The visitors include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and about 60 other people who arrived over the weekend to celebrate International Women’s Day and see for themselves what life is like for Palestinians after Israel’s devastating 22-day offensive.
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The group visited women’s centres and organizations across the Gaza Strip yesterday, handing out about 2,000 aid baskets. They listened to the stories of the women, some of whose children were killed in the war. Over the next few days they will visit refugee camps and neighbourhoods levelled by Israeli shells and artillery.
“This is not a gimmick; it’s a strategy,” Kim Elliott, Toronto publisher of the independent news website http://www.rabble.ca, said in a phone interview from her hotel in Gaza City. “It’s for [us] to see what it’s really like and make the personal connection and go back to [our] homes to talk about it.”
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“All great changes come from minorities,” Alice Walker insisted during a phone interview from the home of a Palestinian family where she was being hosted.
“In fact, they usually come from two to three people – especially if they are writers,” said Ms. Walker, best known for her novel The Color Purple. She said she danced, sang and ate and listened to the women and that she saw “a lot of sadness on the faces of the children.”
The visitors not only had to take a bus for hours from Cairo across the Sinai Desert, they were required to pay their embassies to write letters declaring that they assumed sole responsibility for their lives upon entering the Gaza Strip.
“It cost $130!” said Ehab Lotayef, a 50-year-old Montreal engineer who was able to enter Gaza with the assistance of the U.S. women’s peace group Code Pink, which organized the delegation.
“I think they didn’t want a bunch of women with big banners camping out at the border crossing,” said Sandra Ruch, 52, a Torontonian and program co-ordinator for Women’s Coalition for Peace in Israel and Independent Jewish Voices in Canada.
For 2009 International Women’s Day, we at the Fringe celebrate the dedication and intelligence of women throughout the world who resist apathy and make a difference.
Tomorrow the nonviolent Palestinian resistance will take to their fields and towns, to their confiscated land to confront confiscation for the Wall and settlements.
Expectations are for a violent Israeli response that is an omnipresent aspect of the popular resistance. Western Ramallah’s Bil’in and Na’lin will demonstrate, as will Qalqilia’s Jayyous.
Tomorrow is a special day as every Friday the West Bank chooses a pertinent theme with which to devote demonstrations, in addition to protesting the general policy of the occupying Israeli authorities: last week it was the forcible destruction and eviction of East Jerusalem’s Silwan and Al Bustan to the south of Al Aqsa Mosque.
Tomorrow the honor will be paid to international women’s day. Southern Bethlehem’s Umm Salamuna is expected to come out in droves along with activists from throughout the province that received last week confiscation orders for dozens more dunams of its lands.
Women activists in Bethlehem issued an invitation to “all those of you who care about women’s issues.” Hundreds are expected on Friday.
Over at Jews sans Frontieres, Anthony Cordesman’s flawed CSIS report on Israel’s attack on Gaza is soundly examined and glaring omissions highlighted – Cordesman “diplomatically fails to mention the U.S. attempt to overthrow the elected Palestinian government that led to Hamas taking over”, “He also ignores that whole history of potential negotiations with Hamas”.
Cordesman’s work hards to absolve Israel from war crimes because he is concerned about the effects vigorous prosecution of such crimes would have on the deployment of U.S. forces.
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Cordesman’s concern is to defend the right of the U.S. and it’s allies, whoever they may be, to fight “assymetric wars” that inherently depend on harm to civilians. International law in its present form is not congruent with the way U.S. strategic interests are evolving. (and U.S. hostility to the ICJ and other treaties that put limits on warfare is well known.) CSIS, and the corporate elite it serves, got its money’s worth.
On the boycott and apartheid front, the cessation of negotiations by the British Embassy with Leviev owned Africa-Israel, a company building on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank is a landmark decision, setting a terrific precedent for more UK divestments, boycotts and sanctions against Israel in the future.
it is clear that the growing level of support for Boycott in the trade unions and similar organisations, coupled with a consumer boycott and individual businesses also refusing to trade with Israel is making its mark.
