Today is the 12th day of Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza.
The Palestinian body count is 336, 70 of whom are kids. This has become a murderous spree of killing for the zionist terrorist army, supported by government of this racist colonial entity and by their people , many of whom have been turning increasingly into blood thirsty mobs urging the murder of Palestinian
On the eve of Abu Khudair’s lynching, Member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and government faction whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse the land, declaring “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” She advocated their complete destruction, “including its elderly and its women,” adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more “little snakes.”
... Since the beginning of July, raging crowds of Jewish Israelis just like these have marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beer Sheva, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Leftists,” swarming and attacking vulnerable victims. While a tiny contingent of radical Israelis have formed a loose “anti-fascist” network that tries to patrol city streets and prevent additional lynchings, they are extremely few in numbers and cannot be everywhere at all times.
While Israeli leaders unleash conscripted soldiers to bombard Gaza, they dispatch ultra-nationalist vigilantes to conquer cities inside Israel. With the incitement to murder Palestinians (and the few Israeli allies they have) continue unabated, it seems to be only a matter of time before the bubbling bloodlust boils overs into a bloodbath.
I am sure that you, the people behind Archinect, are well aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this racist colonial entity that has been described by Moshé Machover as being far worse than the south african apartheid system: "talk of Israeli ‘apartheid’ serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."
The global BDS movement is a peaceful movement that has been, in the face of Israeli racist, oppressive and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, garnering great traction around the world as people everywhere are increasingly grasping the nature of the Zionist establishment that is called Israel. Through a deliberate, effective boycotting Israeli products, academics, businesses, items of interest, the movement contributes to the economic and moral isolation of Israel.
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions..."
I notice that there are Israeli businesses being hosted within Archinect's firm listings (for example). As are listings of Israeli universities within the academic section. I highly urge Archinect, the people behind it, Paul, the editors, the writers....to desist from ignoring your responsibilities apropos taking a stand against this racist entity and to remove all Israeli related material from Archinect. You, like everyone else has that responsibility, because you have the knowledge and you have the right of choice. To ignore this is to be complacent and to be regressive.
As a virtual space that spans the social, the professional and the academic, as a gathering of professionals including architects, designers, artists, engineers and others, as a gathering of minds that by implication suggests a progressive humanist endeavor, please instate an anti-zionist, anti-israeli policy (that covers israeli academics, businesses, media, etc) in the spirit of the BDS movement.
Did someone mention whitewashing? like the long history of whitewashing Zionist/Israel crimes, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians since its creation?
Obama with Edward Said in a deep conversation at a dinner.
Interesting bit about Penny Pritzker,
"Obama’s gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had “been courting the pro-Israel constituency.” He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker — now his national campaign finance chair — scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors."
Orhan Ayyüce
Aug 20, 14 1:59 pm
"Derrida’s early position on colonial rule in Algeria, as advanced in the letter to Pierre Nora, does express a certain naïveté towards the effects and conditions of struggle. His subsequent proximity to Emmanuel Levinas and concern for Israel’s continuing existence, shared to a degree by nearly all the French intellectuals of his generation, reinforces the sense that a certain cultural prejudice affected his point of view on political matters. However, Derrida’s openness to the experiences of Palestinian struggle communicated by Genet, and later his interest in the commitment pursued by Mandela, radicalized his political position towards a much more uncompromising position for the deconstructive approach to ethics and politics; one that cannot be easily ignored or dismissed. While biography is often the most reductive approach to the implications of thought, awareness of Derrida’s interlocutors and sympathies can help us greatly in determining the continuing significance of his thought to contemporary political conflict."
A few days before he was killed trying to disarm an unexploded Israeli missile, Hazem Abu Murad, the head of Gaza’s bomb squad, estimated that Israel had dropped between eighteen to twenty thousand tons of explosives on Gaza since 7 July.
As I write, Israel has resumed its heavy bombardment after a nine-day truce ended without a long-term ceasefire agreement.
If Abu Murad’s estimate is right, then the explosive power Israel has fired on Gaza by land, sea and air so far is roughly equivalent to one of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan in August 1945.
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was rated at 13 kilotons – the equivalent of thirteen thousand tons of high-explosive TNT – while the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was rated at 21 kilotons.
Abu Murad, who died along with five other people on 13 August, estimated that about one thousand tons of unexploded munitions remained. There are more than 1,900 people killed in the ongoing Israeli assault – that is more than one out of every thousand of Gaza’s nearly 1.8 million residents.
...
Accountability
These details of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza are important: if human rights researchers can collect the evidence of the weapons and equipment used in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, it can help to make accountable not just those who ordered the weapons fired but also those who supplied them.
The staggering amount of weapons Israel has used to inflict so much indiscriminate harm underscores the urgency of calls for an arms embargo on Israel. It also highlights that Israel, an undeclared possessor of nuclear weapons, must urgently be brought under international control and monitoring.
But it is important not to lose sight of the big picture: no claim of “self-defense” could ever justify dropping this much explosives so indiscriminately and so deliberately on a captive civilian population.
Those who justify it as “self-defense” are complicit in mass murder.
It is also a mistake to look for a “military” explanation for Israel’s actions.
This massacre, this dropping of what plausibly approximates to a “small” atomic bomb on Gaza, can only be explained in political terms. As I have argued previously, it is the price of maintaining a “Jewish state” in Palestine.
archanonymous
Aug 21, 14 10:25 am
I don't understand what the people of Palestine hope to accomplish by allowing a violent political party to antagonize an opponent which has clearly superior military power, civil defenses, resources, and international support.
I fully support the re-establishment of an independent, free state for Palestinians, but I don't see how the Pyrrhic struggle is achieving that cause.
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces killed four Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday after targeting a cemetery in the Sheikh al-Radwan district, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Qidra said.
The bodies of Muhammad Talal Abu Nahl, Rami Abu Nahl, Haitham Tafesh and Abed Talal Shuweikh were taken to al-Shifa medicial center.
The victims were burying relatives who had been killed overnight by Israeli airstrikes.
The latest airstrikes bring the total death toll since midnight to 25 Palestinians.
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces on Wednesday demolished four Palestinian homes in the Nablus village of Aqraba, a Palestinian official said.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an that a large group of Israeli soldiers escorted a bulldozer to the village.
Israeli forces then demolished four old houses in the al-Taweel neighborhood which belonged to Muhammad Sudqi Salih and his brother Anwar.
The houses were over 100 years old.
The al-Taweel neighborhood is on the outskirts of Aqraba and locals say Israeli forces have targeted several properties in the area under the pretext that they were built without a permit.
Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures since occupying the West Bank in 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
chatter of clouds
Aug 21, 14 10:43 am
Orhan, by the way, that was an interesting post. A more extreme and involved case of the hasbara trolls we see here.
curtkram
Aug 21, 14 11:08 am
archanonymous, i am also curious as to why tammuz never talks about the history of the conflict, or if he really understands from an unbiased perspective what has actually been happening over the past few decades. it's apparently very important to him, so you would think some of his time would be spent looking for educational material from multiple sources (even those he might disagree with) to give him a broader understanding. obviously he thinks the israelis have done some horrible things, and he's right about that, but then there is obviously more to the situation too.
i also don't understand why he doesn't ever talk about how to move forward, with an understanding of what both the palestinians and israelis have at stake. i think he's made clear he would like to see a single-state. it seems he doesn't want the israeli people to establish that government though. i mean, israel could just annex gaza and the west bank, and then there would be a single state, but i'm pretty sure that's not what tammuz is after. also he wants to allow emigrated palestinians to return, and he's said it would be ok for the israelis currently living in the area to remain. if israelis remained the majority, wouldn't they be able to keep the government they have?
he often focuses on racial divisions, especially when he talks about ashkenazi jews, as if they don't belong there and don't have a right to establish a sovereign government. on one hand you have 'colonialization' and european settlers that have no right to live in the area living alongside palestinians who, because of their race and dna, lived there forever and have rights that the 'colonizers' don't have. how do you create a single state with that kind of racial divide? would tammuz plan on a palestinian government with the sort of anti-semitic laws which the european settlers moved to the area in the early 20th century to escape?
if the government changes, what happens to israeli's military and nuclear weapons? is the current government expected to hand these over to hamas? would the international community think that's a good idea, knowing the history of the conflict and the attacks on civilian populations? is it possible some rouge elements in the israeli military would just launch a couple in a last desperate act as they lose the country they might not want to lose? it would seriously suck if that were to happen. i know the situation sucks now, but seriously, it could be worse if you play out a scenario like that.
i suppose we should dismiss all that as stupid questions and post more dramatic pictures and statistics to build up fear and anger among simple minded people that don't want to bother with digging deeper into the problems they're facing. orhan's link to the article about the guy arguing with himself under multiple pseudonyms is actually pretty interesting. makes me wonder if tammuz is someone's alt? for what it's worth, i have never posted here under a name other than this one. of course there's no reason to believe me when i say that though.
More than one thousand professionals have signed a manifesto, released by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) academic campaign for Palestine, demanding to end all institutional relations with the Israeli academic world, until it stops supporting occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
chatter of clouds
Aug 21, 14 11:24 am
that curtkram individual cannot even cite my position credibly. S/he is a liar, suffice to say.
While proclaiming their supposed “concern” about civilian casualties, there can be no doubt that Netanyahu and his generals waged a deliberate campaign of terror directed against the population of Gaza as a whole. The repeated bombing and shelling of UN-run facilities in which tens of thousands had taken refuge was neither accident nor mistake. Those attacks were meant to send the message that there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, that resistance to Israeli domination was futile and surrender the only option.
It was a campaign of terror carried out by a terrorist state.
It’s the same message that repeated Israeli massacres from Deir Yassin in 1948, to Sabra and Shatila in 1982, to Jenin in 2002, to Gaza in 2014 were meant to convey. But despite the indescribable suffering they have been subjected to over the past century at the hands of imperialism and Zionism, the Palestinians continue to resist.
curtkram
Aug 21, 14 12:04 pm
that curtkram individual cannot even cite my position credibly. S/he is a liar, suffice to say.
great. if i got it wrong, what's your position then? which part was i mistaken on? do you support a two-state solution, with an independent palestine and an independent israel both co-existing west of the jordan without attacking each other? or is your position just a bunch of links from other people saying how horrible israel is? is your position just a bunch of dramatic pictures and statistics? do you even have an opinion, or are you just throwing a tantrum to get attention?
archanonymous says "but I don't see how the Pyrrhic struggle is achieving that cause."
do you understand what they're trying to achieve? can you explain it? do you think the link you just posted that says 'israel didn't achieve victory' is relevant at all? or is there really no point in any of your posts here?
archanonymous
Aug 21, 14 12:07 pm
curtkram,
I agree. There is a good deal of anger on all sides, but very little effort given over to sustaining an empathetic/ sympathetic response to the other side.
I am no expert on this, but did do a 6-month workshop at an "ivy league" university on the politics of space and geography with several well-known experts. One of the major assignments was imagining geopolitical solutions to this very issue. Before this current renewal in the conflict, every other time there was a flare-up, it generated global, high-level discussion on workable solutions for this place (that went beyond peace talks) - this does not seem to be happening to the same extent this time.
This issue is so complex, that region of the world so intricately tied and bound to centuries of violence and aggression. The end of the Ottoman empire and the events following WWII preceded over half a century of off and on conflict from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean that continues today. I certainly don't think tammuz and the like's yelling and hand-waving is the solution to any problems in this part of the world.
At the beginning of the 20th century, most Palestinians lived inside the borders of Palestine, now divided into the state of Israel, and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip (hereafter OPT). Until 1947, they owned or used approximately 90 percent of the land in Palestine.
Five major periods or episodes of forcible displacement from former Palestine have transformed Palestinians into the largest and longest-standing unresolved refugee case in the world today. Approximately half of the Palestinian people have been displaced outside their former homeland and 82 percent of the land has been expropriated.
...Palestinian displacement and dispossession are the result of forced population transfer ("ethnic cleansing"), defined by the UN as the “systematic, coercive and deliberate… movement of population into or out of an area … with the effect or purpose of altering the demographic composition of a territory, particularly when that ideology or policy asserts the dominance of a certain group over another.”i The Zionist movement and state of Israel have prevented self-determinationii of the Palestinian people, forcibly displaced them and barred the return of the displaced to their homes and properties for the purpose of colonization of Palestinian land and establishing a Jewish demographic majority in it.
As the sponsor of the ads displayed at Metro-North Railroad stations, allow me to respond to the article by Scott Richman and Larry Grossman of the American Jewish Committee/Westchester.
It would require volumes to recount the history of Palestine, the Jewish settlement there and the creation of the State of Israel, so I will focus only on the subject matter illustrated by the maps referenced in my ads — using, not my words, but those of Zionist and Israeli leaders.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote: “We shall have to spirit the penniless population (the Arabs) across the border … while denying it any employment in our own country.”
Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, said: “Palestine is to become as Jewish as England is English.”
David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, wrote: “I favor partition because when we become a strong power we will abolish partition and spread throughout Palestine.”
He also said: “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … we are the aggressors and they defend themselves”; and wrote this: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural, we have taken their country.”
Also, in a letter to his son: “We will expel the Arabs and take their place.”
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first foreign minister and second prime minister, is quoted in “Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict” as saying: “We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it.”
Moshe Dayan, Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff and later defense minister, was a straight talker: “There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
Richman and Grossman tell us that in 1967, “the Arab world threatened Israel with destruction.” Here’s what then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin said in 1982: “In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentration in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
The Arabs did not initiate the war, Israel did.
