today marks the four year anniversary since Rachel Corrie, a American peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was brutally murdered by an "Israeli" CAT bulldozer...

she stood in front of the bulldozer in an attempt to prevent it from demolishing a house, a practice that is internationally condemned...

since 1999 "Israel" has demolished 1,049 homes and buildings in the West Bank alone (B'tselem), making thousands of Palestinians homeless and forced to live in crowded Refugee camps...


Rachel Corrie felt that it was her obligation to help the Palestinian people and she gave her life for it...today we honor her...

What Rachel Saw

Rachel Corrie and Palestine

By SONJA KARKAR

A slip of a girl faced one of Israel's most feared war machines in the Occupied Palestinian Territories--the armed bulldozer--and died. This deliberate killing was no accident. Maybe the Israeli authorities would have preferred it not to happen because of the public relations backlash, but the driver of the bulldozer was wielding power that day. He had a mandate from his government to clear Palestinians out of their homes at a moment's notice and he knew that he would be protected regardless of the crimes he dared to commit. Rachel Corrie was a US citizen, but even the US government closed ranks behind Israel and the bulldozer operator. Being an American did not protect Rachel, and four years later, the US administration still refuses to investigate her death denying her American family justice and closure.

The bulldozer killing of Rachel Corrie was not the only case of such a death in Palestine, but it was the first time a US citizen had become the target of Israel's military. Rachel was a peace activist who had gone to Rafah in Gaza because she wanted to help bring the terrible plight of the Palestinians to the notice of the world. With others in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she believed that non-violent resistance was a means of doing that, and tragically, she achieved that with her death more than she could have ever done with her life.

Rachel was one of hundreds of foreigners who work as human shields in the Occupied Palestinian Territories--dedicated men and women committed to social justice who are seeking to keep the lines of communication open with the outside world while Israel is doing everything to close them. Rachel was trying to stop the bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian physician's family home--one of thousands that have been demolished for Jewish settlements and to make way for the Separation Wall. She wore an orange safety flap- jacket with reflective stripes, and photos clearly show her holding a megaphone. According to witnesses, she was talking to the driver and he knew that she was there. But, that did not stop him from pushing the dirt up against where she was standing into a mound with his blade and as she fell, he drove the bulldozer over her, reversed the killing machine, and ran over her again.

Israel: Scrambling for Cover

Israel's investigations cleared itself of any wrongdoing: Rachel was not run over by the bulldozer, "but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete, which moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved"; the driver of the bulldozer had a "blindspot" and could not see Rachel in front of him; the soldiers who should have been flanking the bulldozer were called away to deal with another emergency; the Israeli army had not intended to demolish the physician's house, but was only looking for explosives in a security zone; the peace activists "were acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger--the Palestinians, themselves and our forces--by intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone"; the Israeli army was not guilty of any misconduct, and therefore, was not responsible for Rachel's death.

Only days before the Israeli findings were reported, another peace activist working with the ISM, Tom Hurndall lay in a London hospital with severe brain damage after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier as he tried to protect Palestinian children from Israeli sniper fire being shot over their heads. Other internationals shot and killed by Israeli soldiers were: German doctor Harald Fischer, Italian cameraman Rafaeli Ciriello, British United Nations worker Iain Hook and British national James Miller. As for the Palestinians, more than 5,050 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed by Israeli troops and Israeli settler paramilitary units since September 2000.

It is important to put Rachel's death in context. Without an understanding of the history behind the injustices being perpetrated against the Palestinians, Rachel's act of courage cannot be understood. In her writings, she believed that good and decent people everywhere would also speak out and do something, if only they knew.

Why Palestine?-- Understanding the social justice issues

The Palestinians are the victims of the longest occupation in modern history. From the time that Israel was created in 1948, Israel intended to rid itself of the Palestinians. It was not a land without people like the myths and propaganda would have us believe. At that time, Palestinians were the majority population in cities, towns and villages and had been for centuries: their history goes back to time immemorial. But after World War II, the world decided to carve up Palestine and give the greater share to the Jewish refugees from Europe on the basis of a religious claim and out of guilt for what they had endured as victims of the Holocaust--a ghastly crime against humanity that had nothing to do with the Palestinians. Unwilling to accept the injustice of being "given" 47% of their homeland, the ill-equipped Palestinians, and backed by neighbouring Arab countries, found themselves fighting a war with the new Israeli army equipped and backed by the world powers. The ethnic cleansing campaign Israel had already begun in villages and towns caused many people to flee as the horrors of massacres reached them. No one who left thought that it would be permanent, but 750,000 Palestinians found themselves refugees living in tents in neighbouring countries with no attempt made by Israel to redress the catastrophic loss of their homes and their homeland in almost 60 years.

By the time the 1967 war happened, Israel was firmly entrenched in the consciousness of the world and its absolute victory was so astounding that the plight of the Palestinians was drowned in the hubris. A new generation of refugees had fled their homes and those who remained--in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem - came under Israeli military occupation. This occupation has continued for forty years, and, in outright violation of international law, Israel has been appropriating more and more land that was intended for a Palestinian sovereign state.

It is important to understand just what the Palestinians have lost and are continuing to lose despite the talks of peace, the peace process and now the Road Map. Not only has Israel been completely intransigent in these negotiations, the US has not been an honest broker, constantly demanding the Palestinians to rein in violence while allowing Israel to violate every single aspect of Palestinian lives and doing nothing to stop Israel's illegal land grabs and illegal settlement building.

