128.

Although there have also been increases in imprisonment in several mainland European jurisdictions, their imprisonment rates fluctuate around 100 and remain relatively stable (France: 102, Belgium 97), or are even decreasing (Germany 85). The Netherlands are a particularly interesting case as they witnessed a rapid increase of their imprisonment rates over the last decades – from a rate of 49 in 1992 up to 123 in 2004 – but recently experienced a significant fall of their prison numbers (decline to 94). This resulted in overcapacity in their prisons, which they have rented out to accommodate Belgian prisoners; haven’t they always been smart traders, these Dutch men?

Further, the Scandinavian countries remain the poster child in this field managing to keep their prison populations consistently low (Finland 59, Sweden 78) even in our current era characterised by punitive populism.

These differences clearly demonstrate that imprisonment rates are not just a fait accompli, but that they result out of choices, made at several levels of the criminal justice process.

What is the point of prison?

So it is time to ask ourselves – and our governments – what do we have to show for it? Or how effective is our imprisonment policy? Although crime rates are also going down, can this drop in volume crime be attributed to the enthusiasm to put people behind bars?

Over the last decade, and in reaction to David Garlands’ publication of the “Culture of Control” (2001), in which he analyses crime control and criminal justice system in the UK/US over the last 30 years, various wise people have looked into this question.

There seems to be a consensus that imprisonment rates vary independently from crime rates, and that in many countries the increases in the prison population have started during a period of sustained decrease in crime rates, or when crime rates remained stable.

So, if this is the case, what can explain this extraordinary expenditure of public funds on a somewhat medieval remedy to the many and varied forms of crime in modern society?

According to many scholars focusing on this issue over the past decade, higher imprisonment rates can be linked to a combination of the following variables: the lack of a strong welfare model; a bi-partisan political model; a common law system; fear of crime; lack of trust in the government and; the presence of minorities who are considered as being problematic.

Regional differences

While one could state that some of these characteristics apply to Australia, why then are there such differences between the states? How is it that, according to the most recent figures, the Northern Territory ends up with an imprisonment rate of 719, Western Australia with 262, New South Wales with 179, while this is only 105 in Victoria?

The states in Australia appear to reflect in microcosm the variety of imprisonment rates observed across the rest of the developed world bearing no particular relation to underlying crime rates but rather policy preferences.

The way ahead

So where do we go from here? Interesting in that respect is the recent popularity of Justice Reinvestment initiatives, originating in the US, and using the funds that are normally spent on imprisoning people, to improve local services addressing the underlying causes of crime.

This might be worth considering and has clearly caught the imagination of many who are pushing for meaningful improvements in this area.

At the very least we should be asking whether we are getting value for money out of imprisonment when it comes to preventing crime, presumably its primary justification.

We need to perhaps review the “open cheque book” approach and look at what we get as a return on our investment.

However outrage over crime means that there will never be any shortage of demand for imprisonment. It then becomes a question of restraint.

But selling the benefits of that in today’s heady emotive media-dominated political environment, provides the proverbial challenge of selling refrigerators to Eskimos.

Hilde Tubex, Future Fellow, Crime Research Centre at University of Western Australia and David Indermaur, Associate Professor, Crime Research Centre at University of Western Australia

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

July 13, 2011December 11, 2020

Israel Reveals Its Pathological Fear of BDS with Passing of Fascist Boycott Law

In Haaretz, Alon Idan writes:

The Boycott Law is Fascism: it is a categorically anti-democratic law whose goal is to annul any possibility of legitimate protest.
…
Not only anti-democratic, the Boycott Bill is also a degrading: It represents an advanced stage of parliamentary hegemony which does now allow a critic to charge himself with the energy needed to wage an opposition struggle. The Boycott Law sends a clear message: there’s no longer any point in arguing.
…
The citizen in a democracy is essentially a dialectical creature: he understands that any thesis, no matter how well-rooted it seems to be, will at some stage be challenged by an antithesis, one which is no less logical; and the fusion of the two leads to a synthesis which at some point turns into a thesis, which in the future will also beget an antithesis.