CD.Arch
Aug 21, 14 1:42 pm
Those are still one sided Tammuz. You're showing history as you have but there's no evidence of another side. You cannot post Palestine as being bullied the whole time. They aren't sitting there saying "oh me! Poor us!" Because it's a two sided conflict.
curtkram
Aug 21, 14 1:58 pm
you still haven't explained how to move forward either. just keep launching rockets and see what happens?
what do you intend to achieve by painting israel as the bad guy? do you think the international community is going to get together, force the current government of israel to dissolve, and hand their nuclear weapons over to hamas? or do you just want to get some people together to protest, so you have something entertaining to do in the evening?
chatter of clouds
Aug 21, 14 2:04 pm
CD.Arch,
Believe what you will. But if you don't see the run of events within the history of a colonizer and a colonized -which is in this case blatantly obvious - then you don't know what is happening -or refuse to know what is happening- and you call, rather mornonically, for two sides of the story as if there is any possible equivalence between the perpetrator of a crime and a victim.
Besides, the onus is not on me to furnish for you "the other side of the story" just in order to sound fair and balanced. Sometimes, it really is just that one side is a criminal...responsible for a crime of theft of land, oppression of another people. murder and genocide. Now, why on earth would you call for his or her story, what could possibly justify their heinous crimes?
For many many years, actually, the US and other parts of the western world have been hearing the news filtered from the Israeli side. The coverage of news and history as seen from Palestine has been disproportionally negligible. You hear about Hamas being the terrorists, Israel's right to defend itself, yada yada...with billions of dollars being spent on this industry of propaganda - all this is obvious to those who care to observe that its obvious. Your reality, in the US and in many other allied countries, is a fabricated and prejudiced one...and it is prejudiced towards the usurping colonizing force it has chosen to subvention and align itself with.
So, now, the likes of you start whining about not there being enough about "the other side" (ie the side that has nearly always been the nearly only one side to be presented to the US public in mainstream) because inherently you are programmed that way.
Asking for an equivalence between the "side of the story" from the rapist and that from the victim, in order to devolve this into, for instance, a general discussion on the fallibility of humanity (whomever she or he is, victim or criminal), is calculated in order to put you in an amoral (therefore immoral) stance towards the criminal who, in your apathy of neutrality, in the idiocy that precludes distinction between a historically aggressive criminal and a self-defensive victim, makes you party to the criminal's actions.
The Israel's side of the story has always been clear: colonize more land and throw the Palestinians out of their homelands. Everything they do, all their tactics, all psychological warfare and fabrications constructed to get you to sympathize with Israel's side over the credible, valid, necessary and valiant right of Palestinians to defend themselves is meant to get the world (or that deluded or complicit part of the world that falls for this poisonous bullshit) to turn against the victim, to forget and overlook each of Israel's long and continual history of massacres against the Palestinians in order to vilify and demonize the Palestinians and rob them of their right to self defense.
Israel is one of the remaining lingering evils of colonialism. Should you be fine with colonialism in principle, and with genocide and forcible displacement of people as tactics, you would be fine with Israel in principle. Are you fine with colonialism, genocide and the forced displacement of people from their homeland then? Perhaps you are; why not just be honest and say so....cut through all the ambiguating double speak, the latency of hypocricy and double standards and disclose your unified standard: that a European white population has the right to forcible eject other people from their homelands and that these other people have no right in self defense.
This is a unique opportunity to hear the renowned historian and author, Ilan Pappe speak about his book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" where he lays out the past, present, and offers suggestions for the future. Vancouver Marsh 29, 08
Orhan Ayyüce
Aug 21, 14 2:44 pm
Yuck! (to the badly rhetorical commentaries)
There is a mountain of posts here about;
history of the region and this particular carnage,
solutions and scenarios offered, inviting people to discuss.
I forget, most of you don't read, leave the room for a nightly entertainment and comeback for more double talk each time you remind yourselves to forget daily murders committed by Israeli army and the tugs who give the orders. So you "think" your conscience is clear and you are not taking sides. Do you realize you are defending the bloody murders of innocent people specially defenseless children and women? Do you?
Like I said before, here is a quarter, go put it in the washing machine to wash all the dirt so you can post as if nothing happened next day and ask intelligent sounding stupid questions here and keep barging, create dumb threads to defame this thread to which your equally desensitized known cohorts contribute momentarily and you don't get much in return for your stupidity, and comeback here for more quarters. You should thank tammuz for educating you, and me supplying the quarters. You are the fringe beneficiaries of the bloody and asymmetrical conflict already.
Non Sequitur
Aug 21, 14 3:35 pm
yawn.
jdparnell1218
Aug 21, 14 3:42 pm
Hey Non Sequitur, I thought we were just going to ignore this thread and not feed the trolls?
Non Sequitur
Aug 21, 14 3:45 pm
I know...
I just felt like reminding TAM & Orhan up there that they are just masturbating in circles.
Orhan Ayyüce
Aug 21, 14 4:24 pm
seems like you are the ones keep coming back to disrupt, salivate and play with your weenies.
if you can't take it leave or don't be cowards. you seem to be growing up to be exactly that.
Non Sequitur
Aug 21, 14 4:35 pm
Orhan, I tried to address this topic seriously in the first few pages before it went off the rails into batshit crazy-town but Tammuz and your own incessant naive one-sided postings have prevented any respectable (and objective) discussions to continue.
Orhan Ayyüce
Aug 21, 14 4:42 pm
i am incessant, naive and one sided. now get the fuck out of here and don't come back until you have something to say or post that we can learn from or discuss. you got nothing.
curtkram
Aug 21, 14 4:53 pm
i was actually asking a question, and archanonymous was seeking clarification, which you guys were generally unable to address, except by providing ad-hominem attacks and a link to an hour long video. "disrupt, salivate and play with your weenies" is not an accurate portrayal of the people that you may disagree with, or perhaps just don't understand.
solutions and scenarios have not been discussed, except in passing and showing a cursory understanding at best of the difficult situation faced by both the palestinians and the israelis. if i wanted to read electronicinfatada.net, i would read their website rather than this one. as it is, i prefer to learn from two-way conversations with people, and find the opinions of the architects and students that post here to often be worthwhile of consideration, even on those occasions when i do disagree with them. i wouldn't expect tammuz to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation, but i know you're capable of more if you chose orhan.
Non Sequitur
Aug 21, 14 4:55 pm
Orhan, I'll stay as long as nonsense gets posted.
Orhan Ayyüce
Aug 21, 14 5:05 pm
at least read it then. otherwise you are a certified loser troll.
From what I've been reading elsewhere - it appears that Hamas is losing power and popularity in Gaza (on account of their corruption) - and this is part of a last ditch effort to drum up outrage against Israel and rally their base. What really sucks is that they knew full well that Israel would retaliate (especially once they started firing rockets into Israel), and that their side would see far more casualties - so - many innocents have died, just so they could hold on to power, for what - a few more years? they even said the goal of the kidnapping was to "spark a popular Palestinian uprising." except it's not a popular uprising... ugh...
Yeah - I agree that Israel is an apartheid state, but it's looking like this current conflict is not about really about self-defense of Palestinians and more about the self-preservation of Hamas.
archanonymous
Aug 21, 14 5:36 pm
maybe everyone except tammuz and Orhan can start a new thread to discuss this.
