There was a time when the Zionist regime and its army took public relations seriously; but that time is long gone. With the US and UK governments prepared to support Israel all the way, while maintaining the charade of 'peace negotiations', the Zionists even shoot journalists as they are talking to camera. They know there will be no repercussions. Our governments cannot be accused of being merely supine; in the short term they will enjoy huge profits from the occupation and the arms industry's advances in killing technology, based on its experiments in Gaza and the West Bank, and the long term advantage of having a Palestine completely emptied of Palestinians but umbilically linked to Washington and Downing Street, as an empire base in the Middle East, are incalculable.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Islam: A potted history of civilization
Hasina Khan, a friend of mine here in Bristol, has published this short history of civilization and its roots in the 'East', just in time for the end of Ramadan. Well worth a look for its summing-up of a very long and complex saga. Another poke in the eye for the white supremacists is the invasion of Greece by King Akhenaten, an African (and father-in-law of Tutankhamun) who introduced the concept of the City to Europe.
Monday, 21 September 2009
I Am Israel
A six-and-a-half minute documentary about Palestine's slow engorgement by the guns and concrete of Zionism, told dispassionately. All the more horrifying for its quiet telling.
Monday, 7 September 2009
Broon: I wanna be your dog
25th August:
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday afternoon with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Netanyahu had to be ushered into Downing Street via the back door, as the front entrance was the scene of a pro-Palestine rally.
The rally, attended by hundreds of people, began about 30 minutes before Netanyahu's arrival at Number 10, causing both the cops and Israeli ‘security officers’ present some concern.
Brown met Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor at the door, and all three were rushed in by their respective 'security' goons.
At some point, several demonstrators tried breaching the barrier, but were stopped by the police. Demonstrators shouted slogans including "Free Palestine", “We are all Palestinians” and "Netanyahu's a war criminal," and carried signs reading "Judea and Samaria are Palestinian territory," "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine," and "Let the Palestinians live."
“We shouted our rage into Downing Street for as long as we were able, but shaming a visiting war criminal is not to be tolerated by our democratic leaders.
So overwhelming numbers of police were drafted in, belts bedecked with tasers, and they finally succeeded in bulldozing the whole protest onto the distant side of the very wide Whitehall road, for the greater comfort of their war criminal guest.
Truth and morals bulldozed out of sight, not unlike the bulldozing tactics used in Israel against Palestinian homes, except that for the Palestinians it is fatal, and final.
And they used the Serious Organised Crime Police Act as a pretext for pushing the protestors away from their war criminal friend – serious organised crime, how very ironic.” - 'Bristolian'
The two held a joint press conference after their meeting, in which Brown said the UK was and is a loyal friend to Israel and that it supports the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’.
Nevertheless, Brown stressed that that the demand to halt 'settlement' construction will not be retracted, as the 'settlements' are what impedes the [unworkable] two-state solution.
Jerusalem, responded Netanyahu, "Is not a settlement. It is the sovereign capital of the State of Israel. We have been building in Jerusalem for 3,000 years."
Brown added that he supported Netanyahu's ‘plan’ to assist in the “rehabilitation of the Palestinian economy “and called on the international community to support a “financial peace”.
The use of phrases such as these must be no more than old-fashioned cant.
Turning their attention to the so-called Iranian 'threat', Brown said that as far as the UK is concerned, such a threat "has no place in a civilized world." London, he added, shares Jerusalem's concern regarding Tehran's nuclear development programme and urged Israel to accept US President Barack Obama's offer to launch a dialogue on the matter.
Netanyahu (of course) agreed, saying that "London, like other European capitals, must speak against the Iranian nuclear programme."
Netanyahu was expected to meet US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Wednesday, probably to ask the US administration to pressure Saudi Arabia into making several goodwill gestures towards Israel, before agreeing to the American demand to halt 'settlement' construction.