The peace plans have masked Israel's true intent, which is to take all of Palestine. Under the Oslo Agreement in 1993, the Palestinians had their land reduced to a mere 22% of their original homeland and the Palestinians accepted that in the hope that they could finally have a state of their own. But that was an elaborate peace plan drawn out over years and in reality gave the Palestinians a piecemeal sovereignty and no borders that they could control. In 2000, Israel's Prime Minister Barak offered them an outrageous 80% of the 22% under what is famously known as Barak's "Generous Offer" and the Palestinians have since been severely castigated for refusing to accept it. Sharon then came along with his "Peace Plan" in 2002 and offered the Palestinians nothing more than had been offered by Barak, but the media spin encouraged everyone to wait in anticipation. The disengagement from Gaza that followed and was so enthusiastically hailed by the world was in fact nothing more than a distraction from Sharon's land theft and furious settlement building in the West Bank while Gaza became the world's largest open-air prison, totally isolated from the West Bank and the rest of the world.

Today, the Palestinians are left with barely 7% of historic Palestine and a totally fragmented 7% at that. The Separation Wall that went up in 2002 on the pretext of Israel's security has been shown as just another tactic to appropriate land, to further fragment what is left to the Palestinians, and to destroy the economic and cultural life of Palestinian communities and families. In effect, Israel is unilaterally setting its own borders, and at the same time, is herding the Palestinians into the squalor of prison-like ghettoes without access to water or the fertile lands that sustained their farming communities for centuries.

Not content with forcing the Palestinians into this no-man's land of 700 kms of wall, over 500 checkpoints, and constant military surveillance and intimidation, Israel is also manipulating some of the most malevolent charades designed to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land. It decides on who can come and go and who will get permits to visit from abroad with family reunification and re-entry being denied in alarming numbers--spouses are being separated, children are being forced to live with one or other parent or relatives, sick people cannot seek medical treatment overseas, academics cannot take study leave, and investors, professionals and tourists are being stopped from entering. Over 60,000 foreign nationals with a Palestinian heritage or married to Palestinians live in the occupied territories on tourist visas and are being denied re-entry when they leave to renew them every three months. Those who cannot afford to leave become illegal residents and are deported if caught. These were people who encouraged to come after the Oslo Agreement to re-build Palestine.

In Israel itself, the 1.3 million Palestinians are also finding it impossible to live because nationality and residency laws with IDs and passes discriminate between Jews and Arabs and 93% of the land inside Israel is held in perpetuity for Jewish people anywhere in the world. Everything is set up to ensure that Israel's Jewish citizens are advantaged, which therefore, reduces Arab-Israelis to second-class citizens and makes a mockery of them having the vote and being represented in the Knesset. East Jerusalem which is supposed to become the capital of a future

Palestinian state is being systematically de-Arabised through a complex system of manoeuvres under the pretext of urban planing and expansion. Building permits are rarely granted to Palestinians and by restricting movement, Israel can confiscate property under the law of absentees. And, although Jerusalem has an internationally recognised special status allowing all religious denominations free access to its holy places, Israel has denied access to Palestinian Christians and Muslims in their own city: it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel intends to make it a city and a state for Jewish citizens only.

What Rachel Saw

Against this background, Rachel Corrie came to Palestine as part of an international movement which realised that Israel was creating an apartheid state out of occupation. Never has a state that describes itself as a democracy so cruelly oppressed and imprisoned a whole people in their own land in total breach of international law, all international conventions and umpteen United Nations resolutions. The full horror of Israel's practices have left many a visitor in shock and few can forget what they see. Rachel wrote stunned about her experiences in her emails home and her words continue to haunt those who hear them.

"I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them. No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it."

Little would she have realised when she wrote these words that they would have the power to move people to action, so much so, that the play "My name is Rachel Corrie" had sell-out performances in London, and last year, was spectacularly banned in New York.

This year, Israel's military occupation will have been ongoing for forty long years. Home demolitions are just one of the many ruthless and violent measures used by Israel to terrorise an already terrorised people. They are a clear violation of international humanitarian law. Since 1967, Israeli bulldozers have destroyed more than 11,000 Palestinian homes, injuring, killing or leaving homeless, thousands of individuals in the process. In Rafah, the homes that were bulldozed stood in the way of the Separation Wall that was being built between Rafah and Egypt, and along with the family homes, greenhouses, mosques, schools and shops were also destroyed. Today, the neighbourhood in Rafah where Rachel stayed is entirely gone. In one midnight attack, only five out of 30 homes remained standing. The house that Rachel Corrie had been trying to save has also been completely demolished.

Israel's home demolition policy is just an extension of Israel's plan to displace or transfer the Palestinian population. Already, some 80% of Palestinians have been pushed out of Israel. In the occupied Palestinian territories, more than half of the Palestinian population is being forced to live in the shanty-towns deliberately created by Israel. It is impossible to imagine the trauma of seeing one's family home demolished and all one's belongings ground into the dirt by the bulldozer: seeing it happen to someone else is bad enough. Rachel Corrie would have seen it happen many times. But that day, the house that she was protecting was the home of a family that had opened its doors to her and where she had been staying. The bulldozer arrived without warning. In many cases, the family are only given an hour at the most to remove their belongings and if they protest, they are forcibly removed, and if they protest too much as they watch all that they have worked for and probably all they own, being ground into nothing, they are beaten, jailed and even killed. This day, Rachel was killed for protesting non-violently.