21st August 2014 | Saeeda Al-Rashid | Occupied Palestine
It’s late May [2013], and the air is stifling. Heat sizzles from the pavement, and Khalili youth, though well-adapted to these conditions, can be seen wiping sweat from their brows as they trek home from school. A few trickle through Checkpoint 56 into the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, formally designated Israeli-controlled territory under the Hebron Agreement. Soldiers search their bags and detain one, but finding no reason to arrest him, release him an hour later, a routine form of harassment youth are all too accustomed to. At some point, a school-bus turns up the road. It’s labeled in Hebrew and English, “Air-Conditioned Video.” The school bus is only for settler children, whereas many Palestinian vehicles are not allowed to drive in Tel Rumeida.
The word “apartheid” is often used to criticize Israeli racism and the Israeli state’s policies of segregation. But on the street level, what does apartheid actually look like? While living in occupied Khalil under Israeli military occupation for a few months, I experienced only the beginning of the answer to those questions. The rest is in the lived experience of businessmen and women, school children, farmers and shepherds who have lived under occupation for forty-plus years.
Apartheid Defined
In his final report as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the oPt [Occupied Palestinian Territories], Richard Falk called for an investigation into the Israeli practices, broadly referred to as hafrada meaning “separation”, that could constitute apartheid under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Offenses that come in conflict with the Convention include the unlawful taking of life, administrative detention, and torture, and also the segregation of land and parallel legal systems in the West Bank that “prevent participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the full development of a racial group” (18).
This invokes a flood of memories from my short time in Palestine, including a young couple in Masafer Yatta living in a former sheep pen because the Israeli Civil Authority won’t grant them a permit to build a house; shops forced to close down during Jewish holidays so that settlers can illegally pass into the Palestinian-controlled part of Khalil; a B’tselem caseworker laughing aloud when we asked whether any action would be taken after Abu Shamsiya documented Israeli settlers’ assault on his family and was himself arrested on false charges of spitting at the nearby soldiers throwing stones and a tomato, whilst at the same time an Israeli boy of similar age threw eggs at internationals and went unpunished.
Saeeda waits outside the IDF compound with the family of a child arrested for ‘throwing a tomato’ (Photo by Youth Against Settlements).
Apartheid, as Falk points out, is not a recurrence of isolated crimes; rather, “the combined effect of the measures designed to ensure security for Israeli citizens, to facilitate and expand settlements, and, it would appear, to annex land, is hafrada, discrimination and systematic oppression of, and domination over, the Palestinian people.” Apartheid is in the rain that flooded the Khalil Souq (market), ruining goods that provide needed income for Khalili families, because Israeli authorities have prevented the construction of appropriate drainage facilities.
Women in Hebron shop flooded (photo by Women in Hebron).
Apartheid is in the rocky, rat-infested paths Palestinians travel on to climb the prayer road because the main roads are only for settlers. Apartheid is in the children who inhale tear gas nearly every day on the way to school, and every family stuck in the Qalandiya checkpoint during Ramadhan, barred from entering Jerusalem to worship. Apartheid is the reason ISM volunteers on the ground believe strongly in only taking actions led by Palestinians – this is their home, and their lives are impacted every day by apartheid years after we’ve flown home to our respective countries.
Resistance and Tear Gas
Richard Falk’s final report also pointed out that persecution of those who resist apartheid practices falls under article 2(f) of the Convention. Upon investigating the types of tear gas deployed by the IDF against peaceful protestors, from an organic chemistry perspective with the help of a leading chemist who was my professor, I unearthed a plethora of information on this vile substance.
The IDF principally uses CS gas (o-chlorobenzilidenemalononitrile). Exposure to CS gas has been implicated in a number of deaths in the West Bank as well as South Korea because it’s a potent Michael acceptor, making it able to inhibit many important chemicals in our bodies including the amino acid cysteine, which can be found on the TRPA1 protein channel that mediates our continued responsiveness to a wide variety of irritants and has been implicated in the prolonged sense of irritation experienced by some who are exposed to tear gas. (This is potentially the reason biting into an onion, a popular on-the-ground treatment for tear gas exposure, also counteracts the toxicity of CS gas – the inert sulfur-containing compounds in onions serve as alternate Michael donors).
Additionally, CS and CN gas produce methylene chloride, which as a nervous depressant and mild carcinogen reaches dangerous levels at exposure above 250 ppm by the constant barrage of intense tear gas deployment I witnessed at demonstrations. Finally, CS gas has been shown to be a mild mutagen (via intercalation with DNA) and thus it is also a potential carcinogen. Much has been said about the disparity in living conditions that results from the Israeli military occupation; prolonged exposure to dangerous chemicals for not only activists who resist the wall but shop-keepers and schoolchildren intertwines with the many different ways the system of apartheid and physical and legal segregation impact the daily lives of Palestinian people.
I believe this apartheid in and of itself is violence; there is no state of peace from which the more obvious forms of violence such as stone-throwing and shootings arise. There will only be peace when real justice is served – when apartheid is nothing more than a history lesson for our children.
An affidavit obtained exclusively by +972 reveals what appears to be the first documented case of a ‘human shield’ used by the Israeli military during its invasion of the eastern Gaza town of Khuza’a.
Abu Raida’s case was documented by Defense for Children International-Palestine, which released a statement Thursday based on the affidavit it collected. +972 spoke with the 17-year-old earlier today.
Trying to escape
Abu Raida’s ordeal followed two days of intense shelling from Israeli tanks, which had crossed the Gaza border near to his home. When his family decided to try and escape on foot, they were stopped by Israeli soldiers.
“I heard a soldier on one of the tanks ordering women, children and old people to stand on one side, and those between 20 and 40 years old to stand on the other side of the street,” Abu Raida said in the affidavit.
After seeing that men in the 20-40 group were taken to an empty field and made to strip down to their underwear, the 17-year-old “took two steps back to see what was going on.”
When he did, Abu Raida said an Israeli soldier took him to the open field, about 100 meters from the group of men, tied his hands with a plastic chord, and forced him to kneel down. According to Abu Raida, the soldier then proceeded to punch him in the stomach and face while saying repeatedly, “You’re not human, you’re a dog.”
At around 4 p.m., according to the affidavit, the men were taken away for questioning and the women, children and older residents were released. Abu Raida was blindfolded, made to strip to his underwear, and taken to a house.
Ahmad Abu Raida holds a the letter he wrote while detained by Israeli soldiers and used as a human shield in Gaza for five days from July 23, 2014 in Khuza’a, Gaza Strip. (photo: DCI-Palestine)
‘Are you Hamas?’
“When the blindfold was removed, I found myself inside the house surrounded by more than 20 soldiers,” Abu Raida told DCI-Palestine. Someone “in military uniform” then approached him and shouted in broken Arabic: “I need to settle the score with Hamas. Are you Hamas?”
After the questioning, Abu Raida was taken to a nearby house, with soldiers forcing him to walk in front of them, the affidavit said. After they gave him “water, two cookies and some nuts,” the soldiers made Abu Raida sit in a chair and tied his hands behind his back.