Not internalizing the foundations of such a dialectic leads to the annulment of democracy, and the creation of some other form of governance in its stead.

The 18th Knesset will be remembered as the one which nullified the tradition of parliamentary dialectics. This is the Knesset which, in a deliberate, consistent fashion institutionalized faith in one policy path, one political position, one acceptable public viewpoint. It adopted as an overriding goal the need to penalize and harm anyone who casts doubts on the veracity of the one accepted path, who wonders about the rectitude of the one accepted public viewpoint, and who dares to challenge the country’s hegemonic perception.

The widely held view that the slew of anti-democratic laws legislated by the 18th Knesset is a slippery slope to Fascism in the future is disingenuous. The Boycott Law is Fascism: it is a categorically anti-democratic law whose goal is to annul any possibility of legitimate protest.
…
One of the most conspicuous signs of Fascism is an assumption laden within any discussion or argument: it is assumed that all debate is a mere formality. Debaters who take positions are nothing other than puppets, devoid of free will; their discussion is a mere showcase, an appealing picture covering an ugly reality.

Read here for the complete diagnosis of symptoms of Israel fascism.

Leadership of Palestinian boycott campaign responds to new law

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Israeli parliament (Knesset) last night passed a new law criminalizing support for the Palestinian civil society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, penalizing Israeli persons and organizations active in the campaign, or indeed in any other partial boycott of Israel or any of its institutions. The repressive legislation also bars companies that refuse to to deal with Israel’s illegal colonies built on occupied Palestinian land from receiving government contracts.

Hind Awwad, coordinator with the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian civil society coalition comprising all major political parties, trade unions, NGOs and mass organsations, said:

“Israel is once again taking draconian measures to criminalize civil resistance to its system of apartheid, colonialism and occupation over the Palestinian people. But so long as Israel continues its illegal siege of the Gaza Strip, brutal occupation, denial of Palestinian refugee rights and system of instituionalized discrimination against Palestinians, repressive acts such as these will only offer further evidence of the undemocratic and oppressive nature of Israeli political life and motivate even more people of conscience to join our global BDS movement for freedom, justice and equality.”

“This new legislation, which violates international law, is testament to the success of the rapidly growing global BDS movement and a realisation within political elites inside Israel that the state is becoming a world pariah in the way that South Africa once was.”

Prof. Gabi Baramki, former head of Birzeit University and currently a Steering Committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), reacted to the new law saying: “The boycott bill is but a continuation of the Knesset’s decades-old pivotal role in legislating Israeli apartheid, colonialism, and other forms of oppression of the Palestinian people.”

Ms. Awwad also stated: “We stand in solidarity with all principled Israeli citizens and organizations who are the primary target of this law, and whomay be fined and even imprisoned for exercising their fundamental right to speak out and act non-violently in order to bring their state into compliance with international law..”

ENDS

For more information:

www.bdsmovement.net

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. The Palestinian civil society campaign for BDS calls for applying broad boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) initiatives against Israel, similar to those applied to South Africa during the apartheid era, until Israel meets its obligations under international law by respecting the basic right of the Palestinian people to self determination by ending its occupation and colonization of the 1967 territory, ending racial discrimination against Palestinians inside Israel, and granting Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned right to return.

2. Key BDS movement successes include the divestment campaign against French multinational Veolia, which has cost the company billions of dollars in lost contracts due to its ongoing involvement in the illegal Jerusalem Light Rail and the decision taken by the Norwegian government to exclude Israeli companies involved in the construction of illegal settlements and the wall from its national pension investment fund. Earlier this year, the University of Johannesburg severed links with Ben Gurion University because of its complicity in human rights violations. Numerous artists have heeded the Palestinian cultural boycott call against Israel, including Roger Waters, Jello Biafra, the Pixies and Faithless. Carmel Agrexco, a partially state owned agricultural export company targeted by the BDS movement, recently announced record losses.

Like such repressive practices, the newly approved Israeli law, which specifies fines and the payment of ‘compensation’ by Israeli citizens or residents, who initiate or encourage a boycott of Israel – is also bound to fail.