Justice Denied

Rachel's family is still searching for justice four years after her murder. No independent inquiry has been carried out in the US and it seems that while the FBI is supposed to carry out an investigation, it does not have any files on Rachel Corrie. US Representative Brian Baird did introduce a bill in the US Congress just a week after Rachel's death calling on the US Government "to undertake a full, fair and expeditious investigation", but no action was taken or has been taken since, despite 56 House members signing the bill.

This official silence surrounding Rachel's death is disturbing. When three Americans were killed in Gaza supposedly by Palestinians, the FBI were on the scene within 24 hours. With Israel and US closing the case which such finality, Rachel's parents turned their attention to Caterpillar Inc, the corporation which manufactures the bulldozers used by Israel in its illegal demolitions. They filed a lawsuit claiming that their product violates international law, but this was dismissed by a Federal judge in November 2005 and he ruled that Israeli law offered adequate available remedies. Of course, Israel had already exonerated itself and no remedies are available to Rachel's parents. They have since appealed the decision.

Blaming the victim is the way Israel and its supporters operate. Not a modicum of humanity for the Palestinians and nothing for those who dare to take up their cause. A vindictive campaign by Israel's supporters continues to dog the efforts of Rachel's family to expose the lies and distortions of the truth about Rachel's death. Promises of a transparent investigation never eventuated and only two American Embassy staff members in Tel Aviv and Rachel's parents were ever allowed to "view" the full document. It prompted Richard LeBaron, US Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission in Tel Aviv, to say that "there are several inconsistencies worthy of note".

If this is the way an American citizen is treated, one has to wonder how many other crimes are being treated as mistakes or the fault of the victim? And, how many excuses can continue to exonerate Israel from the crimes that are being committed every day? It is about time that Israel's crimes are recognised for what they are. Israel kills Palestinians deliberately­ women, children, old men, young men - decent, honourable, innocent people who go about their ordinary everyday business are being made to suffer collective punishment for anyone who dares to resist the Israeli military--with guns or in peace. Of course there are Palestinians who are fighting, just like the French resistance fought their German occupiers and just as it is the right of any people to fight those who oppress them. Resistance, as a last resort, is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is a right under the UN charter's Article 51. But Rachel Corrie did not come to fight with guns. She came to resist non-violently; she came in peace.

The highly politicised nature of the conflict and the fact that Rachel Corrie was American has ensured that the controversy of her death continues. Rachel's courage was perhaps born out of the idealism of youth, but it was a courage far greater than nations with bombs and arms and power to wield who have failed miserably to hold Israel accountable for the war crimes it has perpetrated against the Palestinians over decades of brutal occupation. For this reason, Rachel Corrie will always be a symbol of acting out truth to power in the struggle for Palestinian liberation against the Israeli occupier and a world long desensitised to the immorality pervading the corridors of power of all governments.

You will be remembered forever, Rachel and we hope that out of your tragic death will come a better understanding of the inhumanity gripping our world and what we have to do to bring compassion and justice back into our consciousness. Palestine has waited a long time and Palestine deserves some human kindness in its 40th year of occupation. We have no doubt that Rachel Corrie would have campaigned for that too: we feel her spirit with us as the struggle goes on.

Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.

Strip-Searching Children

another daily practice of the apartheid state of "Israel", reminds me of Nazi Germany...

Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints

Strip-Searching Children

By ALISON WEIR

Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades, some of them American citizens.

While organizations that focus on Israel-Palestine have long been aware that Israeli border officials regularly strip search men and women, If Americans Knew appears to be the first organization that has specifically investigated the policy of strip searching women. In the course of its investigation, If Americans Knew was astonished to learn that Israeli officials have also been strip searching young girls as young as seven and below.

According to interviews with women in the United States, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli border officials periodically force Christian and Muslim females of all ages to remove their clothing and submit to searches. In some cases the children are then "felt" by Israeli officials.

Sometimes mothers and children are strip-searched together, at other times little girls are taken from their parents and strip-searched alone. Women are required to remove sanitary napkins, sometimes with small daughters at their side. Sometimes women are strip searched in the presence of their young sons.

All report deep feelings of humiliation. Many describe weeping at the degradation they felt.

"I remember crying and pleading with my mother," Gaza journalist Laila El-Haddad recalls of an experience when she was 12-years-old, hoping that her mother could convince the Israeli official to allow her to keep her undershirt on. But parents are unable to shield their children, El-Haddad and others report.

"They had machine guns," El-Haddad explains. "We just had to submit." El-Haddad, who holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, believes that the intention of the strip searches is to humiliate Palestinians so that they won't return to Palestine.

Oregon attorney Hala Gores remembers being strip-searched at the age of 10. Her family, Palestinian Christians from Nazareth, were leaving Israel because of Israeli discrimination against Christians. Gores has never returned to her family's ancestral home in Nazareth, she says, in part because she does not want to repeat the experience of having no control over what is done to her.

The Israeli policy appears to target only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including native-born Americans. There are no reports of Jewish children being strip-searched.

New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was "seven, eight, nine years old" on family trips to visit her parents' original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another.

Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight.

Zayid, a former class president and yearbook editor at New Jersey's Cliffside Park High School known for her irreverent comedy routines and strong personality, describes sobbing uncontrollably. "No one spoke up," she remembers. "There were several women, including the woman who was pushing my wheelchair, none of whom said a word."

When she boarded her flight, Zayid recalls, "The flight attendants looked at me in disgust." She told them what had happened, and the attendants then gave her some of their own clothing to use.