While Netanyahu believes that some progress was made by his emissaries to Washington last week, added the source, he also believes that no significant breakthrough which warrants such a categorical demand was achieved. Speaking to reporters, he criticized the Palestinian Authority "for doing nothing but set preconditions for peace and hardening their stance during the Fatah Congress."
Netanyahu did not comment on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's statements regarding the establishing of a Palestinian state within two years.
Following reports of a possible peace summit with Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September, Netanyahu stressed that nothing has been finalized as yet, adding that Jerusalem was appreciative of Washington's efforts to achieve ‘normalization’ overtures from the Arab world towards Israel.
As for Syria, Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the Israeli-Syrian peace process has stalled because of Damascus' support of Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah, adding that "Syria's actions do not indicate that it wants peace. It has taken no steps to curb the terror (sic) organizations."
The prime minister also said that he spoke to Brown about the legal threat posed to IDF officers in British courts: "I told him that it simply did not coincide with common sense. We're fighting the same terrorists and we're exercising our right to self defence. No one accuses the British Army of anything and no one should accuse the IDF or its officers," he said.
According to Netanyahu, Brown said he would look into a legislative change in the matter; in other words, this means finding a way of putting the regime's lackeys above the law. The British premier, never one to pose as a Man of The People despite his buffoonery on YouTube (http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/gordon-brown-joins-u-tube-generation.html), also voiced his objections to the academic and consumer bans against Israel in the UK. In short, Gordon Brown managed a convincing imitation of a poodle.
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday afternoon with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Netanyahu had to be ushered into Downing Street via the back door, as the front entrance was the scene of a pro-Palestine rally.
The rally, attended by hundreds of people, began about 30 minutes before Netanyahu's arrival at Number 10, causing both the cops and Israeli ‘security officers’ present some concern.
Brown met Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor at the door, and all three were rushed in by their respective 'security' goons.
At some point, several demonstrators tried breaching the barrier, but were stopped by the police. Demonstrators shouted slogans including "Free Palestine", “We are all Palestinians” and "Netanyahu's a war criminal," and carried signs reading "Judea and Samaria are Palestinian territory," "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine," and "Let the Palestinians live."
“We shouted our rage into Downing Street for as long as we were able, but shaming a visiting war criminal is not to be tolerated by our democratic leaders.
So overwhelming numbers of police were drafted in, belts bedecked with tasers, and they finally succeeded in bulldozing the whole protest onto the distant side of the very wide Whitehall road, for the greater comfort of their war criminal guest.
Truth and morals bulldozed out of sight, not unlike the bulldozing tactics used in Israel against Palestinian homes, except that for the Palestinians it is fatal, and final.
And they used the Serious Organised Crime Police Act as a pretext for pushing the protestors away from their war criminal friend – serious organised crime, how very ironic.” - 'Bristolian'
The two held a joint press conference after their meeting, in which Brown said the UK was and is a loyal friend to Israel and that it supports the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’.
Nevertheless, Brown stressed that that the demand to halt 'settlement' construction will not be retracted, as the 'settlements' are what impedes the [unworkable] two-state solution.
Jerusalem, responded Netanyahu, "Is not a settlement. It is the sovereign capital of the State of Israel. We have been building in Jerusalem for 3,000 years."
Brown added that he supported Netanyahu's ‘plan’ to assist in the “rehabilitation of the Palestinian economy “and called on the international community to support a “financial peace”.
The use of phrases such as these must be no more than old-fashioned cant.
Turning their attention to the so-called Iranian 'threat', Brown said that as far as the UK is concerned, such a threat "has no place in a civilized world." London, he added, shares Jerusalem's concern regarding Tehran's nuclear development programme and urged Israel to accept US President Barack Obama's offer to launch a dialogue on the matter.
Netanyahu (of course) agreed, saying that "London, like other European capitals, must speak against the Iranian nuclear programme."
Netanyahu was expected to meet US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Wednesday, probably to ask the US administration to pressure Saudi Arabia into making several goodwill gestures towards Israel, before agreeing to the American demand to halt 'settlement' construction.