Abu Raida told +972 that the fear he felt that first night was compounded because he “had no idea what was going to happen.” He added that “there was no one else in the area,” as most of Khuza’a's residents had fled following the Israeli ground invasion.
“I was blindfolded at night,” Abu Raida told +972, “but I always tried to see where I was before they put the blindfold on.”
Looking for tunnels
Abu Raida described being taken out of the house the following day, at about 1 p.m., by a soldier who “made me walk in front of him and [ordered] me in broken Arabic to [turn] ‘left and right’. He was walking about three meters behind me.”
The soldiers then took Abu Raida to two houses, ordering him to “[g]et in and see if there are tunnels or not,” according to the 17-year-old. He told them that he did not find any, which prompted the “captain” to physically assault the child.
“He started punching and kicking me. He even brought a wire and hit me with it on my back,” Abu Raida told DCI-Palestine.
Here is Abu Raida’s complete account of the abuse:
“I was crying and begging him to stop, but he did not show any mercy. He kept hitting me over and over. He poured a glass of water on my trousers. He insulted me using very dirty words that I am familiar with, and other dirty words that I have never heard of. Even soldiers who did not speak Arabic insulted me as well. They threatened to ‘shove a stick into my … bottom’ if I did not tell them where the tunnels were.”
Writing his will
Abu Raida described a similar experience that occurred the following day. After being forced to enter two more houses “to search for tunnels” and finding none, he was again scolded by one of the soldiers and placed in a room by himself. “While I was in the room, I found a notebook and a pen inside a bag… so I decided to write my will and leave it for my family,” Abu Raida said in the affidavit.
DCI-Palestine provided an English translation of Abu Raida’s letter (pictured below in Arabic):
“I spent Friday, 25 July with Israel occupation soldiers who were locking me in this room. I do not know whether I am going to live or they would kill me. I do not know anything about what would happen next to me. I am writing this letter hoping someone would find it and inform my family about it. In case I die or get arrested, please send my greetings to my family. Ahmad Jamal Abu Raida.”
Later that day, Abu Raida was fed “three bites” of sardine.
The original letter written by Ahmad Abu Raida while detained by Israeli soldiers and used as a human shield in Gaza for five days from July 23, 2014 in Khuza’a, Gaza Strip. (photo: DCI-Palestine)
An ‘offer’ to spy
On July 26, according to the affidavit, Abu Raida was ordered to climb down into a hole and dig for tunnels. When he replied that the hole was the beginnings of “a sanitation well,” the captain “took off his helmet and hit me with it on my head,” said Abu Raida.
After complaining that he was feeling ill and could not dig anymore, Abu Raida was taken to a relative’s house, where soldiers again interrogated him about alleged Hamas tunnels:
“I told them I did not know anything about the tunnels, so they would slap me across the face or on my neck, or punch me or kick me whenever they wanted,” Abu Raida said.
After a night of repeated questioning and physical abuse – including being forced “to sit and stand up again more than 60 times” – Abu Raida was asked the following morning if he would “work for them as a spy.” After he refused, a soldier “pointed to the police dogs they had with them and said, ‘You see that dog, it’s better than you.’”
According to the affidavit, at around 1 p.m. on July 27, the fifth day of Abu Raida’s captivity, the soldiers allowed him to put his clothes back on and released him.
Clear case
“The Israeli military has consistently accused Hamas of using civilians – particularly children – as human shields, but this incident represents a clear case of their soldiers forcing a child to directly assist in military operations,” Rifat Kassis, executive director of DCI-Palestine, said in a statement the group released on the case..
The smell and the sights we saw were shocking. The moment we parked and I got out, a very strange smell hit us—the smell of dead bodies. That smell will never leave me; it is still stuck in my nose. We saw totally flattened houses and other houses partially destroyed. It reminded me of pictures from war-torn areas where years of fighting erased a village
I’m writing now from my home, but I still feel dizzy from shock and nauseated by the sights and smells on my visit to Khan Younis and Khuza’a.
Yesterday I decided to use the opportunity of the ceasefire to visit my family in Khan Younis. I especially wanted to see my sister who had open heart surgery before Israel’s assault. I hadn’t seen her for 36 days. I’m lucky that I have enough fuel in my car to drive 24 kilometers (15 miles) so I struck out towards the south.
I drove down Salaheddin Road and passed rubble from mosques, houses, and factories. Some buildings were destroyed completely and some partially. Later on in my drive, I saw dozens of big trees uprooted and smashed, fruit trees destroyed and farms and gardens decimated and ruined. The Israeli bombs were aimed to destroy the infrastructure, to destroy Gaza’s economy. Even the main cookie factory was targeted and destroyed.
I passed UN trucks distributing food to people in long lines. This siege and assault by the Israelis has made everyone in the Gaza Strip live as a refugee, missing basic needs and struggling to survive.
When I drove up to my family’s place in Khan Younis, it was a very emotional moment. We’ve lost many family members and, excuse me, my friends, I’m not going to talk about this meeting because every family in Gaza is going through the same thing.
My sister and relatives decided they wanted to go to see Khuza’a, a village located east of Khan Younis. At first I didn’t want to go to Khuza’a. I didn’t want to be reminded of the massacre, to witness more horrors. But I decided to go so I could give you, my friends from the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), and others living outside of Gaza my first-hand account. I know you are following the news closely but I also know the news might not tell you what has gone on and is going on in Gaza.
As we set out to the east, my niece pointed out the devastation, “You can see where the Israeli tanks were—here and here.” When we came to the village Abbasan, there was an Israeli military vehicle destroyed. Palestinian flags were flying from it and Palestinian children were playing on it while their families stood watching them.
We continued toward Khuza’a. It was a model Palestinian agricultural village with open fields and green everywhere. They had fruit trees and vegetable fields. But there was nothing left of the village I remembered.
Suspected IDF mass execution in Khuza’a
The smell and the sights we saw were shocking. The moment we parked and I got out, a very strange smell hit us—the smell of dead bodies. That smell will never leave me; it is still stuck in my nose. We saw totally flattened houses and other houses partially destroyed. It reminded me of pictures from war-torn areas where years of fighting erased a village. I could tell that something huge and terrible had happened here, the rubble and the destruction were extreme. Some villagers told us they had found two bodies in the rubble a couple of hours before we arrived. Still people were searching the ruins for their relative’s remains. Many times I had to stop myself from vomiting because the smell was so strong.
This Israeli assault has hit the Palestinian people more deeply than the last two military attacks. This one is even more deadly and destructive. Whole neighborhoods and villages have been wiped off the map.
I ask myself now how can we start again?
________________________________
Dr. Mona El-Farra, Director of Gaza Projects, is a physician by training and a human rights and women’s rights activist by practice in the occupied Gaza Strip.
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- At least 38 Palestinians died on Thursday as Israeli planes bombarded Gaza for the second day in a row after a temporary ceasefire fell apart after weeks of fighting, as the Palestinian negotiations delegation accused Israel of failing to respond to an offer for peace.
The deaths brought the death toll in Israel's nearly 50-day assault on the besieged coastal enclave to at least 2,087, a number that was expected to rise Thursday night as Israeli airstrikes continued pounding targets all over the Strip.
