Kibbutz residents attack Bedouin village in the Negev

NEGEV (Ma’an) — Israelis from a Negev kibbutz attacked a Bedouin village on Sunday, setting fire to a tent, a Ma’an reporter said.

Residents from the Kibbutz of Retamim attacked the adjacent Bedouin village of Bir Hadaj and set fire to a tent belonging to Eid Abu Habbak, head of the local village council, Salman Ibin Hamid, told Ma’an.

Abu Habbak filed a complaint with Dimona police department.

“The setters of Retamim are acting like they are in the West Bank,” Ibn Hamid added. “These people have the mentality of the occupying settler to attack every Arab.”

Israeli police said that Bir Hadaj residents hurled stones at residents of Retamim, a claim which Ibn Hamid denied.

On May 6, an Israeli government committee approved a draft bill setting a framework to implement the evacuation of “unrecognized” villages in the Negev, most of which existed before the state of Israel.

(Source / 19.05.2013)

Israeli authorities accompanied by 500 policemen demolish 18 Palestinian houses in the Negev making 40 homeless

 

NAZARETH, (PIC)– The Israeli authorities’ bulldozers accompanied by a large police force and special units demolished on Thursday morning 18 Palestinian houses in the village of Atir in the Negev, in southern 1948-occupied Palestine.

Arab MK Taleb Abu Arar said in remarks to Quds Press that nearly 500 policemen from special units stormed the area to protect the bulldozers while demolishing the houses belonging to the family of Abu al-Ki’an.

The policemen imposed a tight blockade on the houses that were demolished and prevented the residents from entering or approaching them.

Abu Arar warned of the aggravation of the situation and the outbreak of an uprising in the Negev due to the policy of displacement adopted by the Israeli occupation authorities, pointing out that due to the demolition about 40 people, including women and children, have become homeless.

The Israeli bulldozers have also destroyed sheep barns and uprooted about 600 olive trees.

For his part, Sheikh Osama Uqbi official of the Islamic Movement in the Negev described the demolition operations as “crime against humanity”, and stressed on the steadfastness of the residents and their adherence to their land.

(Source / 19.05.2013)

Al Jazeera management orders Joseph Massad article pulled in act of pro-Israel censorship

In an unprecedented act of political censorship Al Jazeera English has deleted an article by noted Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad after coming under intense criticism from Zionists in recent days.

Massad told The Electronic Intifada that he had “received confirmation” from his editor at Al Jazeera English that “management pulled the article.” The Electronic Intifada was able to independently confirm that the article was pulled.

The piece, “The Last of the Semites,” published on 14 May, was taken down from the main Al Jazeera English site this morning – the link now redirects to Al Jazeera’s main page. It has also disappeared from Massad’s personal page on the Al Jazeera website.

The article had been one of the most viewed and emailed articles on the site and had beentweeted hundreds of times.

Intense criticism

Since its publication, the article generated intense criticism from Zionist extremists,including a columnist in the virulently anti-Palestinian Jerusalem Post, and condemnation on Twitter from President Barack Obama’s favorite Israel lobby gatekeeper and former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg:

Jeffrey Goldberg        ✔ @JeffreyGoldberg

Congratulations, al Jazeera: You’ve just posted one of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent memory: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/201351275829430527.html …

3:39 PM – 14 May 2013

The last of the Semites

It is Israel’s claims that it represents and speaks for all Jews that are the most anti-Semitic claims of all.

Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish

John Podhoretz, editor of the neoconservative anti-Palestinian Zionist magazineCommentary tweeted about Massad, “Congratulations, donors to Columbia University, for paying this monstrous fuckhead’s salary!”

The backlash has been so intense precisely because Massad goes to the core of Israel’s claim to represent Jews and to cast its critics as anti-Semites by showing that indeed it is Israel and Zionism that partake of the same anti-Semitism that targeted European Jews.

In doing so, Massad pulls the rug from under Zionists and Israel lobbyists by demonstrating that they are the anti-Semites and taking away the most formidable weapon they wield against critics of Israel: the accusation that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

By neutralizing this ideological weapon that Israel has used so effectively in the Western media to cover up its colonization of Palestine, Massad’s pro-Jewish position and strenuous attack on Zionist anti-Semitism is clearly understood by Israel lobby figures such as Goldberg as a complete obliteration of their ideological arsenal.

Zionism and anti-Semitism: two sides of the same coin

Goldberg’s claim that Massad’s article is an “anti-Jewish screed” could not be further from the truth.