In addition to taking her sanitary napkin, Israeli officials also confiscated medication that Zayid is required to take when flying. As a result, she vomited repeatedly throughout the 12-hour flight.

Zayid, who founded a program for newly disabled Palestinian youths ­ many of them permanently disabled from attacks by Israeli forces ­ was so depressed by her treatment that she determined never to return. "But that's what they want," she says, "They want us to get to the point where we don't go back." She says that she is already planning to return to her volunteer work in the West Bank.

Israeli practices vary and seem to be applied randomly, from elderly women to small children. In some instances women are taken into a room alone and are left sitting naked for hours. At other times they are strip-searched in groups, their clothes thrown in a pile. When they are finally allowed to get dressed, they describe having to rummage through the heap of clothing, naked and barefoot, to find their own garments.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor

While these policies largely target Palestinian and Palestinian-American women and children, some non-Palestinian Americans also report being subjected to strip searches by Israeli officials.

St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, whose parents and extended family perished in Nazi camps, and whose story is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," reports being strip searched three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally.

The strip searches appear to be illegal under numerous statutes. The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, prohibit: "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" and specifically emphasize: "Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour"

Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states: "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy"

In the US, such policies would appear to violate child abuse statutes. The state of Utah, for example, defines Child Abuse as: "Any form of cruelty to a child's physical, moral or mental well-being." The Encarta Encyclopedia defines child abuse as "Intentional acts that result in physical or emotional harm to children."

While the If Americans Knew investigation focused on practices concerning women, many interviewees reported frequent random strip-searching of males as well; including American citizens, children, and the elderly.

While the practice is widely applied, many people find it too humiliating to speak of. One 68-year-old Christian businessman, who had been stripped naked at Ben Gurion airport in 2006 before being allowed to board his flight to return home, had never revealed his experience to his family until he learned of the If Americans Knew investigation. He then explained to his daughter why he had previously told her that he might never return to his original home, now in the state of Israel.

Christians, a thriving community that made up approximately 15 percent of Palestine's population before Zionist immigration and the creation of Israel (Muslims were 80 percent and Jews 5 percent), have now dwindled under Israeli occupation to approximately two percent of the total population.

Israeli spokespeople and sympathizers have bristled in recent months at the title of a book by former President Jimmy Carter, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." In reply, Carter has emphasized that the Israeli "apartheid" he is describing is limited to the West Bank and Gaza. Many analysts have disagreed with Carter, providing evidence of pervasive discrimination within Israel itself. The If Americans Knew finding that Israel has been routinely strip-searching non-Jewish citizens of Israel would also indicate a wider policy of Israeli discrimination.

Since American taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day, the Council for the National Interest, a Washington DC-based lobbying organization, is organizing a campaign to call on Congress to demand that Israel end these policies.

"We are extremely upset to learn that Israel is using American tax money in ways that degrade and humiliate women and children," says CNI President Eugene Bird. "We call on all Americans to help us on this campaign."

The organization urges people to begin contacting their Congressional representatives immediately, and to disseminate the video report by If Americans Knew as widely as possible.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. She can be reached at: alisonweir@yahoo.com

The Niggerization of Palestine

The Niggerization of Palestine
By Jonathan Scott

"What do you call a Black man with a PhD? Nigger." - Malcolm X

The situation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has become so bad that even the pro-Israeli New York Times is reporting on some of the more revolting developments.

For instance, on October 11 the Times ran an article titled "Israel Bars New Palestinian Students From Its Universities, Citing Concern Over Security," and in September it had published a "human interest" piece profiling the long struggle of Palestinian community leader Sami Bahour to gain a residency permit in Ramallah, the place where he has lived and worked for the past 15 years ("Israeli Visa Policy Traps Thousands of Palestinians in a Legal Quandary," 9/18/06). In the latter piece the Times reported that, "Over the past six years, more than 70,000 people, a vast majority of them of Palestinian descent, have applied without success to immigrate to the West Bank and Gaza."

Even the pro-Israeli New York Times is reporting on some of the more revolting developments.

In the former article the Times notes that the Israeli Army has just imposed an "outright ban" on all Palestinian students who wish to study at Israeli universities, even if the student has been already accepted into a doctoral program, which is the case of Sawsan Salameh, a Palestinian woman from the West Bank who recently earned a full scholarship from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to begin a doctorate in theoretical chemistry. Instead of beginning her PhD studies in this fall semester, she is tied up with lawyers who are preparing her case for the Israel Supreme Court.

The Times here has reached the farthest limits of permissible discourse on the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, the longest colonial occupation in modern history and one that is impossible without the $8 billion in unconditional U.S. aid that flows annually to Israel. The occupation costs Israel $12 billion per year and would become immediately insupportable were the massive U.S. aid package suspended for even a month or two (80 percent of all U.S . foreign aid goes to Israel). Thus it's unlikely that the Times will follow up these two stories with the real story behind them, namely why it is that there exists not a single PhD program in any of the eight major Palestinian universities, in spite of the fact that Palestinians are among the most well educated people on earth.