At least 469 children have been killed and over 3,000 injured in Gaza since the start of the Israeli offensive, a senior UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official said, adding that more than 370,000 Palestinian kids require “immediate psychosocial first aid.”
Nine children have died in Gaza violence since Wednesday, the chief of UNICEF’s Gaza field office, Pernilla Ironside, said at a press conference on Thursday in New York.
“There isn’t a single family in Gaza who hasn’t experienced personally death, injury, the loss of their home, extensive damage, displacement,” Ironside said.
...“The impact has truly been vast, both at a very physical level, in terms of casualties, injuries, the infrastructure that's been damaged, but also importantly, emotionally and psychologically in terms of the destabilizing impact that not knowing, not truly feeling like there is anywhere safe place to go in Gaza,” Ironside said.
...To demonstrate the extent of the damage in Gaza, Ironside estimated that it could take up to 18 years to rebuild the 17,000 housing units that were damaged in the conflict and in light of the ongoing blockade of the region limiting the movement of goods and people.
Steven Salaita, an Arab-American Professor of American Indian Studies, was just fired from his job for tweeting criticisms of the Israeli massacre in Gaza.
The University of Illinois, which fired Salaita, will try to tell you his job was ‘rescinded.’
But he was fired.
Here’s why the University and mainstream media don’t want to say he was fired.
Because firing a tenured professor purely for his political opinions, especially one with multiple academic publications to his record, means the University has violated the following:
1) His First amendment rights.
2) His academic freedom.
3) His rights as an employee at a public university, as well his rights to due process.
Here’s the single reason why we claim he was fired: more than one month ago, Steven Salaita signed a contract to work at the University of Illinois.
Approximately three weeks later, he was told he no longer had that job.
That’s a firing, not a rescission.
This incident signals the following:
—For those of us who have tenure in the academy, it tells us that our private expressions on social media may now outweigh our academic work.
The doctrine of eliminating or subduing Palestinians as the only way to build Israel on Palestine’s land was established early on, first by Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the leading ideologues of the Zionist movement. In his seminal work of 1923, The Iron Wall, he wrote:
“This [Zionist] colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs.”
While Netanyahu, following in the footsteps of Jabotinsky and Dayan, continues to attack Palestinian refugees in bouts of death and destruction, it is clear that Palestinians will never surrender and will not vanish overnight.
The policy was followed by Moshe Dayan 33 years later. Mourning a settler who was killed near Gaza in April 1956 on the land of the refugees, Dayan gave a candid speech which became the guiding light for subsequent Israeli military operations against Palestinian refugees. He said:
“For eight years now, they [the Palestinians] have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how, before their very eyes we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home…We are a generation of settlement and without the steel helmet and the gun’s muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree and build a house…That is the fate of our generation. This is our choice – to be ready and armed, tough and hard – or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.”
Sixty-six years after al-Nakba (The Catastrophe), the dispossessed Palestinians are still in refugee camps yearning to return to their homes across the barbed wire. Not far from Dayan’s eulogy lies the colony of Sederot built on the land of Najd and Huj villages. The 10,000 refugees from these villages live in refugee camps 3 km away. When they aim poorly-guided rockets on Sederot they are throwing them on the occupants of their land, reminding them that they still insist on returning home.
Why should they not return? The UN affirmed their right of return 135 times since 1948. The refugees are now crowded in the tiny Gaza Strip, 1.3 percent of the area of Palestine, at a density of 7,000 persons per km2 while the settlers on their land have a density of only 7 persons per km2. Meanwhile, the refugees’ land in the Israeli-occupied rural areas is still empty.
While Netanyahu, following in the footsteps of Jabotinsky and Dayan, continues to attack Palestinian refugees in bouts of death and destruction, it is clear that Palestinians will never surrender and will not vanish overnight. This stalemate can only be broken by a determined action on the part of the international community – some of whom bear a heavy historical responsibility for creating the suffering of Palestinians in the first place – to take the only possible course and apply the principles of justice, international law and UN resolutions. As a measure of urgency Israel must release its grip on the jugular vein of the Palestinians living in Gaza, and remove its air, land and sea blockade. Gaza must breathe.
During the July-August slaughter of Gaza residents, few liberal American commentators could muster the support for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, or even their right to not be mass murdered, that these same analysts can conjure for certain domestic issues or for people they see as oppressed by states other than American or its allies. By misrepresenting or ignoring evidence and overlooking crucial contexts, analysts such as Kevin Drum, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, and Michael Walzer asserted a false symmetry between Palestinians and the Israeli state or outright sided with the latter.
...Thus it is inaccurate to describe Israel’s bombing as a reaction to fire from Gaza because the Israeli airstrike came first while it is accurate to describe the fire from Gaza’s militants as a response to Israeli attacks. Meanwhile, Remnick claims that the murder of three Israeli settler teens initiated the Gaza 2014 war even though that happened in the West Bank on 12 June, a day after the Israeli airstrikes noted in the HRW, weeks after the Israeli military’s 15 May killing of two unarmed Palestinian teenagers, and after consistent Israeli violations of the November 2012 ceasefire. Apologists for the Israeli state are therefore simply wrong when they claim that it was acting defensively, even if one removes from the discussion that Israel’s occupation and siege of Gaza mean that it cannot legitimately claim to be acting in self-defence against Gaza.
......It should not surprise that American liberals would get Gaza disastrously wrong. Liberals do not wish to end colonialism but occasionally seek to tweak the terms on which it is administered. They do not oppose imperialism, they oppose anti-imperialist resistance.
Today is the 12th day of Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza.
The Palestinian body count is 336, 70 of whom are kids. This has become a murderous spree of killing for the zionist terrorist army, supported by government of this racist colonial entity and by their people , many of whom have been turning increasingly into blood thirsty mobs urging the murder of Palestinian
........................................................................................................
From Israeli calls for Palestinian blood ring at fever pitch :
On the eve of Abu Khudair’s lynching, Member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and government faction whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse the land, declaring “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” She advocated their complete destruction, “including its elderly and its women,” adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more “little snakes.”
... Since the beginning of July, raging crowds of Jewish Israelis just like these have marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beer Sheva, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Leftists,” swarming and attacking vulnerable victims. While a tiny contingent of radical Israelis have formed a loose “anti-fascist” network that tries to patrol city streets and prevent additional lynchings, they are extremely few in numbers and cannot be everywhere at all times.
While Israeli leaders unleash conscripted soldiers to bombard Gaza, they dispatch ultra-nationalist vigilantes to conquer cities inside Israel. With the incitement to murder Palestinians (and the few Israeli allies they have) continue unabated, it seems to be only a matter of time before the bubbling bloodlust boils overs into a bloodbath.
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I am sure that you, the people behind Archinect, are well aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this racist colonial entity that has been described by Moshé Machover as being far worse than the south african apartheid system: "talk of Israeli ‘apartheid’ serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."