Massad has long argued – convincingly – that Zionism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same coin. It is a theme he develops with great erudition in his 2006 book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question, and one to which he returns in his latest article, “The Last of the Semites,” published on Al Jazeera on 14 May, which opens thus:

Jewish opponents of Zionism understood the movement since its early age as one that shared the precepts of anti-Semitism in its diagnosis of what gentile Europeans called the “Jewish Question.” What galled anti-Zionist Jews the most, however, was that Zionism also shared the “solution” to the Jewish Question that anti-Semites had always advocated, namely the expulsion of Jews from Europe.

Last December, in another piece for Al Jazeera, Massad explained how “Zionist leaders consciously recognized that state anti-Semitism was essential to their colonial project,” in Palestine, a recognition epitomized by the notorious Transfer Agreement Zionist leaders signed with the Nazi government of Germany in 1933.

A theme that Massad develops in his latest piece is that European, and especially Germany’s, support for Israel after 1948, is no break with the anti-Semitic past:

West Germany’s alliance with Zionism and Israel after WWII, of supplying Israel with huge economic aid in the 1950s and of economic and military aid since the early 1960s, including tanks, which it used to kill Palestinians and other Arabs, is a continuation of the alliance that the Nazi government concluded with the Zionists in the 1930s.

The “The Last of the Semites” was based on a lecture Massad gave at a conference in Stuttgart (PDF), Germany, to a largely German audience, just last week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sqtnY3aYuOo

Censorship

Although Qatar-based Al Jazeera receives much criticism, and often deserved for reflecting Qatar’s foreign policy, the censorship of Massad’s article for political reasons is unprecedented because the English-language website had, until now, enjoyed complete editorial independence.

It is well understood that Al Jazeera’s red lines have always been criticism of Qatar or its Emir, and yet, Massad has even published several articles on Al Jazeera English that harshly criticized both Qatari foreign policy (See here, here and here) and the Emir himselfwithout ever being censored.

And Massad has written plenty of articles that have enraged Zionists.

This indicates, without doubt, that the decision to remove Massad’s article today was taken at the highest level.

But why would this happen now?

One reasonable interpretation would be that the removal of Massad’s article reflects a tightening of the editorial line as the network launches its new channel, Al Jazeera America, which will rely – for access to cable systems, and “mainstream” credibility – on forging good relations with US elites.

An illustration of what this process might look like was on display when Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of Al Jazeera’s international operations and the official responsible for setting up Al Jazeera America, recently visited Chicago – which will be home to a major Al Jazeera bureau.

While in the city, Al Shihabi struck up a cozy relationship with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff.

Emanuel, a major powerbroker in America’s ruling Democratic Party, is, of course, also notorious for his hardline pro-Israel positions.

It is unlikely that Al Shihabi would have had anything directly to do with the removal of Massad’s article – that decision would almost certainly have been taken at an even higher level in Doha – but his dalliance with Emanuel is a good indicator of who Al Jazeera is out to impress.

As of now, Massad’s article can still be read in full on Al Jazeera’s mobile site. That’s obviously an oversight by those who ordered its removal.

Here is a PDF image of the censored article.

The Last of the Semites – Joseph Massad – Al Jazeera English

(Source / 19.05.2013)

 

Ashrawi slams EU decision to delay labeling settlement products

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — PLO official Hanan Ashrawi on Sunday condemned the European Union’s decision to delay the labeling of settlement products following a request from US Secretary of State John Kerry.

“This once again brings into question the American role in negotiations as a credible mediator,” Ashrawi said in a statement.

“Rather than providing Israel with immunity, the Obama administration should act responsibly and promote prospects for a just peace and Palestinian self-determination and freedom.”

The senior PLO official said the EU should go further than simply labeling settlement products by enforcing a “serious ban” on their sale.

“The US has used the so-called peace process as an instrument of Israeli impunity; it is about time to end such a policy.”

EU foreign ministers from 27 member states agreed over a year ago to enforce EU legislation and label products originating from illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

On February 22, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called on EU foreign ministers to enforce legislation on labeling settlement goods and in April, 13 EU foreign ministers expressed support for the initiative, with the issue currently in discussion.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and senior US officials reportedly asked Ashton to delay enforcement of the proposal, with the Americans saying that it would harm Kerry’s efforts to restart peace talks, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

A senior Israeli official told the Israeli daily that Israel had asked the US administration to intervene to delay the EU’s decision to follow through on labeling settlement products.

The decision to label settlement goods will likely be delayed until June.