To keep an eye on – the “long-delayed trial of two former AIPAC staffers accused of passing classified info to the media and the Israeli government.” Gershom Gorenborg quotes Doug Bloomfield in the New Jersey Jewish News:
One of the topics AIPAC won’t want discussed, say these sources, is how closely it coordinated with Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1990s, when he led the Israeli Likud opposition and later when he was prime minister, to impede the Oslo peace process being pressed by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
That could not only validate AIPAC’s critics, who accuse it of being a branch of the Likud, but also lead to an investigation of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“What they don’t want out is that even though they publicly sounded like they were supporting the Oslo process, they were working all the time to undermine it,” said a well-informed source.
While snow, sleet and rain falls on an landscape of bombed out apartment buildings, flattened farmhouses, shattered schools and cratered streets, many thousands of Gazans are suffering a chilly winter in tents after their homes were demolished by the raging Israeli behemoth. Materials to rebuild housing have been denied entry by the Gazans’ gaolers. According to the UN’s John Ging, the destruction in Gaza is massive, with most of the infrastructure destroyed. 90% of Gaza’s drinking water is unsafe, contaminated by sewerage from the wanton damage wreaked on the sewerage treatment plant by the Israelis. Raw sewage is still flowing into the Mediterranean. It’s been several weeks since Israel declared its unilateral ‘truce’ and more than three years since Israel commenced its disgraceful blockade on the neighbours from whom it originally stole land to create its squattocracy.
In the process of denying human dignity to Gaza residents, Israel is capricious about what it will let in – and no concrete, steel or glass is permitted into the Gaza Gulag at all. Do those who presently visit collective punishment on the Gazan people gloat over their power as did their predecessors? When will Israel’s satraps decide the worrisome and possibly terroristic pasta, paper and hearing aids will join the ‘permitted’ list?
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said: “Israel’s blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security.”
Abbas, the illegitimate Palestinian el Presidente (‘al ra’is al filastini al muntahi wilayato’) attends the sham donor talks in Sharm Al-Sheikh and obliging donors trump up with $5.2b to rebuild Gaza which may at Israel’s whim be summarily destroyed again when concealment is desired for further land thefts or other acts of dominion.
Now donor countries have to find a way to rebuild Gaza. Yesterday, donors pledged a total of
US$5.2 billion (RM19.4 billion) for Gaza and for the government of Hamas’ main rival, Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas had sought at least US$2.8 billion in new aid from the donors’ conference in the Egyptian
resort of Sharm el-Sheik.
The US “pledged” $900 million but $200 million of those will go to cover deficits of the administration of Mahmous Abbas, $400 million to West Bank projects (many profiting Israel), and the remaining $300 million will be slated for Gaza but may never get there because the US refuses to deal or help anything associated with Hamas and Hamas is the de facto government (and most of the people) of Gaza.
Israel, which destroyed Gaza under false pretexts, having planned its massacre since before its truce with Hamas last June, deliberately refusing to renegotiate the truce since Israel broke it on November 4, 08, despite the near non-existence of rockets for several months during the truce, doesn’t have to pay a cent to its unfortunate victims for its horrific bombardment, slaughter and war crimes. And why would the US wish them to, as shekels can now flow back to the penny-strapped US to restock Israel’s elephantine arsenal.
In an exclusive press statement to the PIC, Yehia Moussa, a member of the Hamas parliamentary bloc, said Monday that the Sharm Al-Sheikh conference is politicized par excellence, challenging the use of these funds for reconstructing what was really destroyed by Israel because of the corruption of the parties who would receive them and the continued Israeli control over the crossings.
Moussa emphasized that there are several reasons that make the PA and its government in Ramallah ineligible to obtain these funds including that the PA no longer represents the Palestinian people after the expiry of ex-PA chief Mahmoud Abbas’s term of office.
The lawmaker expressed his belief that that the hundreds of millions that were mentioned in the conference would be dissipated and misappropriated by symbols of corruption.