The underlying issue, as is always the case with Palestine, is how Americans might respond politically if they came to know that a significant portion of their tax dollars is funding the most brutal system of racial oppression the world has seen since American Jim Crow and apartheid in South Africa. The thousands of dedicated Palestine solidarity activists across the U.S. work under the assumption that once the basic facts of Israeli racial oppression against the Palestinians are established, vividly and for the political education of the majority of Americans, organized opposition to the 60-year old U.S. pro-Israel policy will spring to life, leading finally to a just solution of what's called euphemistically in the West "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

The Israel Lobby works with this same assumption, evidenced by their vicious attacks on anybody who dares call the Israeli occupation racist, or who merely points out the apartheid character of its new 700 kilometer segregation wall, whose "major aim," as the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B'Tselem, has put it, is "to build the Barrier east of as many settlements as possible, to make it easier to annex them into Israel." As we know, merely naming properly the thousands of well paid pro-Israeli lawyers, academics, and media pundits and organized political lobbyists, whose sole objective is to suppress this kind of information in the West, will get you labeled "anti-Semitic," as the liberal, establishment scholars Walt and Mearsheimer recently learned.

Yet, American dissent against the Israeli occupation has tended to avoid the obvious "niggerization" process in Palestine. In this way, what Edward Said referred to as "the last taboo in American politics," that is, any discussion of Israel as an imperialist power in aggressive pursuit of regional military and economic domination, needs to be qualified, for in the aftermath of the Israeli Air Force's annihilation of Lebanon this kind of discussion is beginning to happen. What's not happening, though, is a discussion of the racial character of Israeli imperialism against the Arab nations, beginning of course with the Palestinian nation.

"American dissent against the Israeli occupation has tended to avoid the obvious 'niggerization' process in Palestine."

The parallel between the nature of Israel's establishment in 1948 and the Anglo-American extermination of the indigenous population, the Native Americans, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is clear and many Palestinian scholars have always stressed it. In 1948 Israeli Zionists executed a genocidal war against the Palestinians, the style of which would have made Joseph Conrad nod in instant recognition. Recall his description in Heart of Darkness of the murderous British imperialism let loose in the Congo: "They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale."

More than 800,000 Palestinians, or 80 percent of the indigenous population, were forcibly expelled from their land and the ripest parts of it, the beautiful and bustling port cities of Haifa, Jaffa, and Akka, immediately confiscated by Israeli Zionists and set aside for Jews only. Palestinians had fled in horror after having either witnessed first-hand the massacre of fellow townspeople and villagers or heard the stories of the hundreds of neighboring towns and villages razed to ground by Zionist militias, who murdered everyone refusing to abandon their homes.

Many works of Palestinian historiography are available that document these basic facts, and there are several classic works of Israeli historiography that do the same, which came out of the 1980s period in which a great deal of declassified material was released by Israel. See in particular Rosemary Sayigh's Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries and Nur Masalha's Expulsion of the Palestinians; for the Israeli accounts, see Benny Morris's The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem and Simha Flapan's The Birth of Israel. These Israeli scholars use the term "ethnic cleansing" to describe the establishment of Israel and its dispossession of the Palestinians. By the logic of the Israel Lobby, these Jewish scholars are guilty of "anti-Semitism" and worse are "self-hating Jews," even though both scholars are actually staunch Zionists.

In fact, the original Zionist idea was to reserve the land for European Jews only, modeled after the well established pattern of nineteenth-century European racialist colonialism in Asia and Africa, but this proved to be a very difficult task as the majority of European and Euro-American Jewry then preferred, and continues to prefer today, the life of a Manhattan or London Zionist to that of an actual Jewish colonial-settler on occupied Arab land.

Consequently, the majority of Israeli society is comprised of Arab Jews, mainly from Iraq, and 20 percent is Palestinian. In Israeli public discourse, these facts are referred to openly as "the demographic problem."

Any "demographic problem" is completely racial: it presupposes the existence of two distinct types of human being, one deserving full civil rtion" process.ights and social privileges and the other an aggravating nuisance that must be got rid of, because this type is merely pretending to be human no matter how much education, property, or eloquence the person possesses. This is the hallmark of the "niggerization" process.

"There is a startling abundance of empirical evidence documenting Israel's 'niggerization' process."

There is a startling abundance of empirical evidence documenting Israel's "niggerization" of the Palestinians, from the various studies conducted by international human rights organizations to local Palestinian and Israeli monitoring groups, who document meticulously everything from daily torture in Israeli prisons, water theft and house demolitions, to racial profiling, harassment and physical assault at military checkpoints, collective punishment and the systematic use of "administrative detention" (imprisoning a person without charge or evidence) as a means of incarcerating a whole generation of rebellious Palestinian youth, in other words, those who have rejected the "niggerization" process.

For those interested, see B'Tselem's perspicaciously maintained web site, and also visit the excellent Electronic Intifada site, among many others. Yet I feel strongly that at this point the documentary record is simply overwhelming the crucial everyday life stories of Palestinians to the extent that more data and analysis will add nothing useful to the discussion. As Dr. King and the African American civil rights movement proved to the world, the moral critique of racial oppression is what changes people's perceptions, not more facts and expert commentary.

Every day I travel back and forth between West Bank and Jerusalem as part of my teaching responsibilities at Al-Quds University, for we have two main campuses. For Palestinians from West Bank, this kind of commute is impossible because Israel has banned all Palestinians from entering Jerusalem, their own capital, except for the few who have Jerusalem identity cards. Consequently, close to 90 percent of all Palestinian students and faculty at the university cannot use the Jerusalem campus, which means that there are many courses students cannot take to graduate because they cannot reach the Jerusalem campus to take them, and conversely many courses are cancelled because professors cannot get there to teach them. They are also cut off from essential library resources.