“The EU decided to give Kerry the time he asked for and see whether the negotiations are resumed,” a European diplomat said, according to Haaretz.

(Source / 19.05.2013)

As Israel’s occupation drags on, boycotts are one way forward

During a visit to Lebanon in 2000, I asked Amal, a Palestinian child in the Ain Al Hilweh refugee camp, “What do you wish the most?”

Without hesitation, she said: “To slip into your suitcase when you head back to Palestine, to go home.”

Her sense of deep nostalgia for a place she’d never visited except in her dreams and her grandparents’ tales was quite pervasive among her peers. But Amal’s fertile imagination about how to overcome barriers to go home was a piercing reminder that the 1948 Nakba, the planned and systematic ethnic cleansing of the majority of the indigenous Palestinians to create a Jewish majority state in Palestine, is not forgotten. Nor will it be forgiven until the Palestinian people can exercise their inalienable right to self determination, with the refugees’ right to return at its core.

Anyone who supports Palestinian self-determination while calling only for ending the 46-year-old Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is actually upholding most of the rights of only 38 per cent of Palestinians, while expecting the rest to accept injustice as their fate.

According to 2011 statistics, of the 11 million Palestinians, 50 per cent live in exile, mostly denied their UN-stipulated right to return to their homes of origin, and 12 per cent are Palestinian citizens of Israel who live under a system of “institutional, legal and societal discrimination”, according to a 2010 US State Department report. More than two-thirds of Palestinians are refugees or internally displaced persons.

Equal rights for Palestinians means, at a minimum, ending Israel’s 1967 occupation and colonisation; ending Israel’s system of racial discrimination; and respecting the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their lands from which they were uprooted and expelled during the 1948 Nakba and ever since. The 2005 Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) call was endorsed by an overwhelming majority of Palestinians because it upholds all three rights.

Given his unparalleled standing among world academics, Stephen Hawking’s recent decision to support the boycott propelled the BDS once again to the centre of public opinion. It is one of the starkest indicators yet that the tide is changing, even in the western mainstream, against Israel’s occupation, colonisation and apartheid and that BDS is fast reaching its South Africa moment of maturity and impact.

Desmond Tutu, Ahmed Kathrada, Roger Waters, Naomi Klein, Alice Walker, Judith Butler, John Berger, Aijaz Ahmed and now Prof Hawking have all reached the conclusion that, like South Africa’s, Israel’s system of oppression cannot be brought to an end without ending international complicity and intensifying global solidarity, particularly in the form of BDS.

Rooted in a decades-long tradition of Palestinian Arab popular resistance against settler colonialism, and inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the BDS movement for Palestinian rights takes to heart the words of Archbishop Tutu: “We do not want our chains comfortable. We want them removed.”

By appealing to people of conscience around the world to help end Israel’s three-tiered system of oppression, the BDS movement is not asking for anything heroic, but for fulfilling a profound moral obligation to desist from complicity in oppression. Given the billions of dollars lavished on Israel annually by western states, particularly the United States and Germany, taxpayers in those countries are in effect subsidising Israel’s violations of international law at a time when social programmes are undergoing severe cuts, unemployment is rising, and the environment is being devastated.

Striving to end western complicity in Israel’s violations of international law is not only good for the Palestinians; it is certainly good for those around the world struggling for social justice and against perpetual war.

Building on its global ascendance, the BDS movement – led by the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society, the BDS National Committee – is spreading, and scoring significant victories.

Multimillion dollar campaigns by Israel’s foreign ministry to counter the BDS by “rebranding” through art and science have largely failed. With impressive successes in the economic and cultural fields, and with the increasing impact of its Israeli supporters, BDS is viewed by Israel’s establishment as a “strategic threat” to its system of oppression. This explains the Israeli Knesset’s passage of a draconian anti-boycott law last year that drops the last mask of Israel’s supposed democracy.

Reflecting the devastating deterioration in Israel’s standing in the world, a BBC poll last year showed Israel competing with North Korea as the third-worst-perceived country in the world in the opinion of large majorities in Europe and elsewhere.

The African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party, voiced support for BDS in December. The Association for Asian-American Studies endorsed the academic boycott of Israel, becoming the first professional academic association in the world to do so. The Federation of French-Speaking Belgian Students, representing 100,000 members, adopted the boycott of Israeli academic institutions a few weeks ago, and so did the Teachers’ Union of Ireland.

Student councils at several North American universities, including University of California Berkeley, are pressuring administrators to divest from companies profiting from Israel’s occupation.