Clinton is in Israel for meetings with Tipsy and Peres, and the obligatory trip to the Holocaust Museum, to assure the Israelis that “US commitment to Israel’s security and to its democracy as a Jewish state, remains fundamental, unshakable, and eternally durable”. Clinton demonstrates how completely she is out of touch with reality, repeating Israel’s mantra of Hamas’ culpability for rockets which are launched by fringe groups, without regard to the fact that Israel destroyed most of Gaza’s internal security apparatus, targeting police stations and policemen who might have been able to prevent such activities, and furthermore ignoring the obvious necessity and right under international law for the Palestinian people to defend against and resist Israel’s illegal, brutal occupation and its infinitely greater destruction of human lives and dignities. In her initial statement, she doesn’t even mention the blockade, Israel’s illegal occupation and collective punishment of the Gazan people.
The first step right now, not waiting for a new government, is a durable ceasefire. But that can only be achieved if Hamas ceases the rocket attacks. No nation should be expected to sit idly by and allow rockets to assault its people and its territories. These attacks must stop and so must the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. These activities put innocent lives of Israelis and Palestinians at risk and undermine the well-being of the people of Gaza.
One has more chance of being struck by lightning or run over by a bus than being hit by a puny Qassam rocket, but let’s not allow facts get in the way of US obeisance to Israel’s customary underdog bargaining position. Neither is it contemplated as relevant that the land on which Israel presently squats was stolen from its prior inhabitants, from whom they are stealing still more land while maintaining a 40 year long illegal Occupation over essentially defenceless Palestinians. Since when do robbers have a right of self-defence over and above those from whom they steal and continue to steal? Another 73,000 dwellings are planned on Palestinian land outside Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank as well as more within Jerusalem itself which Clinton fails to mention. How blasé are the Americans about Israeli land theft these days. As with the ineffectual Rice, Clinton reveals she has no empathy, let alone sympathy, for the dispossessed, so enamoured is she with the confected ‘a priori’ rights of the aggressor.
Israel has had myriad opportunities to remove its illegal occupation, to accept borders which have been defined for it and to allow Palestinians their state. Yet the Zionist project has procrastinated and dissembled at each juncture, flaunting numerous UN Security Council resolutions, sabotaging peace talks and committing inflammatory assassinations. Israel ensures more delays to ceding of stolen territory, leaving potential for future concatenation with previous land thefts.
Under press questioning about the blockade on Gaza, Clinton unreservedly applauds the perspectives of Israel’s leaders. She shows no recognition whatsoever of the screaming, appalling need to rebuild basic infrastructure in Gaza like clean water – in letting Israel off the hook for this and its concurrent, incendiary land thieving activities elsewhere, Clinton happily makes herself an accomplice to ongoing collective crimes against Palestinians. In weasel words – again in time-honoured US tradition, Israel is depicted as the helpless victim despite its ongoing bombings, border incursions, killings and land theft in Palestine, and never the aggressor. Israel insists it must be recognised as responding ‘as any other country would’, righteously punishing and demonising its caged civilian neighbours, some of whom who have the outrageous gall to object to their 61 year long marginalised existence, humiliations, deprivations and ejection from their own land with violent resistance.
I think that clearly the humanitarian needs in Gaza are ones that we all are attempting to alleviate. In our discussions, the foreign minister pointed out that consistent with security, they are trying to do what they can to facilitate the transit of humanitarian goods.
It doesn’t help to have the rockets start up again. That is the double reality that we’re facing here. We have a humanitarian challenge in Gaza with a lot of innocent Palestinians in need of the help that could be provided, and Hamas decides to continue to rain rockets down on Israel.
Yesterday, in my remarks and the remarks that I made afterwards at the press event, I pointed out that it’s very difficult to solve this dilemma when Israel is still under physical attack. I certainly would appeal to the rocket launchers and their patrons to enter into a durable ceasefire and permit the humanitarian aid to flow.
At the same time, we know that the smuggling continues. We know there are certainly lots of items getting into Gaza, and there has to be a real concerted effort to try to cut off the smuggling of weapons, including rockets and other offensive weapons.
But I know that the Government of Israel and certainly the foreign minister share our concern about the humanitarian needs and are looking for a way to facilitate even greater delivery of necessary goods.
