Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

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Nouriel Roubini: Social unrest will spread

27 August 2011

Roubini says that the current global economic system – capitalism – will remain in a crisis – a crisis economist Karl Marx predicted more than a century ago – until major systemic reforms are implemented. He says that social unrest and demonstrations are all being driven by the same thing, capitalism’s most serious crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It stems from globalization, financial intermediation run amok, and a destructive redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital.

Lia Tarachansky: Israelis chant ‘Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies’

25 August 2011

Following last week’s terror attack in which eight Israelis died on the Southern border with Egypt, the Israeli air force escalated its bombardment of Gaza. On Saturday, despite predictions that the cycle of violence would dissolve the rising social protest movement in Israel, thousands poured onto the streets and chanted “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.”

Israel Aerospace Industries unveils unmanned aircraft – GHOST

24 August 2011

Israel Aerospace Industries unveiled over the weekend its latest development in the field of secret unmanned aerial vehicles – a miniature aircraft weighing four kilograms, known as GHOST to foreign customers.

IOA Editor: Israel’s approach to dealing with Palestinian civil society has often been via a ‘technology fix:’ Spot and Shoot, robotic fighting machines, Shock Vehicle and, last but not least, the Caterpillar bulldozer.

This most recent addition to Israel’s arsenal will enable occupation forces to observe urban resistance in narrow alleys, ‘around the corner,’ via a device remotely controlled at the platoon level.

As with the other ‘fixes,’ GHOST could potentially lessen IDF casualties thus making the cost of occupation more acceptable to Israeli society, while enabling the IAI to sell yet another product, tested on the backs of Palestinians, to shady governments around the world.

Amira Hass: Israel’s left now has a chance to awaken the public

24 August 2011

We are profiting from the occupation even as we groan under regressive taxation. Whether our families came from Katrielevka or Baghdad, we are profiting from the structural discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel and from the very fact that they have become a minority in their own land.

Glen Pine: BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – the global struggle for Palestinian rights

23 August 2011

A critical review of Omar Barghouti’s BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions and the treatment of BDS as, at once, an effective strategy, a moral obligation, and a movement — and a discussion of the resulting contradictions and ramifications thereof.

Yitzhak Laor: We are all victims of terrorist logic

23 August 2011

So this is how the occupation develops into war, which the commentators, in their righteousness, call a war “that neither side wants.” Really? Do Military Intelligence and Shin Bet not know that Hamas will fire rockets if the air force kills people in the Gaza Strip? Of course they know.

Merav Michaeli: Israel’s social protests are anything but dead

22 August 2011

Even if the word “occupation” is not uttered, even if no one speaks of a Palestinian state, the smothering trap that successive Israeli governments have put us in for the past 40 years no longer allows us to breathe. There is a sense of hopelessness and pointlessness stemming from the knowledge that everything is the same, and only the citizens’ situation declines from day to day. There’s nothing to look forward to, no prospect for something else in sight.

Lia Tarachansky: Dubious evidence Israeli bus attackers based in Gaza

20 August 2011

Two terror attacks shook Israel on Thursday and Friday. By the weekend, eight Israelis were killed and nearly forty injured. Immediately after the attacks, the Israeli air force bombed many locations in Gaza. Nine were killed and nearly thirty injured. In an interview with The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky, Lt. Col. Avital Liebovitz admits the army does not connect the attack to the Popular Resistance Committee, whom the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blames but that the army targeted and killed its leader anyway.

Adam Keller: A changed agenda?

19 August 2011

Someone in the wild Sinai peninsula took a decision and sent a big, well equipped squad to infiltrate across the border into the Israeli Negev, attack buses and cars and engage in running battles with soldiers and shoot and kill and kill indiscriminately. And presto, in one minute the agenda changed and the public mood changed into a state of emergency and war at the gate and in all communications media there was no more talk of social protests, nothing but terrorism and army and security issues.

Josh Ruebner: Hold Israel accountable with Leahy law

17 August 2011

For the sake of Abir Aramin and all Palestinians who are maimed, killed, or whose homes, farms, and infrastructure are wantonly destroyed in the course of Israel’s brutal military occupation, the US must end taxpayer-funded weapons transfers to Israel and hold it accountable, just like every other country, for its violations of the law. To do anything less would be to unfairly hold Israel to a different standard.