The University of Johannesburg in 2011 severed links with Ben Gurion University over human-rights violations.

Trade union federations with millions of members have also endorsed BDS – in South Africa, Britain, Ireland, India, Brazil, Norway, Canada, Italy, France, Belgium and Turkey, among others.

Veolia and Alstom, two European corporations involved in Israeli projects in violation of international law, have lost contracts worth billions of dollars.

Some global firms are being moved by the pressure. The British Co-op supermarket chain, the fifth largest in the UK, for instance, has adopted a policy of boycotting Israeli agricultural companies operating in the occupied Palestinian territory. Deutsche Bahn, a German government-controlled rail company, pulled out of an Israeli project encroaching on occupied Palestinian land.

Even world-renowned artists – including, Roger Waters, Zakir Hussain, The Pixies, Elvis Costello, Natasha Atlas, Cat Power, Vanessa Paradis and Cassandra Wilson – have cancelled performances in Israel, heeding the cultural boycott and transforming Tel Aviv into the new Sun City. A statement calling for the boycott of an Israeli theatre company that performs in Israel’s illegal colonies in defiance of international law won the endorsement of top theatre and film figures in the UK, including Emma Thompson.

“Besiege your siege” – the cry of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish- acquires a new meaning in this context.

Since convincing a colonial power to heed moral pleas for justice is, at best, delusional, many around the world now understand the need to “besiege” Israel’s occupation and apartheid through BDS, raising the price of its oppression and paving the way for freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinian people.

Only thus can Amal in Ain Al Hilweh and all Palestinian children cling on to the hope of finally realising their rights, after which they can commemorate the Nakba as a distant memory of an injustice that once was.

(Omar Barghouti / Source / 19.05.2013)

 

Sinai hostages ‘can no longer stand torture’ call on Mursi for help

A video posted on Sunday by an anonymous account on YouTube appeared to show the seven hostages, blindfolded and with their hands on their heads, identifying themselves.

Egypt’s President Mohamed Mursi on Sunday barred negotiations with the kidnappers of three policemen and four soldiers who appeared to plead for their release in an online video.

The abductions on Thursday in the Sinai Peninsula prompted angry police to protest and shut down border crossings with Gaza and Israel, piling the pressure on Mursi to help free their colleagues.

“There are no negotiations with criminals and the awe of the state will be preserved,” Mursi was cited as saying by the official MENA news agency.

A video posted on Sunday by an anonymous account on YouTube appeared to show the seven hostages, blindfolded and with their hands on their heads, identifying themselves.

One of the hostages was prodded by what appears to be a rifle held by an abductor off screen before another hostage says the kidnappers want the release of detained Bedouin “political activists”.

The hostage mentioned by name a Bedouin militant who belongs to an Islamist group called Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, a security source told Al Arabiya.

The militant was sentenced to death after a 2011 attack on a police station in the north Sinai town of El-Arish.

“We hope that you, president, quickly release the political activists from Sinai as soon as possible because we can no longer stand the torture,” said one hostage.

The policemen, who worked at border crossings, and soldiers were kidnapped at gunpoint while travelling to their homes.

Since the toppling of former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, hardline Islamist groups in North Sinai have exploited the collapse of state authority.

Presidential sources told the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat that the Egyptian army has urged Mursi to give them the “green light” to launch an attack operation against the kidnappers.

Mursi originally sought negotiations with the kidnappers to “avoid any bloodshed and further complicate the situation in Sinai,” sources told Asharq al-Awsat.

(Source / 19.05.2013)

Group: Israel to return seized land to Palestinian owners

 

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Palestinian land appropriated over thirty years ago to build an illegal settlement is set to be returned to its owners, an Israeli rights group said Sunday.

The Israeli state informed the High Court of Justice last week that the land near Jenin, formally the site of Homesh settlement, will be returned to its Palestinian owners after Yesh Din submitted a petition on behalf of villagers from Burqa.

“Thirty-five years have passed since the land was usurped from its lawful owners,” Yesh Din lawyer Shlomi Zachary said.

“It is regrettable that it has taken so many years for the state to decide to observe the law and to return the usurped land to its owners. Our main concern now is to ensure that the landowners will actually be able to reach their land.”

The land was seized in 1978 by Israel’s military on the pretext of security needs, with the Homesh settlement subsequently built in the area.

Homesh was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan, but the land remained a closed military zone and the original seizure orders were not nullified.

Settlers regularly return to the site and try to re-establish the settlement, locals say, with some attacking Palestinian vehicles and homes.

(Source / 19.05.2013)