Panel of inquiry will primarily look into these groups’ funding sources, particularly to examine whether foreign state or terror-linked organizations are involved.
Israel-Palestine
At midnight, when the French champagne is flowing like water, perhaps we will understand that next year will be the last year we can still save something, and be grateful the truth came out.
New letter signed by rabbis’ wives appeals to women urging them to stay away from Arabs. ‘As soon as they have in you in their grasp – everything becomes different. Attention will be replaced with curses, physical abuse and humiliation,’ letter states.
Students question why teachers stop them from speaking Arabic, but don’t do so when immigrant students speak Russian between themselves.
As many as 90% of Palestinian prisoners are denied this basic right despite civilian and military legislation, says study produced by Public Committee Against Torture and Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.
The U.S. last year denied reports that it had received a request for assistance from Dubai, but a recently released WikiLeaks cable proves otherwise.
Half a million trees planted over the past 18 months on the ancestral lands of Bedouin tribes in Israel’s Negev region were bought by a controversial Christian evangelical television channel that calls itself God-TV.
Israel Bar Association: “Keeping human beings in such unreasonable conditions for extended periods of time, dangerous though they may be, deals a critical blow to the most basic human rights.”
The Israeli army’s “looting” of books belonging to Palestinian intellectuals is the subject of a documentary being made by Dutch-Israeli film maker Benny Brunner. He claims as many as 30,000 Arabic books and manuscripts, some of them rare and valuable, ended up in Israel’s National Library after the 1948 war.
No society is immune to deterioration into violent racism. In the Israel of today, we can observe quite a few conditions whose presence in other societies and among other peoples led to racial separation, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. There are minority groups (Arabs and foreigners ) who are ostracized by the majority, a growing racist ideology, attempts to limit the political activities and civil rights of the minority, a tense security situation and strong political elements with vested interests in territorial expansion.
A Palestinian doctor is filing a lawsuit against Israel for the death of his three daughters, just a day before the second anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza. Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish’s daughters were killed during the military assault when Israeli forces fired on his home.
Four Muslims and a Druze forced out of rented flat in Tel Aviv after neighbors, who say rabbi told them Arabs must leave, vandalize their home and threaten to attach explosives to their car. ‘I felt humiliated by hatred,’ says Abbas, who served in IDF.
Something evil is occurring in Israeli society. Racism and xenophobia are consuming its enlightenment and tolerance, and democracy is becoming more and more endangered. Phenomena that had been on the sidelines are now moving to the forefront.
In an unusual move, the Shin Bet security service has agreed to compensate Jamal al-Hindi, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, for a partial disability that he says is due to having been tortured by Shin Bet agents 15 years ago. The amount of compensation remains secret by court order.
Town draft bylaws: “…multigenerational and variegated communal life that upholds Zionist values and seeks to maintain Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence … based on tolerance, human dignity…”
IOA Editor: The Jewish and anti-democratic majority that for more than six decades has systematically excluded the Palestinian Arab minority from access to land, national resources, equal employment and all other opportunities, is now attempting to codify its apartheid-like practices into law. Some liberal Zionists find the formalization of such long-held practices disturbing but, as can be expected, they are not prepared to criticize the structural foundation of such practices, which is inherent to Zionism.
Adalah lawyer Suhad Bishar: “This legislation makes clear in very blunt fashion that the thrust of policy in Israel is towards maintaining segregation in housing between Jewish and Arab citizens.”
The book’s stark – and inevitably highly political – conclusion is contrary to the view that “Israel is withdrawing from the Palestinian Territories slowly and with the appropriate caution and security”. The IDF soldiers quoted “describe an indefatigable attempt to tighten Israel’s hold on the territories, as well as on the Palestinian population”.
Let’s not be naive: We all know that Arabs are the ones who burned down the Carmel forests. Not one Arab, not two, not a thousand. The Arabs burned the Carmel… The Arabs burned down the Carmel because they are bad people. It’s as simple as that.
The absence of an effective Palestinian political body that could mobilize and represent refugees as a collective national group, combined with repressive state policies, catapulted UNRWA to center stage. Taking on a unique and visible role, it assumed many of the functions of a welfare government.
Jews must not rent homes to “gentiles”. That was the religious decree issued this week by at least 50 of Israel’s leading rabbis, many of them employed by the state as municipal religious leaders. Jews should first warn, then “ostracise” fellow Jews who fail to heed the directive, the rabbis declared.
