Israeli human rights organisation, Gisha, was recently able to access Israel’s 2008 ‘Red Lines’ document annotating its plans to maintain the captive population of Gaza on a starvation diet. Yet Israel did not keep to this plan. Despite this diabolical ‘starvation’ diet calculated malevolently as collective punishment, Israel only let in half the trucks required for it. What is half of starvation?
‘But a rather different picture emerges as one reads the small print. While the health ministry determined that Gazans needed daily an average of 2,279 calories each to avoid malnutrition – requiring 170 trucks a day – military officials then found a host of pretexts to whittle down the trucks to a fraction of the original figure.
The reality was that, in this period, an average of only 67 trucks – much less than half of the minimum requirement – entered Gaza daily. This compared to more than 400 trucks before the blockade began.
To achieve this large reduction, officials deducted trucks based both on an over-generous assessment of how much food could be grown locally and on differences in the ”culture and experience” of food consumption in Gaza, a rationale never explained.’
‘We could argue over who killed it, but what’s the point? It’s increasingly obvious that a continued insistence on zombie peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians is deluded, because the two-state principle framing them is dead. ‘
The Cameri Theatre group serves as an “official propaganda tool for the State of Israel — a State that occupies Palestinian lands and practises apartheid policies on the Palestinian people.’’’
The nefarious actions of the Israeli government against BGU make a mockery of any claims that academic boycott against Israel’s complicit academic institutions are unwarranted.
The struggle for Palestinian rights is incompatible with any form of racism or bigotry: a statement by Palestinians
We the undersigned, as Palestinians living in historic Palestine and the diaspora, in the spirit of past statements, and in light of recent controversies, write to reaffirm a key principle of our movement for freedom, justice, and equality: The struggle for our inalienable rights is one opposed to all forms of racism and bigotry, including, but not limited to, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Zionism, and other forms of bigotry directed at anyone, and in particular people of color and indigenous peoples everywhere.
We oppose the cynical and baseless use of the term anti-Semitism as a tool for stifling criticism of Israel or opposition to Zionism, as this assumes simply because someone is Jewish, they support Zionism or the colonial and apartheid policies of the state of Israel – a false generalization.
Our struggle is anchored in universal human rights and international law in opposition to military occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid, something people of conscience of all ethnicities, races, and religions can support.
Finally, we call on people around the world to join us in a morally consistent stance that opposes racism and bigotry in all forms. An ethical struggle for justice and equal rights in any context entails zero tolerance for racial discrimination and racism anywhere.
Two young Palestinian Israeli citizens who came second in an international Physics Competition in Warsaw are omitted conspicuously in a racist report on the winners in Israel Hayom. It is notable that of all the Israeli winners, only ONE won a prize in the 24th European Union Contest for Young Scientists, and it was the Palestinian Israeli, Alfarook Abu Alhassan, who won the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility GmbH Prize.
*Even when you excel and you are an Arab, you remain invisible.
* Israel came first in an international physics competition, and it is trying to reach the same benchmark in racism.
First published: 1/10/2012 11:30:27am
On 20 September 2012 Israel Hayom published an article under the headline Quantum of success. It highlighted the success of the Israeli delegation from Ilan Ramon Centre at Ben-Gurion University in a competition held at the Institute of Physics in Warsaw.
The article contained the names of the winners, but not all of them…
It mentioned the first prize winner (Yuval Katznelson) and one of third prize winners (May Alon). The article quotes Professor Victor Malamud, head of the Ilan Ramon Centre at BGU, which coordinates efforts for the competition as saying that “We succeeded in showing the world the potential of the Jewish mind.”
On the surface, a cause for Jewish pride, indeed..
But what about the second place getter in the competition? The two second place winners, Magd Alfrawona and Alfarook Abu Alhassan were not mentioned at all. Probably because they don’t have a Jewish mind, or because they are Arabs …
What is the message that such articles give to the general public? What is the message that head of the program is providing to the students?