While Netanyahu believes that some progress was made by his emissaries to Washington last week, added the source, he also believes that no significant breakthrough which warrants such a categorical demand was achieved. Speaking to reporters, he criticized the Palestinian Authority "for doing nothing but set preconditions for peace and hardening their stance during the Fatah Congress."
Netanyahu did not comment on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's statements regarding the establishing of a Palestinian state within two years.
Following reports of a possible peace summit with Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September, Netanyahu stressed that nothing has been finalized as yet, adding that Jerusalem was appreciative of Washington's efforts to achieve ‘normalization’ overtures from the Arab world towards Israel.
As for Syria, Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the Israeli-Syrian peace process has stalled because of Damascus' support of Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah, adding that "Syria's actions do not indicate that it wants peace. It has taken no steps to curb the terror (sic) organizations."
The prime minister also said that he spoke to Brown about the legal threat posed to IDF officers in British courts: "I told him that it simply did not coincide with common sense. We're fighting the same terrorists and we're exercising our right to self defence. No one accuses the British Army of anything and no one should accuse the IDF or its officers," he said.
According to Netanyahu, Brown said he would look into a legislative change in the matter; in other words, this means finding a way of putting the regime's lackeys above the law. The British premier, never one to pose as a Man of The People despite his buffoonery on YouTube (http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/gordon-brown-joins-u-tube-generation.html), also voiced his objections to the academic and consumer bans against Israel in the UK. In short, Gordon Brown managed a convincing imitation of a poodle.
Update 2 October 2009: Protest as war criminal Ehud Barak is welcomed to Labour's party conference. Film at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2R86Z7wM40
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Israel sells off refugees' hopes
Jonathan Cook August 14. 2009
TZIPORI, ISRAEL // Amin Muhammad Ali, a 74-year-old refugee from a destroyed Palestinian village in northern Israel, says he only feels truly at peace when he stands among his ancestors’ graves.
The cemetery, surrounded on all sides by Jewish homes and farms, is a small time capsule, transporting Mr Muhammad Ali – known to everyone as Abu Arab – back to the days when this place was known by an Arabic name, Saffuriya, rather than its current Hebrew name, Tzipori.
Unlike most of the Palestinian refugees forced outside Israel’s borders by the 1948 war that led to the creation of the Jewish state, Abu Arab and his family fled nearby, to a neighbourhood of Nazareth.
Refused the right to return to his childhood home, which was razed along with the rest of Saffuriya, he watched as the fields once owned by his parents were slowly taken over by Jewish immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe. Today only Saffuriya’s cemetery remains untouched.
Despite the loss of their village, the 4,500 refugees from Saffuriya and their descendants have clung to one hope: that the Jewish newcomers could not buy their land, only lease it temporarily from the state.
According to international law, Israel holds the property of more than four million Palestinian refugees in custodianship, until a final peace deal determines whether some or all of them will be allowed back to their 400-plus destroyed Palestinian villages or are compensated for their loss.
But last week, in a violation of international law and the refugees’ property rights that went unnoticed both inside Israel and abroad, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, forced through a revolutionary land reform.
The new law begins a process of creeping privatisation of much of Israel’s developed land, including refugee property, said Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva.
Mr Netanyahu and the bill's supporters argue that the law will cut out a whole level of state bureaucracy, make land transactions simpler and more efficient and cut house prices.
In practice, it will mean that the 200 Jewish families of Tzipori will be able to buy their homes, including a new cluster of bungalows that is being completed on land next to the cemetery that belonged to Abu Arab’s parents.
The privatisation of Tzipori’s refugee land will remove it from the control of an official known as the Custodian of Absentee Property, who is supposed to safeguard it for the refugees.
“Now the refugees will no longer have a single address – Israel – for our claims,” said Abu Arab. “We will have to make our case individually against many hundreds of thousands of private homeowners.”
He added: “Israel is like a thief who wants to hide his loot. Instead of putting the stolen goods in one box, he moves it to 700 different boxes so it cannot be found.”