“We don’t need to help Arabs set down roots in Israel,” Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of the Beit El settlement, said. Aviner explained that he supported the move for two reasons: one, a Jew looking for an apartment should get preference over a gentile; and two, to keep the growing Arab population from settling too deeply. “Racism originated in the Torah,” said Rabbi Yosef Scheinen, who heads the Ashdod Yeshiva. “The land of Israel is designated for the people of Israel. This is what the Holy One Blessed Be He intended and that is what the [sage] Rashi interpreted.”
We must gather up our courage and teach our children to refuse. Refuse to take part in an organization that is led by war criminals, murderers of children. An organization like that cannot be anything but a crime organization. Avoid it like you would avoid live fire, we should tell them, and think of other ways to contribute to the society in which you live.
The head of the Israeli secret service, who the Egyptians nicknamed “Superman” after the assassination of Hamas senior official al-Mabhouh earlier this year, concluded on Monday eight years at the helm of the organization.
Noam Chomsky speaks about the US economy, US mid-term elections, climate change, Haiti, Honduras, China and North Korea, and much more. This is Part II of a DemocracyNow interview with Amy Goodman held on 30 November 2010.
Approximately 86 percent of Israeli Jews believe any final Knesset decision regarding the country’s future political arrangement must be approved by a Jewish majority, according to a poll by the Israel Democratic Institute.
Israeli democracy at its best: The entire people will decide on the next peace arrangement, but not on the question of settlements and annexation, and not on the question of wars. Israeli trickery at its best: Legislators pass laws relating to the day an arrangement is forged whose point is to defer that day’s arrival for as long as possible. And Israeli morality at its best: A manifestly immoral question is formulated for a referendum, and insult is added to injury because only we Israelis, members of the chosen people, will decide on the fate of another people which has for generations lived under occupation, and we dare to call all this tomfoolery democracy. In fact, this is Israeli chutzpah at its worst.
Jonathan Cook, reporting on Israel and the Occupation for over a decade now, provides a comprehensive review of the many ways in which Israel attempts to suppress, control, shape and bias media coverage of the Occupation – globally, locally, and via its far-reaching international Hasbara propaganda network.
RELATED Why NGO Monitor is attacking The Electronic Intifada
Jonathan Cook, reporting on Israel and the Occupation for over a decade now, provides a comprehensive review of the many ways in which Israel attempts to suppress, control, shape and bias media coverage of the Occupation – globally, locally, and via its far-reaching international Hasbara propaganda network. (Part II)
The sixth Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture organized by the Department of English and Comparative Literature, American University in Cairo, by Judith Butler.
Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher: “In effect, [the new law] weakens the authority of the Knesset to decide these issues and turns it over to a system that has never been tried in Israel. It’s extremely difficult to predict how the [new] system will behave. It is clearly intended to make it more difficult to approve withdrawal from these territories. It really strikes at the heart of the Israeli parliamentary system.”
IOA Editor: Why is this important? The new law makes Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and of Syria’s Golan Heights more permanently secured by making a negotiated compromise by a future Israeli government (however theoretical and hard to imagine) much more difficult to carry out.
For historical context, read about the 1967 expulsion of Syria’s Golan Height population, which was strikingly similar in methods and means to Israeli actions in the 1948 Nakba:
By handing light sentences to IDF soldiers who knowingly risked the life of a non-combatant Palestinian child, an Israel Defense Forces court has conveyed a message that the lives of Arabs have less value than the lives of Jews, Deputy Knesset Speaker Ahmed Tibi said Sunday.
Noam Chomsky on the illusion of US democracy, liberal-conservative politics, the economy, unions and much more in a Paul Jay (the Real News Network) interview.
Irene Gendzier, professor of Political Science at Boston University (and IOA Advisory Board member), will present her research on the foundations of US foreign policy in the Middle East in 1945 – 1949. The findings point to very early recognition on the part of US foreign policy planners of the future role the newly created State of Israel could have in protecting US interest in the region.
The talk by Irene Gendzier is THIS Monday, 22 November 2010- Columbia University, 207 Knox Hall, at 12:30pm
“In underlining them we are purposefully directing attention to individuals rather than the static structures through which they operate,” the website states while calling on visitors to spread the info “widely”.
UPDATED: ‘War criminals’ site exposing personal details of IDF soldiers taken down.