The global BDS movement is a peaceful movement that has been, in the face of Israeli racist, oppressive and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, garnering great traction around the world as people everywhere are increasingly grasping the nature of the Zionist establishment that is called Israel. Through a deliberate, effective boycotting Israeli products, academics, businesses, items of interest, the movement contributes to the economic and moral isolation of Israel.
As you might know, there is also the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel , whose mission statement states the following:
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions..."
I notice that there are Israeli businesses being hosted within Archinect's firm listings (for example). As are listings of Israeli universities within the academic section. I highly urge Archinect, the people behind it, Paul, the editors, the writers....to desist from ignoring your responsibilities apropos taking a stand against this racist entity and to remove all Israeli related material from Archinect. You, like everyone else has that responsibility, because you have the knowledge and you have the right of choice. To ignore this is to be complacent and to be regressive.
As a virtual space that spans the social, the professional and the academic, as a gathering of professionals including architects, designers, artists, engineers and others, as a gathering of minds that by implication suggests a progressive humanist endeavor, please instate an anti-zionist, anti-israeli policy (that covers israeli academics, businesses, media, etc) in the spirit of the BDS movement.
Oakland protest blocks unloading of Israeli cargo ship
Did someone mention whitewashing? like the long history of whitewashing Zionist/Israel crimes, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians since its creation?
Max Blumenthal: "Birthright and the Whitewashing of Israeli Apartheid"
(part 2 and part 3 of video follows)
How Barack Obama learned to love Israel
Now
and then,
Obama with Edward Said in a deep conversation at a dinner.
Interesting bit about Penny Pritzker,
"Obama’s gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had “been courting the pro-Israel constituency.” He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker — now his national campaign finance chair — scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors."
"Derrida’s early position on colonial rule in Algeria, as advanced in the letter to Pierre Nora, does express a certain naïveté towards the effects and conditions of struggle. His subsequent proximity to Emmanuel Levinas and concern for Israel’s continuing existence, shared to a degree by nearly all the French intellectuals of his generation, reinforces the sense that a certain cultural prejudice affected his point of view on political matters. However, Derrida’s openness to the experiences of Palestinian struggle communicated by Genet, and later his interest in the commitment pursued by Mandela, radicalized his political position towards a much more uncompromising position for the deconstructive approach to ethics and politics; one that cannot be easily ignored or dismissed. While biography is often the most reductive approach to the implications of thought, awareness of Derrida’s interlocutors and sympathies can help us greatly in determining the continuing significance of his thought to contemporary political conflict."
Read the whole essay here: Derrida and the Crisis of French Zionism
The Double Identity of an "Anti-Semitic" Commenter
really interesting and full of double plays...
From How many bombs has Israel dropped on Gaza?
A few days before he was killed trying to disarm an unexploded Israeli missile, Hazem Abu Murad, the head of Gaza’s bomb squad, estimated that Israel had dropped between eighteen to twenty thousand tons of explosives on Gaza since 7 July.
As I write, Israel has resumed its heavy bombardment after a nine-day truce ended without a long-term ceasefire agreement.
If Abu Murad’s estimate is right, then the explosive power Israel has fired on Gaza by land, sea and air so far is roughly equivalent to one of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan in August 1945.
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was rated at 13 kilotons – the equivalent of thirteen thousand tons of high-explosive TNT – while the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was rated at 21 kilotons.
Abu Murad, who died along with five other people on 13 August, estimated that about one thousand tons of unexploded munitions remained. There are more than 1,900 people killed in the ongoing Israeli assault – that is more than one out of every thousand of Gaza’s nearly 1.8 million residents.
...
Accountability
These details of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza are important: if human rights researchers can collect the evidence of the weapons and equipment used in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, it can help to make accountable not just those who ordered the weapons fired but also those who supplied them.
The staggering amount of weapons Israel has used to inflict so much indiscriminate harm underscores the urgency of calls for an arms embargo on Israel. It also highlights that Israel, an undeclared possessor of nuclear weapons, must urgently be brought under international control and monitoring.
But it is important not to lose sight of the big picture: no claim of “self-defense” could ever justify dropping this much explosives so indiscriminately and so deliberately on a captive civilian population.
Those who justify it as “self-defense” are complicit in mass murder.
It is also a mistake to look for a “military” explanation for Israel’s actions.
This massacre, this dropping of what plausibly approximates to a “small” atomic bomb on Gaza, can only be explained in political terms. As I have argued previously, it is the price of maintaining a “Jewish state” in Palestine.
I don't understand what the people of Palestine hope to accomplish by allowing a violent political party to antagonize an opponent which has clearly superior military power, civil defenses, resources, and international support.
I fully support the re-establishment of an independent, free state for Palestinians, but I don't see how the Pyrrhic struggle is achieving that cause.
From 4 killed by airstrikes while burying relatives in Gaza cemetery
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces killed four Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday after targeting a cemetery in the Sheikh al-Radwan district, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Qidra said.
The bodies of Muhammad Talal Abu Nahl, Rami Abu Nahl, Haitham Tafesh and Abed Talal Shuweikh were taken to al-Shifa medicial center.
The victims were burying relatives who had been killed overnight by Israeli airstrikes.
The latest airstrikes bring the total death toll since midnight to 25 Palestinians.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank...
Israel demolishes 4 Palestinian homes near Nablus
Published yesterday (updated) 21/08/2014 12:19
(MaanImages/file)
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces on Wednesday demolished four Palestinian homes in the Nablus village of Aqraba, a Palestinian official said.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an that a large group of Israeli soldiers escorted a bulldozer to the village.
Israeli forces then demolished four old houses in the al-Taweel neighborhood which belonged to Muhammad Sudqi Salih and his brother Anwar.
The houses were over 100 years old.
The al-Taweel neighborhood is on the outskirts of Aqraba and locals say Israeli forces have targeted several properties in the area under the pretext that they were built without a permit.
Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures since occupying the West Bank in 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
Orhan, by the way, that was an interesting post. A more extreme and involved case of the hasbara trolls we see here.
archanonymous, i am also curious as to why tammuz never talks about the history of the conflict, or if he really understands from an unbiased perspective what has actually been happening over the past few decades. it's apparently very important to him, so you would think some of his time would be spent looking for educational material from multiple sources (even those he might disagree with) to give him a broader understanding. obviously he thinks the israelis have done some horrible things, and he's right about that, but then there is obviously more to the situation too.
i also don't understand why he doesn't ever talk about how to move forward, with an understanding of what both the palestinians and israelis have at stake. i think he's made clear he would like to see a single-state. it seems he doesn't want the israeli people to establish that government though. i mean, israel could just annex gaza and the west bank, and then there would be a single state, but i'm pretty sure that's not what tammuz is after. also he wants to allow emigrated palestinians to return, and he's said it would be ok for the israelis currently living in the area to remain. if israelis remained the majority, wouldn't they be able to keep the government they have?
he often focuses on racial divisions, especially when he talks about ashkenazi jews, as if they don't belong there and don't have a right to establish a sovereign government. on one hand you have 'colonialization' and european settlers that have no right to live in the area living alongside palestinians who, because of their race and dna, lived there forever and have rights that the 'colonizers' don't have. how do you create a single state with that kind of racial divide? would tammuz plan on a palestinian government with the sort of anti-semitic laws which the european settlers moved to the area in the early 20th century to escape?
if the government changes, what happens to israeli's military and nuclear weapons? is the current government expected to hand these over to hamas? would the international community think that's a good idea, knowing the history of the conflict and the attacks on civilian populations? is it possible some rouge elements in the israeli military would just launch a couple in a last desperate act as they lose the country they might not want to lose? it would seriously suck if that were to happen. i know the situation sucks now, but seriously, it could be worse if you play out a scenario like that.
i suppose we should dismiss all that as stupid questions and post more dramatic pictures and statistics to build up fear and anger among simple minded people that don't want to bother with digging deeper into the problems they're facing. orhan's link to the article about the guy arguing with himself under multiple pseudonyms is actually pretty interesting. makes me wonder if tammuz is someone's alt? for what it's worth, i have never posted here under a name other than this one. of course there's no reason to believe me when i say that though.