Mr Netanyahu was given a rough ride by Israeli legislators over the reform, though concern about the refugees’ rights was not among the reasons for their protests.
Last month, he had to pull the bill at the last minute as its defeat threatened to bring down the government. He forced it through on a second attempt last week but only after he had warned his coalition partners that they would be dismissed if they voted against it.
A broad coalition of opposition had formed to what was seen as a reversal of a central tenet of Zionism: that the territory Israel acquired in 1948 exists for the benefit not of Israelis but of Jews around the world.
In that spirit, Israel’s founders nationalised not only the refugees’ property but also vast swathes of land they confiscated from the remaining Palestinian minority who gained citizenship and now comprise a fifth of the population. By the 1970s, 93 per cent of Israel’s territory was in the hands of the state.
The disquiet provoked by Mr Netanyahu’s privatisation came from a variety of sources: the religious right believes the law contravenes a Biblical injunction not to sell land promised by God; environmentalists are concerned that developers will tear apart the Israeli countryside; and Zionists publicly fear that oil-rich sheikhs from the Gulf will buy up the country.
Arguments from the Palestinian minority’s leaders against the reform, meanwhile, were ignored – until Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, added his voice at the weekend. In a statement, he warned that the law “validates and perpetuates the crime of land and property theft from the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Nakba”.
Suhad Bishara, a lawyer from the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian minority, said the law had been carefully drafted to ensure that foreigners, including wealthy sheikhs, cannot buy land inside Israel.
“Only Israeli citizens and anyone who can come to Israel under the Law of Return – that is, any Jew – can buy the lands on offer, so no ‘foreigner’ will be eligible.”
Another provision in the law means that even internal refugees like Abu Arab, who has Israeli citizenship, will be prevented from buying back land that rightfully belongs to them, Ms Bishara said.
“As is the case now in terms of leasing land,” she explained, “admissibility to buy land in rural communities like Tzipori will be determined by a selection committee whose job it will be to frustrate applications from Arab citizens.”
Supporters of the law have still had to allay the Jewish opposition’s concerns. Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that only a tiny proportion of Israeli territory – about four per cent – is up for privatisation.
But, according to Mr Yiftachel, who lobbied against the reform, that means about half of Israel’s developed land will be available for purchase over the next few years. And he suspects privatisation will not stop there.
“Once this red line has been crossed, there is nothing to stop the government passing another law next year approving the privatisation of the rest of the developed areas,” he said.
Ms Bishara said among the first refugee properties that would be put on the market were those in Israel’s cities, such as Jaffa, Acre, Tiberias, Haifa and Lod, followed by homes in many of the destroyed villages like Saffuriya.
She said Adalah was already preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of the refugees, and if unsuccessful would then take the matter to international courts.
Adalah has received inquiries from hundreds of Palestinian refugees from around the world asking what they can do to stop Israel selling their properties.
“Many of them expressed an interest in suing Israel,” she said.
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0413.htm#Top
TZIPORI, ISRAEL // Amin Muhammad Ali, a 74-year-old refugee from a destroyed Palestinian village in northern Israel, says he only feels truly at peace when he stands among his ancestors’ graves.
The cemetery, surrounded on all sides by Jewish homes and farms, is a small time capsule, transporting Mr Muhammad Ali – known to everyone as Abu Arab – back to the days when this place was known by an Arabic name, Saffuriya, rather than its current Hebrew name, Tzipori.
Unlike most of the Palestinian refugees forced outside Israel’s borders by the 1948 war that led to the creation of the Jewish state, Abu Arab and his family fled nearby, to a neighbourhood of Nazareth.
Refused the right to return to his childhood home, which was razed along with the rest of Saffuriya, he watched as the fields once owned by his parents were slowly taken over by Jewish immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe. Today only Saffuriya’s cemetery remains untouched.
Despite the loss of their village, the 4,500 refugees from Saffuriya and their descendants have clung to one hope: that the Jewish newcomers could not buy their land, only lease it temporarily from the state.
