Israel’s Education Ministry has recalled all copies of a history textbook because of a passage alleging “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians during the 1948 war, a newspaper reported on Monday. Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said the secondary school textbook was removed from shelves because it sought to present both Israeli and Arab perspectives on the departure of some 750,000 Palestinians during the fighting that erupted after the creation of the Jewish state.
IOA Editor: “Deny, deny, deny…” see No Atonement
As Defense Minister Ehud Barak continues to be the subject of a torrent of criticism over his extravagant spending on five-star hotels with the use of taxpayer money, Israelis are becoming increasingly aware of the decorated former general’s lavish lifestyle.
IOA Editor: This story is presented here to show how not only criminal, from an international-law standpoint, but also profoundly corrupt Barak is. This report focuses on Barak’s personal lifestyle and twisted personality, leaving out a range of suspicions concerning his business practice, including income of several million dollars for services which, so far, remain unidentified.
Israeli authorities are planning to demolish 150 Palestinian houses, home to about 1,000 people in East Jerusalem, according to a new report from the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights… [This figure does] not include another 125 houses and apartments whose owners were given demolition orders.
“The police commissioner has apparently forgotten that Umm al-Fahm and Ramle are parts of the State of Israel,” Al-Sana said. “The residents of these Arab communities are not demanding independence and are not undermining Israeli sovereignty – and are fighting for their equal civil rights and social justice.”
The [Israeli] police have recently started operating an undercover unit among Israeli citizens. Some two months ago, Police Commissioner David Cohen said the force had “no intelligence infrastructure to deal with the Arab community.”
US and Israeli forces were already poised for their joint Juniper Cobra strategic missile defense exercise, which takes place every two years, to begin Oct. 12, when at noon, Oct. 11, an Israeli military spokesman suddenly announced its postponement by one week.
“I don’t understand why we incarcerate them in Israel in the first place,” the professor told [Israeli] Army Radio Saturday. She added that “all prisoners should be returned to Palestine regardless of a deal for Gilad Shalit’s release.”
A video tape made during a guided tour of the archaeological excavations at Silwan (the City of David) near Jerusalem’s Old City walls reveals how Elad, the association that runs the dig, works together with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Jerusalem municipality to dig under the homes of Arab residents.
ALSO: Court rejects Silwan residents’ petition against City of David archeological work
IOA Editor: As is often the case, Israel is acting as if the Palestinians do not exist. Or, treating them as ‘debris.’
Participation of foreign diplomats represented a turning point in the way that the world treated relations between Israel’s Arab population and the state… About a month ago, The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee decided to declare a general strike in all Israeli Arab communities on Thursday, October 1st.
IOA Editor: The participation of foreign diplomats in events related to the General Strike would be a remarkable change, and would add to Israel’s feeling of growing global pressure. Let us hope that this will actually happen.
“The Jewish soul is a precious, all-too-rare resource, and we are not prepared to give up on even a single one”
Hadash Chairman Mohammad Barakeh said the statistics were the result of long term government policies: “We are living in two states here. This is the result of actions by generations of Israeli governments. The data speaks for itself… It’s a policy meant to place the Arab citizens under siege and it translates into poverty”
A new report from Adalah shows how the courts and police attempted to stamp out opposition to Operation Cast Lead. “This is a time of war, and every incident harms the people’s morale.”
The Education Ministry will be reexamining a new Hebrew-language history textbook… [that] gives expression to the Palestinian perspective on the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), which is the Palestinians’ term for what happened to them in the War of Independence.
Although Lieberman declared he would reactivate Israeli foreign policy in certain African states, past experience has shown that the Defense Ministry and arms manufacturers’ lobby have hijacked Israeli foreign policy in recent decades and subordinated it to their needs, Israeli sources said. No deals were signed on this trip. But Foreign Ministry officials estimate Africa’s business potential at some $1 billion, in addition to the $3 billion of merchandise and services Israel currently exports to the continent.
Two cases brought before Israeli courts last week revealed the attitude of the establishment towards Palestinian Arab citizens of the state. One shows how Palestinian citizens are treated as victims of police brutality, and the second shows how they are regularly victimised because of their opposition to injustice.
A day after mounting a scare-tactic campaign to prevent the assimilation of Diaspora Jews, the Prime Minister’s Office and Jewish Agency received some 200 calls, most of them reporting names of Jews living abroad. However, many callers also blasted the campaign – which describes assimilation as a “strategic national threat.”
IOA Editor: What’s next? An IDF rescue mission to forcibly airlift strayed Jews to Jewish re-education camps in the Negev?
“There is so much paranoia from the government, the municipality and the courts about Muslims using this mosque again,” said Nuri al-Uqbi, a 67-year-old Bedouin activist in Beersheva. “It was built with money raised from the local Bedouin and we should have the right to pray in it.”
The name of this Israeli ethos is “who are you to tell us?” We are destroying Arab East Jerusalem? Who are you to tell us that it is wrong? We killed masses of Palestinians in Gaza? Who are you to tell us anything? We have maintained a brutal dictatorship in the territories for 42 years – longer than any other military occupation of the post-World War II era? Who are you to tell us? We’re allowed. We’re your victims. The past belongs to us. We will do as we please with it.
