Friday 22 December 2006

Witnessing an Undercover Operation in Ramallah

A Tale of Two Sisters: Witnessing an Undercover Israeli Operation in Ramallah
Annemarie Jacir, occupied Palestine, 15 November 2006

Emily Jacir's blog from Ramallah
Today is November 15th. Today is our supposed "Independence Day". A joke. Was almost killed today. This will be brief and inarticulate. I am still in shock.

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Book Review: The Second Palestinian Intifada by Ramzy Baroud
Fred Wilcox, 7 November 2006
Palestinians who resist the occupation suffer terrible consequences, but they are not alone. An Israeli sniper in the Jenin refugee wounded Ian Hook, a United Nations coordinator. Mr. Hook bled to death when the IDF refused to permit an ambulance to take him to a hospital. On the same day Hook was murdered, Israeli soldiers shot and wounded a twenty-three year-old Irish activist, Caoimhe Butterly, who was standing in the line of fire between the IDF and Palestinian children.

Treacherous Road to Oslo Begins Here
Ramzy Baroud, November 13, 2006

Pinochet in Palestine
Joseph Massad, 9 - 15 November 2006

Academic set for Palestinian 'unity' leadership
Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem, 14 November 2006

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Gaza: While the world looked elsewhere, another week of death and misery
Donald Macintyre In Beit Hanoun, 11 November 2006

How a Beit Hanun Family was Destroyed
Amira Hass, November 13, 2006

Not Without my Daughter
Gideon Levy, November 13, 2006
Above all, this is the story of a little girl whose life was ruined during the festive first trip in the family car that her father had bought, when it was hit by an air force missile. Perhaps it was supposed to kill a wanted man, but instead it hit the new car and wiped out an innocent family. But no less than that, this is also the story of her father, Hamdi Aman, a young man of 28 who lost his small son, his wife, his mother and his uncle during the cursed family outing, and whose life's work is now his disabled daughter's rehabilitation.

Preparing for the next invasion
Amira Hass, Haaretz, 15 November 2006
The management of the Beit Hanun hospital decided to dig a well in the hospital's yard. By Saturday, laborers and bulldozers were already on the job. That is how the hospital is readying itself for the next invasion by the Israeli army.

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US vetoes Security Council draft resolution on Israeli operations in Gaza
Report, UN News, 11 November 2006
Exercising its veto in the Security Council today, the United States blocked a draft resolution that won the endorsement of 10 other members and would have called for a United Nations fact-finding mission in response to a recent Israeli operation in Gaza resulting in at least 18 civilian deaths.

UN expert urges Israel to stop destruction in Gaza, calls for military sanctions
Report, UN News, 13 November 2006

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A Dissenting Note on the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917
On the Anti-Semitism of the Present Government

By Lord Montague

South Africa seen as model for Palestine
Ali Abunimah, The Chicago Tribune, 13 November 2006

Lieberman And Israeli Apartheid
Saree Makdisi, 15 November, 2006
The only thing that distinguishes Avigdor Lieberman from run of the mill politics in Israel is that he is willing to take Israel's vision of itself to its logical conclusion. Rather than tolerating non-Jews as second or third class citizens, he wants them out altogether. The issue, then, is not that Lieberman is more racist than other Israeli politicians. It is, rather, that he shamelessly utters what most of his peers dare not say aloud.

The Anatomy of a Beautiful Soul
Raymond Deane, The Electronic Intifada, 9 November 2006
Of Israeli literature's "three wise men", Grossman is the one who universally gleans most respect. When the "three wise men" came out against the recent Lebanon war two weeks after it had started, this was widely reported and totted up to their credit. The fact that they had initially backed it enthusiastically wasn't reported at all.

Poetic license
Meron Benvenisti, Ha'aretz, 16 November 2006

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French troops 'came close to shooting down Israeli jets'
Angela Charlton in Paris, 10 November 2006
The French government has demanded that Israel stop mock raids over Lebanon after French peacekeepers came within seconds of shooting down Israeli warplanes.