According to international law, Israel holds the property of more than four million Palestinian refugees in custodianship, until a final peace deal determines whether some or all of them will be allowed back to their 400-plus destroyed Palestinian villages or are compensated for their loss.
But last week, in a violation of international law and the refugees’ property rights that went unnoticed both inside Israel and abroad, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, forced through a revolutionary land reform.
The new law begins a process of creeping privatisation of much of Israel’s developed land, including refugee property, said Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva.
Mr Netanyahu and the bill's supporters argue that the law will cut out a whole level of state bureaucracy, make land transactions simpler and more efficient and cut house prices.
In practice, it will mean that the 200 Jewish families of Tzipori will be able to buy their homes, including a new cluster of bungalows that is being completed on land next to the cemetery that belonged to Abu Arab’s parents.
The privatisation of Tzipori’s refugee land will remove it from the control of an official known as the Custodian of Absentee Property, who is supposed to safeguard it for the refugees.
“Now the refugees will no longer have a single address – Israel – for our claims,” said Abu Arab. “We will have to make our case individually against many hundreds of thousands of private homeowners.”
He added: “Israel is like a thief who wants to hide his loot. Instead of putting the stolen goods in one box, he moves it to 700 different boxes so it cannot be found.”
Mr Netanyahu was given a rough ride by Israeli legislators over the reform, though concern about the refugees’ rights was not among the reasons for their protests.
Last month, he had to pull the bill at the last minute as its defeat threatened to bring down the government. He forced it through on a second attempt last week but only after he had warned his coalition partners that they would be dismissed if they voted against it.
A broad coalition of opposition had formed to what was seen as a reversal of a central tenet of Zionism: that the territory Israel acquired in 1948 exists for the benefit not of Israelis but of Jews around the world.
In that spirit, Israel’s founders nationalised not only the refugees’ property but also vast swathes of land they confiscated from the remaining Palestinian minority who gained citizenship and now comprise a fifth of the population. By the 1970s, 93 per cent of Israel’s territory was in the hands of the state.
The disquiet provoked by Mr Netanyahu’s privatisation came from a variety of sources: the religious right believes the law contravenes a Biblical injunction not to sell land promised by God; environmentalists are concerned that developers will tear apart the Israeli countryside; and Zionists publicly fear that oil-rich sheikhs from the Gulf will buy up the country.
Arguments from the Palestinian minority’s leaders against the reform, meanwhile, were ignored – until Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, added his voice at the weekend. In a statement, he warned that the law “validates and perpetuates the crime of land and property theft from the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Nakba”.
Suhad Bishara, a lawyer from the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian minority, said the law had been carefully drafted to ensure that foreigners, including wealthy sheikhs, cannot buy land inside Israel.
“Only Israeli citizens and anyone who can come to Israel under the Law of Return – that is, any Jew – can buy the lands on offer, so no ‘foreigner’ will be eligible.”
Another provision in the law means that even internal refugees like Abu Arab, who has Israeli citizenship, will be prevented from buying back land that rightfully belongs to them, Ms Bishara said.
“As is the case now in terms of leasing land,” she explained, “admissibility to buy land in rural communities like Tzipori will be determined by a selection committee whose job it will be to frustrate applications from Arab citizens.”
Supporters of the law have still had to allay the Jewish opposition’s concerns. Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that only a tiny proportion of Israeli territory – about four per cent – is up for privatisation.
But, according to Mr Yiftachel, who lobbied against the reform, that means about half of Israel’s developed land will be available for purchase over the next few years. And he suspects privatisation will not stop there.
“Once this red line has been crossed, there is nothing to stop the government passing another law next year approving the privatisation of the rest of the developed areas,” he said.
Ms Bishara said among the first refugee properties that would be put on the market were those in Israel’s cities, such as Jaffa, Acre, Tiberias, Haifa and Lod, followed by homes in many of the destroyed villages like Saffuriya.
She said Adalah was already preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of the refugees, and if unsuccessful would then take the matter to international courts.