Taking seven or eight years to graduate is becoming normal, and there are many unfortunate student dropouts as well as a gradual loss of faculty, since there is only so much a person can take. Many students require four hours to get to the West Bank campus, coming as they do from all over West Bank where Israel has in place around 800 military checkpoints altogether.

Under American Jim Crow and South African apartheid, this was known as the illegalization of literacy, one of the basic elements of racial oppression. The other three elements - the declassing of property-holders, the deprivation of civil rights, and the destruction of the family - are also deployed in Israel's racist policy of excluding Palestinians from Jerusalem, which is very obvious and can be illustrated by a only few examples.

"Israel's racist policy of excluding Palestinians from Jerusalem is very obvious."

In the Palestinian West Bank village where I live, there are many new shopkeepers selling cheap goods in direct competition with more established shops. At first I didn't understand why a person would attempt such an impossible business enterprise, especially during a time when Palestinians are suffering extreme cash-flow problems due to the ongoing U.S. economic blockade of the Hamas government. So I asked a few shopkeepers. One had his tour bus business ruined after Israel imposed its ban on Palestinians from West Bank entering Jerusalem, since this meant he could no longer drive his bus in and around Jerusalem, while several others were forced to abandon their wholesale produce businesses for the same reason: without access to Jerusalem restaurants and grocery stores, they lost their whole clientele.

This central aspect of the "niggerization" process in Palestine is not new; the fact is that it is now nearly complete. Palestinian political economist Adel Samara points out that it began within days of Israel's conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, when hundreds of new military orders were issued, half of which involved Israel's economic interests. "These interests include the employment of a cheap labor force," says Samara. "Military orders cut the occupied territories off from the rest of the world, making Israel their main supplier (90 percent of the occupied territories' imports come from or through Israel). Thus the wages paid to the workers were returned to Israel as payments for Israeli consumer goods. By absorbing the labor force, while at the same time pursuing a policy of rejecting Palestinian applications for licenses to start productive projects, the Israelis were able to destroy the occupied territories' economic infrastructure, thus facilitating the integration of the latter's economy into that of Israel" (For a full analysis, see his book, The Political Economy of West Bank).

In terms of the deprivation of civil rights, being denied entry into Jerusalem means the denial of the right to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, which are not only two of the holiest sites in Islam but also located in al-Haram al-Sharif, a 35-acre sacred area in the southeastern corner of the Old City, one of the most venerated places of worship in the entire world much less historic Palestine. Palestinian scholar Salim Tamari has referred to the Israeli policy of denying Palestinians access to worship in Jerusalem "a regime of discrimination."

"East Jerusalem has been reduced from Palestine's commercial and political capital to another Palestinian ghetto."

The denial of building permits is the other side of Israel's policy of denying visas to Palestinians who hold North American or European passports: the latter blocks the development of Palestinian society by robbing it of both capital and a skilled cadre of professional analysts, social planners, architects, and administrators, while the former produces ghettoization on a massive scale. The Israeli Jerusalem Municipality issues on average only 100 building permits annually to Palestinians, as compared with 1,500 to Jewish Israelis. As a result of this racist policy, between 1986 and 1996 40 to 60 percent of Palestinian Jerusalemites were forced to move outside the municipal boundaries. Most belong to Palestine's middle class. East Jerusalem has been reduced from Palestine's commercial and political capital to another Palestinian ghetto. Within these ghettos, it's very common to find Palestinian businessmen as well as college graduates driving broken down shuttle vans for less than $10 a day.

Last week I was riding in one of these vans on the way to visit a friend in Ramallah when the engine quit. The driver graciously returned our money - a mere shekel and a half each, about 30 cents - and we piled out of the van to wait along the road for a different van. While waiting together we could see a speeding sports car brake as it approached us. The windows came down and the people inside, a family of Jewish Israelis, flipped us the middle finger. A small thing compared to the total scale of Israeli oppression of Palestinians, yet the image has stayed with me. A shiny new BMW, a well-scrubbed family on the way perhaps to the local synagogue or a birthday party, their sparkling faces, taking a little time out of their busy day to say hello to a group of dusty travelers stranded by the side of the road.

Jonathan Scott is Assistant Professor of English at Al-Quds University and the author of Socialist Joy in the Writing of Langston Hughes (University of Missouri Press, 2006). He can be reached at Jonascott15@aol.com .

UN to Permanently Monitor "Israel"

the UN Human Rights Council has decided to permanently monitor "Israeli" actions in occupied Palestine, the previous Human Rights Commission was dismantled because it kept "singling out Israel"...I wonder why...


UN to open permanent probe on Israel
By TOVAH LAZAROFF

The United Nation's Human Rights Council is expected to place Israel under permanent investigation for its "violations" of international law in the territories - until such time as it withdraws to the pre-1967 border - according to Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

Neuer added that he received that information from diplomatic sources.

It's one of at least four anti-Israel actions he expects the council to take during its fourth session, which started in Geneva on Monday and runs through April 5, Neuer told The Jerusalem Post from Geneva.

The UN body was created in June to replace the Human Rights Commission, which was scrapped because it had a faulty membership composition and repeatedly singled out Israel.

But since its inception, the 47-member body - which includes Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China - has continued to single out the Jewish State. It has issued eight anti-Israel resolutions, and none against any other nation. It has also held three special sessions on Israel.

Neuer and Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Yitzhak Levanon, said they expected this session to continue in that same pattern, although the council is also expected to discuss human rights abuses in other parts of the world, including in Darfur, Sudan.