The conclusion is inescapable, instead of being proud of all those who represented the country and impel them further forward, there is a very clear delineation between the Arab and Jewish participants. This is not all that far from our reality which is full of physical and virtual fences marking the separation between the two peoples.
This statement is racist for several reasons: it ignores some of the delegation’s winners, solely because cultural/social/national differences. This statement tries to establish the superiority of some participants over others on the sole basis of their national affiliation. In addition to all this, the article tries to obliterate the Arab presence in the delegation, and their success. This is despite the writers being aware of a different picture being presented on the university’s English-language website (there the two Arab winners are mentioned, and they also appear in the team photo published in the newspaper).
It is a pity that a lecturer in such a distinguished university professor chose to speak in such a racist fashion as he died. We hope he’ll get his comeuppance when the university launches an inquiry and takes disciplinary proceedings against him, and those responsible for this letdown.
This article proves once again that academia is not free of racism …
Roger Waters: ‘Bertrand Russell believed that there was a logical connection between the rule of law and a natural law of human kindness.’
‘The Russell Tribunal is about shedding a light about what is going on in the Occupied Territories in order that we can lend weight to the argument that the Palestinian people should be treated with respect.’
After the Russell Tribunal sessions in Barcelona, focusing on EU complicity, London on Corporate Complicity, and Cape Town, on the crime of Apartheid, the New York Tribunal will examine UN and US responsibility in the denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination.
As the US is currently blackmailing the EU in the UN to prevent Palestinians obtaining a higher ‘non-member’ status in the UN, the Russell Tribunal hearings in New York have contemporary relevance. Neither the US nor Israel wish for Palestinian statehood – the US stymies Palestinians at every turn enabling Israel to pretend to be pursuing two states even as it makes this outcome impossible through its ongoing rapacious, criminal land and resource theft. The status quo of ongoing Israeli appropriation of Palestinian land and resources is the preferred option of both the exploitative neoliberal empire and its racist crony which poses duplicitously as an oxymoronic ‘Jewish democracy’ surrounded by hostile hordes.
Marty acknowledged that the situation in the occupied territories had gro
wn unfavorable following unilateral Israeli moves.
“There is an unbalanced situation and Israel should bear responsibility for the failure of peace negotiations,” Marty said on the sidelines of the 67th UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
The foreign minister was commenting on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s pessimistic assessment of the peace process. “The door may be closing, for good, on a two-state solution,” Ban said in his speech to the assembly.’
Israeli harpists are also being asked to boycott the contest.
Many other harp competitions exist. We believe it is not considered an ho
nor to participate or to place in the Israeli contest. It is an indication that the harpist ignored the call to boycott, and chose to stand instead on the side of the oppressor. The level of the music may be sublime, and that is all the more reason not to validate Israel’s cruel apartheid government by participating. Such beautiful music should be used to promote justice, not to enable and legitimize occupation and segregation.
Lessons from South Africa : ‘One of the most diabolical aspects of racist repression was the regime’s ability to outsource that repression to puppet regimes like those of Matanzima, Oupa Gqozo and other “homeland leaders”.’ This is a terrific article covering sexism, racism and the ongoing role of capitalism/neoliberalism.
‘In his presentation at this weekend’s conference, Miko Peled, the Israeli-born anti-Zionist and advocate of equal rights and decolonization in a single state, made the observation that every cause of social justice in history that has been worth fighting for was divisive in its time
where De Beers put on display a Forevermark Steinmetz diamond in honor of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The Steinmetz Foundation funded and supported the war criminals of the Givati Brigade
, responsible for the massacre of the Samouni family in Gaza during the Israeli assault in the winter of 2008/2009.
The trade in Israeli blood diamonds goes on unseen and unnoticed on the high streets of every city. Jewellers must be asked to end the trade in Israeli diamonds which are funding the proliferation of nuclear arms and war crimes in the Middle East.