Adalah has received inquiries from hundreds of Palestinian refugees from around the world asking what they can do to stop Israel selling their properties.
“Many of them expressed an interest in suing Israel,” she said.
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0413.htm#Top
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Hebron: the truth, from an exile in Bristol
Iqbal Tamimi - Abraham bought a cave, he did not buy Palestine
I have been reading an article by Robin-Yassin Kassab, entitled ‘A visit to Hebron’. Yassin Kassab is the author of ‘The Road from Damascus’. This time he was not writing about Damascus, he was writing about my home town Al-Khaleel, known to the Western world by the name of Hebron. In his article he describes his visit to Al-Khaleel accompanied by a number of wonderful writers and publishers, amongst them Michael Palin, Henning Mankel, Deborah Moggach, Claire Messud and MG Vassanji, and he describes the misery of the people in my hometown under the illegal Israeli occupation. Those writers have been able to witness the very painful reality when they travelled to Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature.
As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.
In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.
The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.
He complained that the owners of the city - the Arab Palestinians - have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.
This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.
Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.
I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.
My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats. His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway - to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.
Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.
This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.
Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.
Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.
The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.
I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 - 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.
This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.
For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.
The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgot to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.
Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!
First published at www.palestinianmothers.com and http://palestinianthinktank.com , 12 August 2009
I have been reading an article by Robin-Yassin Kassab, entitled ‘A visit to Hebron’. Yassin Kassab is the author of ‘The Road from Damascus’. This time he was not writing about Damascus, he was writing about my home town Al-Khaleel, known to the Western world by the name of Hebron. In his article he describes his visit to Al-Khaleel accompanied by a number of wonderful writers and publishers, amongst them Michael Palin, Henning Mankel, Deborah Moggach, Claire Messud and MG Vassanji, and he describes the misery of the people in my hometown under the illegal Israeli occupation. Those writers have been able to witness the very painful reality when they travelled to Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature.
As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.
In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.
The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.
He complained that the owners of the city - the Arab Palestinians - have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.
This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.
Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.
I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.
My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats. His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway - to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.
Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.
This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.
Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.
Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.
The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.
I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 - 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.
This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.
For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.
The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgot to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.
Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!
First published at www.palestinianmothers.com and http://palestinianthinktank.com , 12 August 2009
Monday, 10 August 2009
UK Government torture complicity - more weasel words
The Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary claim that Britain does not collude in torture.
On Sunday 8th August 09, David Milliband and Alan Johnson put out a joint newspaper article in which they said they couldn't guarantee that some methods used by other governments did not amount to torture. (Our own use of torture against Irish suspects in the Seventies is perhaps another matter); Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, was able to challenge their laissez faire attitude on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4:
"The important word is complicity. Now this is a word that comes from the Torture Convention. It was very helpfully unpacked for us by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Now it referred to things like 'sending questions to a foreign power, knowing that they'll be put to someone under torture', 'sending intelligence that leads to someone's arrest by a foreign power that engages in torture', 'interviewing a suspect quite possibly between torture sessions by that foreign power' - essentially systematic arrangements to receive material that has been harvested in this way... in yesterday's article the Home Secretary and Home Secretary did that thing that interviewees do, which is answer the question that wasn't put to them. So they say, "We cannot eradicate all risk of receiving information from dubious sources". No one asked them to eradicate that risk. People want to know, Have you been sending questions that are then put to people under torture? Etcetera.
...Now this isn't something that I made up. We've had two, high level parliamentary committees reporting within less than a week and to some extent impugning the government's record in this area. We have a number of ongoing court cases and what the government and indeed the security establishment are sadly facing at the moment and have been for some years, is a slow bleed of poisonous revelations, drip by drip, which can't be good for morale and I don't think allow us move on from the darkest moments of the war on terror."
Kim Howells, Labour Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, House of Commons, responded with his answer to the question: ' Do you believe there is no complicity of that sort?'