Livni hops up to the pitch with her complementary prevaricative blither:
I would like to add clearly that the crossings are open for humanitarian needs. The crossings are not closed for humanitarian needs. Israel is not trying to punish the population in Gaza Strip. We are acting against Hamas, since this is a terrorist organization, who, in a way, abuse the fact that it controls the civil population in order to target Israel, and in order to get legitimacy from the international community.
And much more of the same rubbishy rhetoric predictably demonising the democratically elected Hamas government.
It is worth noting that Israel’s concept of humanitarian aid is a fraction of that which the UN and other agencies say is required by the people of Gaza.
Officially, Israel insists all the aid that Gaza needs is being allowed in. The cabinet minister responsible, Isaac Herzog, recently said about 100 trucks a day is about as much as can be absorbed by the Palestinians on a daily basis.
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That statement is sounding increasingly ludicrous, given what every aid agency and the UN has made clear about the desperate situation in Gaza. The UN says 500 trucks is the minimum required.
In her statement, Hillary quotes commitments she made at the Egypt Conference.
That is the message that I brought to the Gaza donors conference, along with a pledge that the United States will be vigorously engaged in the pursuit of a two-state solution every step of the way. Our Special Envoy Senator Mitchell is here with me today. He will be back soon, once there is a government formed. The road ahead, we acknowledge, is a difficult one but there is no time to waste.
Then under questioning, she waltzes backward, pointing ever so gently to US support for a two state solution. Her production is mealy-mouthed, allowing Israel much the same criminal latitude it has enjoyed from its craven host for decades.
It is our assessment, as I expressed yesterday and again today, that eventually the inevitability of working toward a two-state solution seems inescapable. That doesn’t mean that we don’t respect the opinions of others who see it differently. But from my perspective, and from the perspective of the Obama Administration, time is of the essence on a number of issues, not only on the Iranian threat. We happen to believe that moving toward the two-state solution, step by step, is in Israel’s best interest. But obviously, it’s up to the people and the government of Israel to decide how to define your interests.
No mention of Israel’s new settlement plans whatsoever. No stick, no carrot. Just accommodation to Nutanyahoo, who doesn’t want a two state solution at all, but rather a de facto continuation of the three existing bantustans, with the West Bank and Jerusalem ever-dwindling in size from the predations of armed land-thieving ‘settlers‘.
As for the terrible two’s transparent discussions on Iran, one gets the distinct feeling the cynics are correct – that Israel has the US firmly by the throat and will gain whatever it wants from the US to prevent Iran developing as a regional power – yet there are those within the US who still believe the US can project its power in the region through its voracious Israeli proxy. The spectre of Iran seeking nukes is a pathetic smokescreen.
From Clinton:
The foreign minister and I also discussed Iran. We share Israel’s concerns about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its continued financing of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. As we conduct our policy review and consider areas where we might be able to productively engage with Iran, we will stay in very close consultation with our friends here in Israel, with the neighbors of Iran in the region and beyond with those countries that understand what a threat Iran poses today, and what a greater threat it would pose were it ever to be successful in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Livni prances forward in response, not forgetting to throw in the lame canard about Iran actively seeking nuclear weapons, first punctuating with a fond kiss the US’s reprehensible decision to boycott April’s UN World Conference Against Racism in Geneva.
And Israel, I would say, proud to be or to represent these values here in the Middle East. According to these values and the need to fight anti-Semitism, I would like to express not only the government appreciates them, but the people of Israel’s appreciation to the standing that you took against the participation in Durban. This demonstrates the values of the United States of America. It was a symbolic decision, and I hope to see more states who are going to follow this decision. And I would like to thank you personally for this.
According to these values, there is an understanding between Israel and the United States of America that the division in the region is between extremists and moderates, and there’s a need to act according to a dual strategy. On one hand, to confront terror, to act against extremism that is being represented here in the region by Iran, who poses these threats trying to pursue a weapon – a nuclear weapon and expresses its extreme ideology, which is not connected in any way to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
What is this ‘understanding’? and what of this preposterous parading of black and white thinking redolent of the vacuous Bush years of foreign policy and strategic errors, now with added ‘red lines’ for decoration, surrounding the gigantic lies about yet another nation which Israel insists is its next greatest threat? With moderates like Israel, one need look no further for extremism.