"I'm expecting there will be some clashes concerning Israel," Levanon told the Post.

Neuer said Israel would be rapped for the Antiquities Authority's construction of an access ramp to the Temple Mount's Mughrabi Gate.

The work has been widely condemned throughout the Muslim world.

Neuer said the council would also take Israel to task for refusing entry to inquiry teams in July and in November. The first team was sent to investigate Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip following the kidnapping by Hamas of Cpl. Gilad Schalit in June.

The second team was dispatched to investigate the accidental discharge of an IDF artillery barrage that killed 19 civilians in Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip in November.

Levanon said the investigators were denied entry because they were overtly biased against Israel.

The Human Rights Council is also set to hear a report compiled by UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard that compares Israeli actions in the territories to that of the former apartheid system in South Africa.

LA Times Bias

interesting article on the blatant "Israeli" bias of the LA Times... and they call this a liberal newspaper...


In the war of words, The Times is Israel's ally

The paper consistently adopts Israel's language, giving credence to an inaccurate, simplistic and dangerous cliche.

By Saree Makdisi, SAREE MAKDISI, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, writes frequently about the Middle East.
March 11, 2007

'AS SOON AS certain topics are raised," George Orwell once wrote, "the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse." Such a combination of vagueness and sheer incompetence in language, Orwell warned, leads to political conformity.

No issue better illustrates Orwell's point than coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. Consider, for example, the editorial in The Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians "recognize Israel" and its "right to exist." This is a common enough sentiment — even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel's advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is — at best — utterly nonsensical.

First, the formal diplomatic language of "recognition" is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to "recognize" a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).

Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, "Israel" is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of "Israel"?

For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?

If none of these questions are easy to answer, why are such demands being made of the Palestinians? And why is nothing demanded of Israel in turn?

Orwell was right. It is much easier to recycle meaningless phrases than to ask — let alone to answer — difficult questions. But recycling these empty phrases serves a purpose. Endlessly repeating the mantra that the Palestinians don't recognize Israel helps paint Israel as an innocent victim, politely asking to be recognized but being rebuffed by its cruel enemies.

Actually, it asks even more. Israel wants the Palestinians, half of whom were driven from their homeland so that a Jewish state could be created in 1948, to recognize not merely that it exists (which is undeniable) but that it is "right" that it exists — that it was right for them to have been dispossessed of their homes, their property and their livelihoods so that a Jewish state could be created on their land. The Palestinians are not the world's first dispossessed people, but they are the first to be asked to legitimize what happened to them.

A just peace will require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile and recognize each other's rights. It will not require that Palestinians give their moral seal of approval to the catastrophe that befell them. Meaningless at best, cynical and manipulative at worst, such a demand may suit Israel's purposes, but it does not serve The Times or its readers.

And yet The Times consistently adopts Israel's language and, hence, its point of view. For example, a recent article on Israel's Palestinian minority referred to that minority not as "Palestinian" but as generically "Arab," Israel's official term for a population whose full political and human rights it refuses to recognize. To fail to acknowledge the living Palestinian presence inside Israel (and its enduring continuity with the rest of the Palestinian people) is to elide the history at the heart of the conflict — and to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian claims and rights.

This is exactly what Israel wants. Indeed, its demand that its "right to exist" be recognized reflects its own anxiety, not about its existence but about its failure to successfully eliminate the Palestinians' presence inside their homeland — a failure for which verbal recognition would serve merely a palliative and therapeutic function.

In uncritically adopting Israel's own fraught terminology — a form of verbal erasure designed to extend the physical destruction of Palestine — The Times is taking sides.

If the paper wants its readers to understand the nature of this conflict, however, it should not go on acting as though only one side has a story to tell.

"Israeli" Ambassador Recalled

what else can you expect from a Zionist official, this is a few of the innumerable examples of corruption in "Israeli" elites...

...Those Allah humiliates will have no one to honor them. Allah does whatever He wills.
(Surat al-Hajj: 18)


Heres a list of links to other "Israeli" scandals...

Katsav Rape Charges
Olmert Bribery Charges
Justice Minister Indicted
Sharon's Son in Corruption Case

Israel recalls 'naked ambassador'

Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.

Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.

A foreign ministry official described Ambassador Tzuriel Refael's behaviour as an unprecedented embarrassment.

The incident, which happened two weeks ago, has renewed calls for a radical overhaul of the way Israel appoints and promotes its diplomats.

San Salvador was Mr Refael's first post as ambassador. He was promoted in 2006 from a technical position in the ministry which had involved several foreign postings.

He was being recalled, although he had not broken any laws, foreign ministry spokeswoman Zehavit Ben-Hillel told reporters.

She confirmed that lurid reports of the incident in the Israeli press were accurate.

"We're talking about behaviour that is unbecoming of a diplomat," she said.

Israel has been rocked by a recent series of misconduct and corruption scandals, shaking public confidence in the political leadership.

Haaretz website reports that police found Mr Refael in the Israeli embassy compound where he had been found bound, gagged and naked apart from sado-masochistic sex accessories.

In 2006, Israel's diplomatic service was criticised by the public watchdog for its appointments system.

The state comptroller's report singled out the foreign ministry appointments committee for its inadequate examination of candidates and lack of transparency.

UN: Implement Right of Return

another call from the UN demanding the right of return of the 5 million plus refugees forcibly expelled from their lands, but it will fall on deaf ears because "Israel" is above international law...this will unfortunately pass just like the numerous resolutions before it...