Knesset Passes Boycott Law; ACRI Plans to Appeal
Full translation of the Boycott Prohibition Law [.doc]
Sign On Today: Statement Condemning the Anti-BDS “Boycott Law” from US Groups
Amid Uproar, Israeli Lawmakers Vote to Punish Boycotters

“This law will serve as a weapon in the hands of those people who claim that Israel is not a democracy and does not respect human rights,” Amnon Rubenstein, a legal expert and winner of the esteemed Israel Prize, wrote in the daily Ma’ariv. “It will also increase Israel’s isolation in the academic world and among Western liberal democracies. Paradoxically, this law increases the danger of anti-Israel boycotts. That’s the polar opposite of what Israel needs at the moment.” Commentator Ben Caspit in the same pages: “There is no reason that Haredim [ultra-Orthodox] should be able to boycott stores that sell pork (or that are open on the Sabbath), that masses of Israelis can boycott cheese producers and marketers, but left wingers cannot boycott the produce of the settlements, which they view as a cancerous growth in the state’s meager body.

Rights groups: anti-boycott law “effectively a legal annexation of W. Bank”
Knesset study: No democracy has similar anti-boycott laws
When the State places itself above the law, we have totalitarianism.
The law might be overruled by Israel’s Supreme Court, but this will only spur the fascist coalition to curb the court as it has been eager to for years.
Going to the HCJ, which may take up to 12 years to consider the case, is putting a Band Aid on a gangrenous limb. What we need is an amputation.

Palestine / Israel Links

A wedding under Apartheid
Israeli airstrike hits eastern Gaza – a 19-year-old girl was injured in the attack and dozens of people, including children, were treated for shock.
‘Seven years after the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Barrier: The Impact of the Barrier in the Jerusalem area’
Australian Human Rights Campaigners Detained by Israeli Authorities
Four Welsh activists remain in Israel as first captured campaigners return to UK
After witnessing Palestine’s apartheid, Indigenous and Women of Color feminists endorse BDS
Was New York Times’ Ethan Bronner duped by an Israeli Facebook fraud?
Former MP fights deportation from Israel
Will Jello Biafra play in Tel Aviv after all?

Other Links

Getting Away with Torture

This 107-page report presents substantial information warranting criminal investigations of Bush and senior administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet, for ordering practices such as “waterboarding,” the use of secret CIA prisons, and the transfer of detainees to countries where they were tortured.

A new law-enforcement tool: Facebook searches

July 9, 2011December 11, 2020

Boycott Max Brenners – No More Sweetening of Apartheid

Boycott apartheid Israel! Boycott Max Brenner!

Max Brenner Chocolates is a 100% Israeli-owned company belonging to the Strauss Group, the second largest Israeli food and beverage company. On the “corporate responsibility” section of its website, the Strauss Group emphasises the support it gives to the Israeli army. The Strauss group is proud that for more than 30 years, it has supported the Golani reconnaissance platoon infamous for its involvement 2006 invasion of Lebanon and other atrocities. As their website puts it: “Our connection with soldiers goes as far back as the country, and even further. We see a mission and need to continue to provide our soldiers with support, to enhance their quality of life and service conditions, and sweeten their special moments.”

PROTEST: Sat August 27
Gather at 1pm in park on cnr of Merivale & Glenelg St for a march to Max Brenner store at South Bank, Brisbane.

Download Poster

Download Flyer

Phone: 0400 720 757, 0401 586 923
Email:

spread the word!

Source

July 8, 2011December 11, 2020

Flytilla! Israel Hustles Humanitarians Away From Its Crime Sites

Israel has a phobia of boats AND planes transporting humanitarians! While the Freedom Flotillas to Gaza highlight the illegal blockade Israel enforces on the 1.6 million people who live in Gaza, the Air Flotilla shows up Israel’s disgraceful blockade of the West Bank bantustan.

Israel’s fear of humanitarians accessing the West Bank was so great, the ‘provocation’ from ‘delegitimisation’ by people of conscience so frightening, that ziomoles combed facebook groups hunting for prospective passengers in advance.