Military sales to Israel challenged
Richard Norton-Taylor, Wednesday November 15, 2006

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The Contract of the Distilled Egotism
Benny Ziffer (Tziffer), Zalman Amit (translator)
Ha'aretz, November 8, 2006

We already have experience with one thousand and one cases where Palestinians were killed by mistake.

No one is guilty in Israel
Gideon Levy, November 14, 2006
A few hours after the disaster, while the Gaza Strip was still enveloped in sorrow and deep in shock, the air force was already hastening to carry out another targeted killing, an arrogant demonstration of just how much this disaster does not concern us.

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How Gaza Offends Us All
Jennifer Loewenstein, Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University's Refugee Studies Centre, 11.09.2006
What a terrible shame it is that Gazans have not yet attained the status of Human in the eyes of the Western powers, for the resistance there will continue to be an enigma until this changes. For now, however, the slaughter will continue unabated.

Cultural diplomacy
Jessica Robertson Wright, The Jerusalem Fund, 13 November 2006
With reactions ranging from bugged-out eyes to shocked silence, I have started tempering my response to the job question by mumbling that I work for a Middle Eastern nonprofit. However, my husband, who loves to rile people up and dismisses my soft-pedaling, usually leans over when he hears me and chimes in with a hearty "It's a Palestinian organization." And there the conversation dies.

The Democrats Don't Care
Kathleen and Bill Christison, 13 November 2006

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Photostory: The Old City of Nablus
November 14th, 2006 Posted in Journals, Nablus Region,
Photos by Bill Dienst MD, November 13th

Nablus, population 113 thousand, is the West Bank's second largest city: second only to East Jerusalem. Founded during the time of the Romans, it is over 2000 years old.

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Dear student, what does Dad think of the army?
Meron Rapoport, Ha'aretz, 15 November 2006
The homeroom teacher did not tell the students the truth, and maybe she didn't know it herself. Those questionnaires were not meant "to remain with the youth counselors." They were meant to reach the Education Corps and to help it find "problematic clients," the young people who are not happy about army induction and to give them personal attention. The IDF uses the direct-mailing method. The product it is marketing with this method is the military draft.

Israel opted for cheaper, unsafe cluster bombs in Lebanon war
Meron Rapoport, Haaretz, 14 November 2006
The main reason for the use of the U.S.-made weapons: Israel uses military aid funds to purchase cluster bombs from the U.S., and in order to buy IMI-made bombs, the Israel Defense Forces would have to dip into its own budget.

How Israel put Gaza civilians in firing line
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, Sunday November 12, 2006
The IDF has claimed a fault in the artillery radar system's co-ordinates for the missiles changed the margin of error from 25 to 200m, but that still does not explain why it waited until the following day to return fire to a general area - a policy that the Israeli peace group B'Tselem describes as a 'war crime'.

Grave suspicion of extrajudicial execution of two wounded Palestinians
B'Tselem - 8 November 2006
B'Tselem's investigation indicates that Salim Abu al-Heijah and Mahmoud Abu Hassan were executed by soldiers while they lay wounded, unarmed and posed no risk to the soldiers.

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For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is 'God's Foreign Policy'
David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times,14 November 2006

Christian Zionism: An Egregious Threat to Middle East Understanding
Report, Council for the National Interest, 26 October 2006

Save a Jew, Save Yourself!
10.25.2004
Mark Ames reviews The American Prophecies by Michael D. Evans


http://www.christianzionism.org/

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As'ad AbuKhalil reviews Time Magazine's
The Middle East: The History,the Conflict, the Culture, the Faiths

12 November 2006

Norman Finkelstein on Jimmy Carter's Peace Not Apartheid (New York: 2006)
10 November 2006

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Photostory: How to Harvest Olives In Palestine
Omar, with photos, editing, and English translation by Dr. Bill
Dienst writing from Qraawa-Beny-Zed, occupied Palestine, 13 November 2006

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