IDF officer who defended beating Palestinians to take over infantry

17 August 2011

Head of the Kfir infantry brigade, was censured by IDF Central Command chief Gadi Shamni; was subject to criminal investigation against him, before the case was closed for lack of evidence; and is now to be promoted.

IOA Editor: Advocacy of violence towards Palestinians by a top IDF occupation officer is rewarded with a promotion, naturally.

Lia Tarachansky: The fight for equality in Israel’s J14 movement

17 August 2011

Saturday saw the largest demonstration in Israel’s history in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other cities. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis poured onto the streets to demonstrate against the high housing prices and rising costs of commodities. Meanwhile Israel’s Palestinian citizens who make up 20% of the population join the movement that began on July 14th and became known as J14.

Akiva Eldar: Israel will use Palestinian UN bid to restore status quo

15 August 2011

This time, too, Israel will accuse the Arabs of unilateral steps, ignore the United Nations, expand settlements in the West Bank, and build more neighborhoods for Jews in East Jerusalem.

Alon Idan: Israel’s social protesters mustn’t forget the occupation

14 August 2011

It’s no accident that the outlines of extreme capitalism, a policy based on the continual splintering of society due to competition among people, is inherent within the occupation. Anyone who travels around the West Bank and the Jordan Valley can witness capitalism’s geographic manifestations. Cantonization, the proliferation of checkpoints and the bureaucratic control of traffic are all components of separation designed to make survival difficult and perpetuate control by the central authority.

Ran Greenstein: A Palestinian revolutionary – Jabra Nicola and the Radical Left

13 August 2011

Moshé Machover: “He had precisely what we lacked then – a consistent and comprehensive grasp of the Zionist settlement process and especially its impact on Arab society in Palestine. We acquired from him a deeper, more complete conceptualization of Israel as the realization of Zionist settlement. He also grasped the Arab Revolution as one indivisible process.”

Report: US threatens to halt humanitarian aid to Gaza

12 August 2011

State Department announcement comes in light of Hamas demands to audit the books of US charities, New York Times reports, which would violate U.S. policy against direct contacts with Hamas.

Amira Hass: The people want a reset

12 August 2011

As the movement grows, some will continue to think and demand “justice” within the borders of one nation, at the expense of the other nation that lives in this land. Others will understand that this will never be a country of justice and welfare if it is not a state of all its citizens.

UN calls on Israel not to build new settlements in East Jerusalem

11 August 2011

UN coordinator for the ME peace process: “If confirmed, this provocative action undermines ongoing efforts by the international community to bring the parties back to negotiations.”

Ilana Hammerman: Soldiers’ testimonies on the occupied territories

11 August 2011

For in this stretch of land, despite the many fences and walls and barriers of all sorts that scar its landscape, the borders are not clear and they are not permanent – not only the physical borders between one power and another and between one authority and another, but also the mental and moral borders between what is permissible and what is forbidden, between good and evil, between stupidity and wickedness, between the humiliated and those who humiliate.

Yasmin Dahr and Eilat Maoz: To build and be built in it

11 August 2011

Yasmin Dahr and Eilat Maoz put Israel’s July 14 Movement in its proper historical, social, and political context – something the protest movement’s loosely structured leadership has, so far, insisted on avoiding. Important analysis. (HEBREW)

IDF deploys drones to protect gas fields from Hezbollah

9 August 2011

Israeli official: “UAVs are a critical part of the battlefield today, as can be seen by the dramatic increase in the amount of flight hours of drones in the IAF – and they can also contribute to watching over gas fields.”

Michael Sfard: In his father’s name

8 August 2011

Israel Harel does not deal with the simple fact that the land on which his son and his friends are living is private land, registered properly in the name of Palestinians, who have submitted to the High Court the deeds that prove their family’s ownership of the land. The petitioners’ documents are unequivocal, and the State of Israel is not denying their ownership.

Noam Chomsky: America in decline

8 August 2011

The [Washington] spectacle is even coming to frighten the sponsors of the charade. Corporate power is now concerned that the extremists they helped put in office may in fact bring down the edifice on which their own wealth and privilege relies, the powerful nanny state that caters to their interests.

Academic claims Israeli school textbooks contain bias

7 August 2011

Nurit Peled-Elhanan: “People don’t really know what their children are reading in textbooks. One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform. I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians.”