Aided by Facebook, Israel on Friday prevented scores of pro-Palestinian activists from boarding Tel Aviv-bound flights in Europe, questioned dozens more upon arrival at its main airport and denied entry to 69, disrupting their attempts to reach the West Bank on a solidarity mission with the Palestinians.

Israel had tracked the activists on social media sites, compiled a blacklist of more than 300 names and asked airlines to keep those on the list off flights to Israel. On Friday, 310 of the activists who managed to land in Tel Aviv were detained for questioning, said Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad. Of those, four were immediately put on return flights and 65 were being held until flights home could be arranged for them, she said. The rest were permitted entry, she said. [hasbara alert]
…
Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said the list was compiled by following organizers’ preparations on social networks and websites. In all, about 300 people were identified as planning to create “provocations” upon arrival, he said.

“These people announced on their Internet sites that they planned to come here and cause disruptions, and told their friends. We were able to contact other foreign ministries and simply give them links,” Palmor said. Barring entrance in such cases is “accepted practice in any country,” he added.

Larry Derfner describes the reaction of the locals once they realised who the humanitarian arrivals were:

A couple of dozen people, mainly men but also a few women, followed very close behind the tightly-bunched demonstrators, cops and reporters to the police van. “Throw them in the garbage,” shouted one woman. An old man tried to get at one of the activists, but the police stopped him.

I was there ostensibly as a journalist, and I was scribbling notes, but I felt cowardly not saying anything to these nationalist hooligans, so I started telling them in Hebrew, “What are these people doing?” The woman who wanted them thrown in the garbage said, “They’re hurting us!” I said, “They’re talking,” and the little mob turned on me, a couple of the men raised their fists. The woman told me, “Go back home, get out of here,” I said, “I live here.”

Now we know where the unbalanced, indignant girl in the psychiatrist’s office in the latest hasbara infomercial went after she stormed out. Mobs are primed and cued by propaganda, then act out the omitted conclusion.

It is not surprising that Israel denies and is desperate to conceal its ongoing crimes in the West Bank with self-righteous rage from humanitarians who would be sympathetic to Palestinians under brutal military occupation suffering frequent incursions, arrests, a draconian matrix of checkpoints stifling movement, home demolitions, water theft, olive tree burnings, land theft and settler violence. Two and a half million Palestinian people live in the West Bank bantustan, enduring a lack of basic human rights, without nationality, persecuted by encroaching, violent illegal settlers, tacitly and overtly supported by a racist, belligerent expansionist government, determined to evict them from the fraction of their birthright which remains intact betwixt the already usurped hilltops and pampered ziocolonies.

As flytilla humanitarians continue to jet in, more of the world cannot help but notice in abhorrence the loathsome discrimination and dispossession inflicted on Palestinians and the willingness of Israel to forego the incoming revenue, for these travellers must pass through Israel to reach the West Bank, so its glossy, privileged ‘western’ image is not ‘delegitimised’. Blithely unaware that it manically scuttles its own leaky vessel, Israel has run out of fingers to plug the widening holes.

Flytilla blocked: RT talks to only Gaza activist who ‘slipped through net’

Related Links

“Air Flotilla” successful in exposing Israeli blockade of West Bank
Israel blocks airborne protest, questions dozens
Mobocracy at Ben-Gurion Airport
Hysteria at the airport – If the intention of flotilla and fly-in organizers was to direct global attention to Gaza, Israel’s government and law enforcement agencies are doing everything to help them and even boost the resonance.
Pro-Palestinian activists barred from boarding flights in Paris
Israel tries to stop pro-Palestinian ‘flytilla’
#Airflotilla | Overview
Nearly 600 women, men and children, among whom more than 350 French citizens, will fly to the West Bank next Friday 8 July, in answer to the call from 15 West Bank Palestinian civil society organizations.
Gaza fly-in: 2 pro-Palestinian activists to be deported
Israel blocks 200 pro-Palestinian activists from flying into country
By Torpedoing the Gaza Flotilla, Israel Sunk its Own Ship
Israel: “Flytilla” activists threaten to go on hunger strike as they insist there is no ground for detention
Israel has been accused of over-reacting to a recent ‘fly-in’ of activists who say they were treated harshly.