UN committee: Israel should let Palestinians return to their land
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

A United Nations committee has called on Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their property and land in Israel and to ensure that the bodies responsible for distributing property, such as the Jewish National Fund, not discriminate against the Arab population.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination made the recommendation in its concluding observations released Friday, in response to a report Israel submitted on the matter. Representatives of a number of human rights groups appeared before the committee, including Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which presented objections to the official Israeli position.

The report recommends that Israel scrutinize its policy in a number of areas. Among them, it recommends that "the state party ensure that the definition of Israel as a Jewish nation state does not result in any systematic distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin." The committee also said it "would welcome receiving more information on how [Israel] envisions the development of the national identity of all its citizens."

The committee's deliberations were made in the framework of overseeing the implementation by various countries of the provisions of the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Israel has been a signatory to the convention since the late 1970s, and should submit a report every two years. However, it has not done so for nine years.

The appearence before the committee of the human rights organizations, which also included B'Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) and Ittijah (the Union of Arab Community Based Organizations in Israel), is part of an increasing
trend to fight Israeli policies in international forums. Adalah said some of the information provided to the committee came from its international advocacy department assigned to UN committees.

The committee also noted a number of positive developments, among them the ministerial appointment of Raleb Majadele and the High Court decision on the petition of the Ka'adans, an Israeli Arab couple, to buy land in the community of Katzir.

The Islamic obligation to defeat Zionism

Words to consider...

The Islamic obligation to defeat Zionism

The zionist state of Israel has existed in Palestine for nearly 60 years - more than the lifetimes of most Muslims. It is treated as an integral and permanent part of the world map in the hegemonic discourse of the modern West, and all too often by many Muslims as well. A. K. KURTHA reminds us of the Islamic obligation to defeat zionism.

As Muslims we implicitly believe in the Holy Qur'an as the final word of Allah (swt). Every word of the Book, from the first word to the very last, is the word of the Creator of the universe.

If any Muslim doubts any portion, be it an ayah or a surah, of the Book, then the implication is that the doubter doubts the Author of the Book; and so he or she ceases to be a believer (Muslim). The Holy Qur'an is not to be questioned or doubted. Muslims accept the Qur'an in its entirety and haveto live and abide by its injunctions.

Allah says in Surah Bani Israil: Glory be to Allah Who transported His servant [Muhammad] by night from the Sacred Masjid [in Makkah] to the Distant Masjid [ie. in Jerusalem], whose surrounding territory [ie. Palestine ] We have blessed, in order to show him Our signs. Surely He hears and sees [all]. (al-Qur'an 17:1.)

In a nutshell, the spiritual significance of the miraculous night journey is to establish the sovereignty of Allah (swt), and thereby of Islam, over the entire Holy Land of Palestine. The political implication is to demonstrate to all the peoples of the world, including Christians and Jews, that Muhammad (saw) is the final Prophet and the Imam and leader of all the viceregents (khulafa') of Allah (swt) by his leading of the congregational salah in Masjid al-Aqsa with all the Anbiya' in attendance.

Allah and His beloved final Rasool (saw) do not recognise the existence of such a state as Israel; so by what right or on whose authority can a follower of Muhammad (saw) accord the right of such a state to exist? For the follower of Muhammad there is no middle road or fence-sitting. There is only right or wrong, and Muslims must (for want of a better metaphor) "nail their colours to the mast" and boldly state that there can be absolutely no compromise on the issue of Palestine. The Holy Land is the land of Islam, where all its citizens, Muslims, Christians and Jews, can enjoy protection from persecution, freedom and peace as guaranteed by Allah (swt).

Allah reminds us in Surah al-Ma'idah: O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he among you who turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust. (al-Qur'an 5:5)

This is a reminder to all believers: do not follow the path of the munafiq Arab governments who have failed utterly to support the cause of Palestine, and who are in league with the enemies of Islam. These are indeed difficult and testing times for Muslims in general and our leaders in particular; any compromise with the illegitimate zionist state and its supporters will undermine the faith and imaan of the believers. No matter how unbearable the oppression and how difficult or seemingly insuperable the odds, Allah the Merciful has given us His promise.

Again, Allah tells us in Surah al-Ma'idah:

O ye who believe! If any from among you turn back from his Faith, soon will Allah produce a people whom He will love as they love Him, lowly with the Believers, mighty against the rejecters, fighting in the way of Allah, and never afraid of the reproaches of such as find fault. That is the grace of Allah, which He will bestow on whom He pleaseth. And Allah encompasseth all, and He knoweth all things.

Your [real] friends are [no less than] Allah, His Messenger, and the [fellowship of] believers – those who establish regular prayers and regular charity, and they bow down humbly [in worship].

As for those who turn [for friendship] to Allah, His Messenger and the [fellowship of] believers – it is the fellowship of Allah that must surely triumph. (al-Qur'an 5:54-56.)

Thus believers have no choice but to take a stand. We have to contribute in the struggle against the zionist state in any way possible, from boycotting zionist merchandise and produce, to lobbying against zionist groups and supporters, and offering our total support to the Islamic movement in Palestine.

We have to raise the awareness of family, friends and acquaintances to participate wherever possible to debunk the legitimacy of the zionist state. Let us be proud of the role that we play to free the oppressed people and land of Palestine, and ensure the demise of this ungodly state, as we witnessed the the demise of the apartheid state.

Let the believers participate and take delight in seeing the zionists swallow the bitter pill of justice, and freedom for the oppressed people of Palestine.