Lia Tarachansky: Voices from Israel’s July 14 Movement

5 August 2011

On July 14th, eight Israeli students set up tents in the heart of Tel Aviv. Within days they were joined by hundreds of tents, and tent cities sprung up throughout the country. This movement, which became known as “July 14th” saw dozens of direct actions such as blockading the entrance to the Israeli parliament and massive protests with tens of thousands on the streets of Tel Aviv and nine other cities.

The rise of the Right: Dozens of hilltop youth set up camp in Israel’s biggest tent city

3 August 2011

The activists, who belong to the extreme right, claim solution to housing crisis is construction in the West Bank; plan to set up dozens of more tents in coming days.

Dozens of MKs to Netanyhu: Solve Israel housing crisis by building in West Bank

2 August 2011

Forty-two cabinet ministers and MKs, all members of the [right wing pro-settlement] Eretz Yisrael Lobby, signed a petition addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, calling on him to solve the housing crisis that has swept up the country by building in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

IOA Editor: Turning problems into opportunities…

Israel’s Supreme Court orders state to dismantle largest West Bank outpost

2 August 2011

Unprecedented ruling states that Migron must be razed by April 2012; Israeli government had admitted outpost was built on lands belonging to Palestinians, but has thus far failed to dismantle it.

Israeli journalist: At long last we have learnt something from the Arabs

2 August 2011

I hope that the activists in the Arab countries, especially in Egypt, will realise their vital and deep influence on the Israelis’ motivation to protest.

Joel Beinin: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Arab Awakening

1 August 2011

The great majority of the Israelis demanding affordable housing, even if they may understand the connection, are reluctant to articulate that their economic distress is exacerbated by the cost of the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Israel’s military budget for fear that this stance would discredit them politically. Consequently, it may take a long time before a significant number of Israelis are convinced or compelled to abandon their colonial settlement project and share the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with Palestinians on the basis of equality.

Amira Hass: Palestinians’ low salaries also linked to Israeli social struggle

1 August 2011

A Palestinian financial crisis? Problems with donor countries? Economist Raja Khalidi offers some different explanations for the PA’s fiscal problems.

No housing shortage over the Green Line

1 August 2011

Anyone who asserts that there is no construction in Israel should peruse OECD data on building beyond the Green Line. 9% of GDP beyond the Green Line comes from construction, compared with 4.7% of GDP within the Green Line. The difference is even greater for residential construction: within the Green Line, residential construction accounts for just over a fifth of investment; beyond the Green Line, it accounts for almost 45%.

Ahmed Tibi: A strike against free speech

29 July 2011

Because I believe in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees forced from their homes and lands in 1948, I support boycotting — and calling on others to boycott — all Israeli companies that help perpetuate these injustices.

Gideon Levy: The tent protesters must graduate to second grade

28 July 2011

The time has come to stick their hand in the fire and fight for all the issues they have steered clear of so far – the security budget, the settlements, the occupation, the breaches of democracy and the rule of capital, without which no real rectification can be made, not even in the cost of rent.

Israel to bill Bedouins for razing their homes

27 July 2011

Israeli authorities are suing residents of a makeshift Bedouin village for the cost of repeatedly evicting them and razing “illegal structures” where they live, an official said on Wednesday… An Israeli non-governmental group, Bedouin-Jewish Justice, reported in March that the homes there had been destroyed and rebuilt 21 times since July 2010.

IOA Editor: Dispossession neoliberal-style where the victim is charged for his oppressor’s operating expenses.

Michal Shamir: More political than politics

27 July 2011

For Israel’s housing protest to succeed, it must be defined as political – and it must be translated into political acts. The issues it raises must be placed at the center of Israel’s democratic life. The argument over who gets what must find expression within political parties and elections.

IOA Editor: This domestic Israeli (Jewish and largely middle-class) housing campaign is rapidly spreading and may well threaten the stability of Netanyahu’s government.

However, so far, demonstration activists and their leaders have dealt with the housing crisis outside of any political context. They didn’t discuss the dramatic discrepancy between Israel’s domestic and West Bank housing development policies, let alone make the connection between Israeli governments’ (past and present) high priory for settlement construction and low priority for domestic development – both designed to increase the size of the settlement population. Similarly, they didn’t include Israeli Palestinians — whose community has suffered a far greater housing shortage for decades — in their national campaign.

This ‘missing’ context is a true reflection of the extent of this Israeli-Jewish struggle. It is also likely to constrain the significance of any ‘success’ resulting from this campaign.