Israel / Palestine Links

Israel thieves more land from Palestinians to bolster one of its illegal settler outposts
Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (30 June– 06 July 2011)
IDF Castrator Earns Second-Highest National Award
Firm that produced anti-flotilla video works for Israeli government

The Israeli production company Zed Films that made the anti-flotilla propaganda video “Sex with the Psychologist” lists the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, the Government Press Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other official Israeli bodies as its clients. Does this indicate that this and other recent propaganda videos are the work of the Israeli government?

Is Palestine Next? by Adam Shatz

And there’s yet another reason for the lack of interest in the declaration: as the prospect of a genuine – a sovereign and independent – Palestinian state has receded, another discourse has returned, one with much deeper roots in the Palestinian political imagination than talk of statehood, and much closer to the ideas that inspired the Arab uprisings. It’s often forgotten that until the mid-1970s, Palestinians were looking not to establish a state but to achieve ‘national liberation’, to restore their rights in the land from which they had been driven – beginning with the right of return. Palestinians rarely talk about statehood, but they often talk about their rights; statehood is viewed, at best, as a means to achieve them. And because they don’t often talk about statehood, it seems unlikely that the failure to win recognition at the UN would be enough to spark an uprising. Any sign of serious unrest, moreover, would not be viewed kindly by the PA, which would do everything in its power to prevent a third intifada that might sweep it away.

U.S. House passes resolution threatening to suspend aid to Palestinians
Spirit of Rachel Corrie: Humanitarian Cargo Released and Shipped to Gaza
Palestinian civil society calls for comprehensive military embargo on Israel
In the top four – Israel hits 7.2 billion in arms exports
Chomsky: In Israel, a Tsunami Warning : Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, warned participants that “the morning after the anticipated announcement of recognition of a Palestinian state, a painful and dramatic process of Southafricanization will begin” – meaning that Israel would become a pariah state, subject to international sanctions.
Saudis replace Israel as top importer of U.S. arms – must have been a good year for oil profits.
#BDS Victory: Filmmaker Barbara Hammer Endorses BDS!

I accept and exercise my social responsibility as an artist not to lend legitimacy to the State of Israel as long as it continues the occupation.

My conscience will not allow me either to participate in programs funded by the current Israeli government at this point in time, or to show my films at venues that receive funding from that government. I stand in support of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples who believe in justice for all, equal representation, and an end to the oppression of the Palestinian peoples. It is the least I can do. The most is yet to be seen.

AIPAC Bills Opposing Palestinian Statehood Drive Sail Through House And Senate

The boycott law is unconstitutional and undemocratic

?’Israel passes law banning calls for boycott – Opposition blasts law, which penalizes persons or organizations who call for a boycott of Israel or the settlements, calling it unconstitutional and irresponsible’ : But Israel doesn’t *have* a constitution.
American Jew refused entry to Israel on suspicion of converting to Islam
The Audacity of Illegal Settlers in Hebron | West Bank | Rise Resist and Revolt
Israel-Lebanon gas border dispute
What is the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement?
this is your Gaza opening

Turkey Links

Turkey’s purification

Other Links

Google+ and “Real Names”
Anonymous leaks cache of sensitive security data from FBI contractor –

includes “a proposal for the FBI to develop a “Special Identities Modernization (SIM) Project” to “reduce terrorist and criminal activity by protecting all records associated with trusted individuals and revealing the identities of those individuals who may pose serious risk to the United States and its allies”.

Ahmadinejad calls on Iran colleges not to segregate sexes – “It has been heard that in some universities, classes and disciplines are being segregated without considering the coincidences.” (I’m sure the translator meant ‘consequences’!
GILLARD STOPS GAY AUSSIES FROM MARRYING IN NEW YORK Nothing worse than a wowser in power.
Mass psychosis in the US : How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs.