SYDNEY
BRISBANE
MELBOURNE
ADELAIDE
CELBRATIONS IN GAZA Ft DR. MADS GILBERT
Night of Victory – Palestine from Sani Araby Al-Kahery
Related Links
BACKGROUNDER: The UN Partition Plan for Palestine
No rush to join ICC, says Palestinian UN envoy
Israel’s Diabolical Starvation Diet for the People of Gaza
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.’
Palestine/Israel Links
When liars lie to liars. Lieberman to Cashton.
The death of the two state solution:
‘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.’’’
Alice Walker, Roger Waters and Remi Kanazi urge Carnegie Hall in NYC to cancel this week’s performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra; and much more in BDS news.
Released Israeli Activists from SV Estelle say tasers and brutal force used – Greek MP assaulted
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.
Israel’s Criminal Treatment of Palestinian People Is Beyond Appalling
Three pieces today detailing crimes committed by the apartheid Israeli entity bring a sickening lurch to an already nauseated stomach and reaffirm the need for boycott, divestment and sanctions against it.
The first – where Israel is complaining like a torturer unsatisfied with the volume of the victim’s screams, is recorded by Ma’an News agency:
Israel’s military department governing civil affairs in the occupied West Bank regards a UN agency’s assistance to displaced Palestinians as illegal operations, a spokesman said Sunday.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported earlier that the department, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are seeking to “reassess” the role of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the West Bank.
The UN office “are assisting Palestinian communities who have demolitions because they are built in an illegal way. OCHA gives them tents and by that is doing illegal work, without seeking Israeli permission,” COGAT spokesman Guy Inbar told Ma’an.
Humanitarian officials say providing a temporary tent to a displaced family falls under international definitions of emergency humanitarian assistance, rather than a building project that requires a permit.
Israeli authorities insist there is a legal process for Palestinians living in Area C, the 62 percent of the West Bank under full Israel civil and security control since the 1993 Oslo Accords, to build in their communities.
“In the last year (COGAT) approved many international projects, even UN OCHA projects, but not in an illegal way, like what they are doing in the south Hebron hills,” Inbar said, while warning: “International work does not get immunity.”
But the United Nations and humanitarian agencies say in reality it is almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain a building permit, and highlight that Israeli settlers in the same area are able to expand communities that are illegal under international law.
The south Hebron hills is one area of the West Bank facing repeated demolition orders. Israeli forces last month warned that they intend to demolish all 50 buildings in one village in the region, Susiya, after a settler group filed a legal petition calling for its removal.
A diplomatic source told Ma’an: “It is outrageous that (the Israeli) administration which condones illegal settlement construction is here using an argument against construction that helps some of the most disadvantaged communities, who have the right to protection under international law.”
Already in 2012, Israeli authorities have demolished 330 Palestinian buildings in the West Bank, displacing 536 people, half of whom are children, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Richard Falk said in late June.
Meanwhile international law experts say that under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel must provide for the needs of the occupied Palestinian population, and are prohibited from demolishing any structure that has a civilian purpose.
Haaretz reported that COGAT asked the Foreign Ministry to lodge a formal complaint with the UN, and on July 10 Israel’s UN ambassador wrote to the UN humanitarian affairs chief asking for staff lists, past and future activities and a review of the agency’s role.
Israeli authorities are considering limiting visas for foreign OCHA employees and stopping work and travel permits for Palestinian staff members, the newspaper said.
Inbar said COGAT is perturbed that OCHA is over reaching its mandate through its work in Area C, while OCHA says it does not undertake building projects but is mandated to coordinate international agencies’ response to humanitarian emergencies.
The second gut-churning criminal abuse involves Israel’s continuing mistreatment of Palestinian children incarcerated in its dungeons. Unfortunate child prisoners are forced to stand in the sun for three hours and be strip-searched while their rooms are searched:
The administration of the Israeli Hasharon jail has forced Palestinian minors to stand in the sun heat for three hours at the pretext of searching their rooms.
Amjad Siraj, who is representing those minors, told a lawyer for the Palestinian prisoner’s society that the incident took place three days ago and that the rooms were turned upside-down in the savage search by the Israeli Nahshon unit members.
Siraj said that the conditions in the Israeli jails, as far as minors were concerned, did not change, adding that the prison administration only responded to a number of simple requests.
He said that the Nahshon unit members rummaged through the minors’ ward and forced minors to strip search.
Defence for Children International’s recent report details the deleterious extent of Israel’s disgraceful abuses against Palestinian children. In an urgent DCI appeal last week, this prestigious organisation revealed that
Since 2008, DCI-Palestine has documented 53 cases in which children have been held in solitary confinement in facilities located inside Israel, mainly Al Jalame and Petah Tikva interrogation centres, and Hasharon prison. The children report being held in isolation at these facilities for an average of 10 days.
In the third instance of unusual and cruel collective punishment, in which Egypt is also implicated, the people of Gaza are subjected to power cuts – 8 hours on and 8 hours off in blistering summer heat.
Ahmed Abu Amrain, the Director of Information Center of the Energy Authority, said during a press conference yesterday that the Authority and Gaza Electricity Distribution Company are working on scheduling the electricity consumption in order to manage the crisis noting that the electricity will be running for 8 hours then cut off for 8 hours, successively throughout the 24 hours.
He attributed the main reasons behind the deficit to the reduction in the amounts of fuel provided for Gaza and which is resulting from the Israeli arbitrary measures and Egyptian inaction in allowing the fuel donated by Qatar into the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Nutanyahoo brags about another 500 apartheid settler homes to be constructed in the illegal and brazenly named ‘national priority settlements’ in the Occupied West Bank, and La Ashton indicates her complicity with Israel’s criminal treatment of Palestinian prisoners in variance with the EU Parliament position. As Ali Abunimah has highlighted:
Moreover, the circumstances in which she gave her statement suggest Ashton acted in order to ensure that Israel’s human rights abuses would not be discussed by the Foreign Affairs committee of the European Parliament.
These vile, ongoing crimes remind us all, in the absence of action by governments, to support the international boycott of Israel called by Palestinian civil society until Palestinian people receive their full human rights which Israel denies them, including the end of Israel’s Occupation, apartheid and colonialism, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the recognition of right of return of Palestinian refugees.
Related Links
“Break your chains on your own” : Mustafa Barghouti urges Palestinian BDS against apartheid Israeli products in the Occupied West Bank
In New York, TIAA-CREF shareholders will be attending the annual meeting to question new trustees about their stance on profiting from companies whose products are used by the Israeli military in grave and systematic human rights violations. “We are here to remind TIAA-CREF that their investments destroy Palestinian schools, make Palestinian families homeless, and deny Palestinians freedom of movement,” said Allison Brown of Adalah-NY, a We Divest Campaign coalition partner. “These are not investments ‘for the greater good.’
Apartheid illegal settlers indulging in vitiwashing hasbara
Palestine / Israel Links
Would you trust the media spew from these hasbaroids?
Israeli government office burned, vandalized in solidarity with self-immolating protester
The empire is back to using the Egyptians as intermediaries, washing its hands of Obama’s failure to stop the settlements – not that he cared enough to put sufficient pressure onto Israel, in fact rewarded them with increased joint miltech projects.
Egypt’s new president signals there won’t be dramatic changes in Gaza policy
Contrary to what Baskin claims, Palestinian nationalists are talking (and working) with Israelis, if and when the Israelis fulfill the conditions set by the Palestinian national leadership. It is not and should not be a matter of negotiation between the Palestinian national movement and the tiny minority of Israelis supporting their rights. Israeli anti-occupation activists are not the UN, working between the two camps: either Israelis are with the Palestinian national struggle, or they are a kind of cover-up for the Israeli colonial occupation.
Histadrut still represents Israel Railway workers, National Labor Court rules
Samah Sabawi : Boycott Israel on Both Sides of the Green Line
TRANSCRIPT
Leading Liberal Zionists have come out in impressive numbers calling for the boycott of settlements, but I have to warn you there is something to dread; they want you to buy Israeli products instead! They say they want to save Israel from a dangerous extremist threat. Namely, the Israeli gov’t and the BDS! Yes, they have lumped us together as two extreme versions calling for one state. Both? Extreme?
In this absurd reality BDS’s call for equality is apparently as extreme as ethnic cleansing. In what world is this convincing?
In their grand hypocrisy they want us to fortify the Green line that supposedly separates a Jewish state from a future Palestine but without ever supporting Palestinian resistance. Is it then a matter of a state of mind? If we think it, the settlements will go? What tools can we use and where are these liberal Zionists when nonviolent protestors are shot in the face with gas canisters?
They want us to be as delusional as they are. They want us to be docile. They want us
to exonerate Israel of all its past crime or God forbid, we would be accused of clinging to victimhood.They want us to march along side the spin doctors and bleeding hearts ‘The settlers are to blame for the erosion of Israel’s democracy!’, ‘The settlers are to blame!’. ‘The settlers are to blame for the erosion of Israel’s democracy’. ‘The settlers are to blame!’.
For the destruction of a Zionist fantasy!
As if settlers exist in a vacuum. As if settlers have come from some far away planet. landed on a hill in the West Bank and without any help from congress, the Knesset or the senate, they began to build their colonies on our land.
‘The settlers are to blame!’ As if Israel was not built on the ruins of Palestinian villages long before the settlers came to the West Bank. Long before the checkpoints and the wall, long before it all, long before there was an occupation, there was a total devastation, a ruthless destruction of an entire nation.
‘The settlers are to blame!’ But as far back as 1948 villages were erased, Palestinians were massacred, to make way for the establishment of this state.
‘The settlers are to blame!’ But go on and ask this soil you tread whose ancestral flesh
has fed this earth for centuries? Whose blood runs in the sap of the olive trees? Whose stories are written between the cracks of these old stones?‘The settlers are to blame!’ Close your eyes and search your soul. Dig deep. Those nightmares in your sleep are the voices that once filled this Arab home you have occupied with laughter. Look beneath your bed. Did they leave their slippers when they ran barefoot down the street and into exile? Did they leave behind the tea-kettle warm on the kitchen table? Before they wore an eternal label ‘refugees’!
‘The settlers are to blame.’ But who shoots the gas canisters and live bullets at the protestors in the West Bank? Who enables these settlers to steal Palestinian land?
‘The settlers are to blame.’ Who is responsible for the death of thousands in Gaza?
Was it settlers riding on their F16 fighter jets who dropped the phosphorus bombs on schools, houses and mosques? Or was it a state army, your army, wearing a uniform that supposedly represents all of Israel that killed and maimed at will?The best part is when Liberal Zionists like Beinart suggest calling the West Bank ‘undemocratic Israel’. ‘Undemocratic’ as opposed to what? The democratic Israel on the other side of the Green line where Palestinians who survived the Nakba and hold Israeli citizenships have dozens of laws that single them out and discriminate against them?
‘The settlers are to blame!’ But how are the settlers alone responsible for the systematic racism of a state that defines all non-Jews as second-class citizens?
And pray tell, who set the Eritrean migrants’ house on fire in Jerusalem and demanded the deportation of Africans seeking asylum?
If we boycott settlements and buy Israeli goods will the Jews in Israel become more accepting of non-Jews in their neighborhoods?
Let’s put an end to this grand deviation. Settlers wouldn’t exist if not for the support of an ethnocentric nation, dedicated by any means necessary to driving out the indigenous population.
Yes, Boycott the settlements. But don’t stop at the green line because they did not.
Boycott the settlements but also boycott ethnic superiority. Boycott discrimination against Palestinians who are second-class citizens in their own country. Boycott Israel’s academic institutions for their complicity. Boycott Israel’s culture for its duplicity. Boycott Israeli industries. Boycott Israeli institutions for supporting war crimes. Boycott Israel’s apartheid policies on both sides of the green line until all of this changes and we are all free, living together Palestinians and Jews in equality.Boycott Israel and I promise you, this day will come.
Related Links
Omar Barghouti explains why BDS targets ‘trade with companies that profit from the illegal settlement enterprise, as well as other Israeli violations of human rights and international law’
Hit apartheid Israel where it hurts – trade
Campaign Against Israeli Blood Diamonds – Australian Palestinian Solidarity Activists Alert
Please help raise awareness about a very important Kimberley Process meeting to be held in Washington from June 4-7th. You can email, tweet and phone politicians asking that the Australian representative at this meeting calls for a ban on trade in blood diamonds from Israel that fund war crimes, trade which the Kimberley Process should prohibit.
The sentencing of the blood diamond-funded former Liberian President, Charles Taylor, for war crimes and crimes against humanity will take place on 30th May. Together with the Kimberley Process (KP) meeting in Washington shortly after, there’s sure to be a lot more media reports about blood diamonds and so there’s an opportunity to push the issue of Israeli blood diamonds into the media spotlight once again.
Your government will have a seat at the KP table. It is important that you voice your concerns about the trade in diamonds from Israel that fund war crimes and crimes against humanity but which evade the human rights strictures of the Kimberley Process and are sold worldwide labelled as conflict-free. NGOs are seeking to have cut and polished diamonds included in the remit of the KP but the vested interests are resisting any such move which would pose a serious threat to Israel’s burgeoning diamond industry and the entire Israeli economy. Even though the KP refuses to include cut and polished diamonds it’s important to raise the issue and expose the double standards in the Kimberley Process which is designed to protect the rich an powerful beneficiaries of the diamond trade while Palestinians hunger and die under Israel’s diamond-funded hegemony.
Please take a few moments to contact your political representatives and ask them to raise this issue in parliament and with the government.
As the time frame for action is quite narrow it is important to act as soon as possible. You can find contact details for your local MP here – http://australia.gov.au/directories/contact-parliament
Another promising development is the action by solidarity activists in Italy who are planning an Israeli blood diamond demonstration in Vicenza next Monday to coincide with a meeting there of the World Diamond Council that will be attended by all the movers and shakers in the global diamond industry.
For more information about Israeli blood diamonds and the campaign to stop them, visit here.
Below is a draft letter which can be used or adapted and sent to politicians about the issue. Please help the monitoring of the uptake on this action and BCC emails.
Australia must act to end the trade in diamonds from Israel that fund war crimes
The conviction of former Liberian President Charles Taylor by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity has again cast the spotlight on the trade in blood diamonds. It is a timely reminder of the urgent need for reform of the Kimberly Process definition of a “conflict diamond” which presently only applies to rough diamonds that fund rebel movements and not to diamonds that fund government forces guilty of war crimes.
Last year the Kimberley Process allowed the export of blood-tainted diamonds from Zimbabwe where government forces stand accused of serious human rights violations. Human rights organisations wanted the definition of a “conflict diamond” broadened to take account of diamonds that fund rogue governments guilty of human rights violations but the KP failed to act and the diamonds from Zimbabwe were allowed to contaminate the global market. As a result, Global Witness, a founding member of the KP, withdrew last December stating “most consumers still cannot be sure where their diamonds come from, nor whether they are financing armed violence or abusive regimes”. Other human rights organisations have indicated that they will also withdraw from the KP unless meaningful reform of the definition of a “conflict diamond”, accompanied by the inclusion of the cutting and polishing sector, is agreed this year.
Reform of the KP definition of a “conflict diamond” will be the main issue on the agenda at the KP Intersessional Meeting in Washington from June 4th – June 7th. It is important that the Australian representative at that meeting calls for a broadening of the KP definition of a “conflict diamond” to include all diamonds that fund gross human rights violations, including cut and polished diamonds which presently evade the criteria applied to rough diamonds.
Israel, a member of the KP, stands accused by the UN Human Rights Council of serious war crimes and possible crimes against humanity following the 2008/2009 assault on Gaza that left over 1400 people dead including more than 300 children;
The UN Human Rights Council investigation of the Israeli attacks on the humanitarian aid flotilla (including MV Mavi Marmara), bound for Gaza on 31 May 2010 during which nine people were murdered and many others injured, found that there was clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: – Willful killing; Torture or inhuman treatment; Willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.
The investigation also considered that a series of violations of Israel’s obligations under international human rights law have taken place, including: – Right to life (art. 6, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights); Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (art.7, International Covenant; Convention against Torture); Right to liberty and security of the person and freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention (art. 9, International Covenant); Right of detainees to be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person (art. 10, International Covenant); Freedom of expression (art. 19, International Covenant);
Considering that evidence presented to the London session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in November 2010 indicated that the Israeli diamond industry contributes about $1 billion annually to the Israeli military and security industries and that every time somebody buys a diamond that was exported from Israel some of that money ends up in the Israeli military;
Diamonds exported from Israel are therefore helping to fund gross human rights violations in Palestine as well as Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme which it refuses the International Atomic Energy Agency permission to supervise or inspect.
Given these facts, I call on you to ask the government to instruct the Australian representative to the Kimberley Process to call for:
the Kimberley Process definition of a “conflict diamond” to be broadened to include all diamonds that fund gross human rights violations by any group or government;
a ban on the export of diamonds from Israel until such time as it respects the human rights of the Palestinian people under its control and abides by the international human rights law and humanitarian law.
Related Links
David Cronin writes about the diamond trade that links Antwerp and Tel Aviv and how Israeli diamonds evade KP scrutiny.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] Movement