"Well, I have to be completely objective about this, and we will look at any evidence that's put before us, and there are court cases pending at the moment, and they go back mainly to a period round 9.11, when there was frantic activity across the world, but I can tell you that we found no evidence that there's been collusion and governments that torture their individuals and - can I add this? Y'know, we can't give a guarantee and no government on earth can give a guarantee that someone who's picked up and held in another country hasn't had their or her human rights abused in some way. No one, not the French, the Swedes, the Spanish, the Germans, it doesn't matter who they are; you cannot guarantee if you haven't held that prisoner that they haven't been deprived of sleep for some hours, that they haven't in some shape or form been frightened or cajoled [blog's emphasis] into giving information. But if we don't have that information from other intelligence agencies, how can you be sure that they aren't jihadists, who are trying to murder citizens on the street, or Irish Republicans who want to blow people to pieces in order to further their cause? You have no way of knowing that."
Mr Howells' naivety is breathtaking. Despite centuries of hard evidence that torture merely forces victims to say anything, absolutely anything, as long as it sounds like the kind of information the tormentors are seeking, just to stop the agony, he continues to profess belief in its efficacy, and in the 'ducking stool' method.
If she floats, she is a witch, and must be burned. If she drowns, that is regrettable. It was an honest mistake. Y'know.
On Sunday 8th August 09, David Milliband and Alan Johnson put out a joint newspaper article in which they said they couldn't guarantee that some methods used by other governments did not amount to torture. (Our own use of torture against Irish suspects in the Seventies is perhaps another matter); Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, was able to challenge their laissez faire attitude on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4:
"The important word is complicity. Now this is a word that comes from the Torture Convention. It was very helpfully unpacked for us by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Now it referred to things like 'sending questions to a foreign power, knowing that they'll be put to someone under torture', 'sending intelligence that leads to someone's arrest by a foreign power that engages in torture', 'interviewing a suspect quite possibly between torture sessions by that foreign power' - essentially systematic arrangements to receive material that has been harvested in this way... in yesterday's article the Home Secretary and Home Secretary did that thing that interviewees do, which is answer the question that wasn't put to them. So they say, "We cannot eradicate all risk of receiving information from dubious sources". No one asked them to eradicate that risk. People want to know, Have you been sending questions that are then put to people under torture? Etcetera.
...Now this isn't something that I made up. We've had two, high level parliamentary committees reporting within less than a week and to some extent impugning the government's record in this area. We have a number of ongoing court cases and what the government and indeed the security establishment are sadly facing at the moment and have been for some years, is a slow bleed of poisonous revelations, drip by drip, which can't be good for morale and I don't think allow us move on from the darkest moments of the war on terror."
Kim Howells, Labour Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, House of Commons, responded with his answer to the question: ' Do you believe there is no complicity of that sort?'
"Well, I have to be completely objective about this, and we will look at any evidence that's put before us, and there are court cases pending at the moment, and they go back mainly to a period round 9.11, when there was frantic activity across the world, but I can tell you that we found no evidence that there's been collusion and governments that torture their individuals and - can I add this? Y'know, we can't give a guarantee and no government on earth can give a guarantee that someone who's picked up and held in another country hasn't had their or her human rights abused in some way. No one, not the French, the Swedes, the Spanish, the Germans, it doesn't matter who they are; you cannot guarantee if you haven't held that prisoner that they haven't been deprived of sleep for some hours, that they haven't in some shape or form been frightened or cajoled [blog's emphasis] into giving information. But if we don't have that information from other intelligence agencies, how can you be sure that they aren't jihadists, who are trying to murder citizens on the street, or Irish Republicans who want to blow people to pieces in order to further their cause? You have no way of knowing that."
Mr Howells' naivety is breathtaking. Despite centuries of hard evidence that torture merely forces victims to say anything, absolutely anything, as long as it sounds like the kind of information the tormentors are seeking, just to stop the agony, he continues to profess belief in its efficacy, and in the 'ducking stool' method.
If she floats, she is a witch, and must be burned. If she drowns, that is regrettable. It was an honest mistake. Y'know.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)