The US, Canada, France and Israel have stuck their noses in the air and are planning to boycott the UN World Conference Against Racism to be held in Geneva on the 24th April.
Reportedly, the American delegation in attendance at the conference’s preparatory talks concluded that “the anti-Israel and anti-Western tendencies were too deeply entrenched to excise.
Cynthia McKinney, Presidential candidate for the Greens in the last US elections, attended the last conference in Durban which she saw as a triumph and landmark for marginalised people.
In order to prevail in Durban, I had to go toe to toe with the Anti-Defamation League and Members of Congress Tom Lantos and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who, among many other Members of Congress, vociferously denounced Durban. This was something that I did because I felt it was the right thing to do. Given Israel’s recent actions in Gaza that have brought upon it the world’s opprobrium, I can imagine that this is the last point in time that Israel might want to revisit Durban. Israel has said that it will not attend the Conference in Geneva.
To Obama on his shunning of the forthcoming Geneva sessions she says:
This morning, I sent the following message to the White House:
‘Mr. President, it was with great disappointment that I read of your decision to pull out of Durban II. Even the Bush Administration, under pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus, provided some funding for the United Nations effort and sent staff to support the Congressional delegation that attended the Conference. I was there. I was head of the Congressional Black Caucus Task Force that negotiated Congressional and Administration engagement on this issue. There is still time for the U.S. to participate. Your decision is not irrevocable. I would encourage you to please reconsider this decision and not only attend the Conference, but also provide funding to ensure its success.”
I implore the Members of the Congressional Black Caucus to spearhead the participation of the United States in the United Nation’s World Conference Against Racism: to boldly go where we have gone before. Dr. King reminded us that “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” On this issue, President Obama has shown us his measure. I hope that the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus and the Democratic Caucus can show us, oh, so much more.
Will Australia choose to attend or bow to the Zionist Lobby? As Antoun Issa aptly illustrates, an Australian presence is vital. Australia is a nation which has said sorry to our indigenous people – along with our anti-discrimination legislation, it’s a start, and a positive example of a country addressing its historical crimes against humanity.
Israel’s bid to equate criticism of its policies to anti-Semitism is merely an attempt to deflect attention from its handling of the Palestinian question. No country likes to admit that its policies have traces of racism or they are committing fault. It took Australia seven decades to abolish the White Australia Policy, and it took years for us to even acknowledge that stealing Indigenous children from their parents was wrong.
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Contrary to Dan Gillerman’s idea that strong democratic nations like Australia should steer clear of the anti-racism conference in Geneva, countries like Australia and Israel both have a lot to gain from attending a forum dedicated to addressing the persistent issue of racism across the world. Within such a forum, and after it, Australia can make a valuable contribution by helping Israel to move away from policies that inevitably cause racial hate, violence and failure. As a friend to Israel, Canberra must make it clear that the country’s pursuit of the racist path will not result in a peaceful solution for either side.
Attending Durban II will send Israel the message it needs to hear from its closest friends in the world: Tel Aviv must abandon its racist approach to the Palestinian conflict. And we, with recent experience in taking a pivotal step in racial reconciliation, are in a good position to help Israel accept its own indigenous population.
1. To review progress and implementation by all stakeholders of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Through an inclusive, transparent and collaborative process the Review Conference will assess contemporary manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, while identifying concrete counter measures to eliminate these manifestations of intolerance.
2. To assess the existing Durban follow-up mechanisms and their effectiveness, as well as other relevant United Nations mechanisms dealing with the issue of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
3. To promote the universal ratification and implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and proper consideration of the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination;
4. To identify and share good practices in the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Until past wrongs are acknowledged and responsibility taken for better, more just future strategies, as with South African apartheid, boycotts, divestment and sanctions are appropriate responses – and these are proving effective.
“… dignity will not come without first an acknowledgment of the truth: with truth we can have justice; and with justice we can have peace; and it is only with peace that we can truly have dignity.”
Israel, which