From 1,200 Spanish University Professors and Researchers Demand to Break Academic Relationships with Israel
More than one thousand professionals have signed a manifesto, released by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) academic campaign for Palestine, demanding to end all institutional relations with the Israeli academic world, until it stops supporting occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
that curtkram individual cannot even cite my position credibly. S/he is a liar, suffice to say.
From “Terror carried out by a Terrorist State”. Why Israel Wanted a Ceasefire Now?
While proclaiming their supposed “concern” about civilian casualties, there can be no doubt that Netanyahu and his generals waged a deliberate campaign of terror directed against the population of Gaza as a whole. The repeated bombing and shelling of UN-run facilities in which tens of thousands had taken refuge was neither accident nor mistake. Those attacks were meant to send the message that there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, that resistance to Israeli domination was futile and surrender the only option.
It was a campaign of terror carried out by a terrorist state.
It’s the same message that repeated Israeli massacres from Deir Yassin in 1948, to Sabra and Shatila in 1982, to Jenin in 2002, to Gaza in 2014 were meant to convey. But despite the indescribable suffering they have been subjected to over the past century at the hands of imperialism and Zionism, the Palestinians continue to resist.
that curtkram individual cannot even cite my position credibly. S/he is a liar, suffice to say.
great. if i got it wrong, what's your position then? which part was i mistaken on? do you support a two-state solution, with an independent palestine and an independent israel both co-existing west of the jordan without attacking each other? or is your position just a bunch of links from other people saying how horrible israel is? is your position just a bunch of dramatic pictures and statistics? do you even have an opinion, or are you just throwing a tantrum to get attention?
archanonymous says "but I don't see how the Pyrrhic struggle is achieving that cause."
do you understand what they're trying to achieve? can you explain it? do you think the link you just posted that says 'israel didn't achieve victory' is relevant at all? or is there really no point in any of your posts here?
curtkram,
I agree. There is a good deal of anger on all sides, but very little effort given over to sustaining an empathetic/ sympathetic response to the other side.
I am no expert on this, but did do a 6-month workshop at an "ivy league" university on the politics of space and geography with several well-known experts. One of the major assignments was imagining geopolitical solutions to this very issue. Before this current renewal in the conflict, every other time there was a flare-up, it generated global, high-level discussion on workable solutions for this place (that went beyond peace talks) - this does not seem to be happening to the same extent this time.
This issue is so complex, that region of the world so intricately tied and bound to centuries of violence and aggression. The end of the Ottoman empire and the events following WWII preceded over half a century of off and on conflict from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean that continues today. I certainly don't think tammuz and the like's yelling and hand-waving is the solution to any problems in this part of the world.
To remind:
From History of Forced Displacement of Palestinians
At the beginning of the 20th century, most Palestinians lived inside the borders of Palestine, now divided into the state of Israel, and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip (hereafter OPT). Until 1947, they owned or used approximately 90 percent of the land in Palestine.
Five major periods or episodes of forcible displacement from former Palestine have transformed Palestinians into the largest and longest-standing unresolved refugee case in the world today. Approximately half of the Palestinian people have been displaced outside their former homeland and 82 percent of the land has been expropriated.
...Palestinian displacement and dispossession are the result of forced population transfer ("ethnic cleansing"), defined by the UN as the “systematic, coercive and deliberate… movement of population into or out of an area … with the effect or purpose of altering the demographic composition of a territory, particularly when that ideology or policy asserts the dominance of a certain group over another.”i The Zionist movement and state of Israel have prevented self-determinationii of the Palestinian people, forcibly displaced them and barred the return of the displaced to their homes and properties for the purpose of colonization of Palestinian land and establishing a Jewish demographic majority in it.
To understand the history of Palestinian dispossession look to the words of Zionist and Israeli leaders
Henry Clifford, the 83-year-old Connecticut man who funded a billboard a New York MTA train line illustrating Israel’s expanding control over historic Palestine, responded to his critics in a letter to the lower Hudson Valley Journal News:
As the sponsor of the ads displayed at Metro-North Railroad stations, allow me to respond to the article by Scott Richman and Larry Grossman of the American Jewish Committee/Westchester.
It would require volumes to recount the history of Palestine, the Jewish settlement there and the creation of the State of Israel, so I will focus only on the subject matter illustrated by the maps referenced in my ads — using, not my words, but those of Zionist and Israeli leaders.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote: “We shall have to spirit the penniless population (the Arabs) across the border … while denying it any employment in our own country.”
Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, said: “Palestine is to become as Jewish as England is English.”
David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, wrote: “I favor partition because when we become a strong power we will abolish partition and spread throughout Palestine.”
He also said: “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … we are the aggressors and they defend themselves”; and wrote this: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural, we have taken their country.”
Also, in a letter to his son: “We will expel the Arabs and take their place.”
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first foreign minister and second prime minister, is quoted in “Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict” as saying: “We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it.”
Moshe Dayan, Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff and later defense minister, was a straight talker: “There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
Richman and Grossman tell us that in 1967, “the Arab world threatened Israel with destruction.” Here’s what then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin said in 1982: “In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentration in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
The Arabs did not initiate the war, Israel did.
Those are still one sided Tammuz. You're showing history as you have but there's no evidence of another side. You cannot post Palestine as being bullied the whole time. They aren't sitting there saying "oh me! Poor us!" Because it's a two sided conflict.
you still haven't explained how to move forward either. just keep launching rockets and see what happens?
what do you intend to achieve by painting israel as the bad guy? do you think the international community is going to get together, force the current government of israel to dissolve, and hand their nuclear weapons over to hamas? or do you just want to get some people together to protest, so you have something entertaining to do in the evening?
CD.Arch,
Believe what you will. But if you don't see the run of events within the history of a colonizer and a colonized -which is in this case blatantly obvious - then you don't know what is happening -or refuse to know what is happening- and you call, rather mornonically, for two sides of the story as if there is any possible equivalence between the perpetrator of a crime and a victim.
Besides, the onus is not on me to furnish for you "the other side of the story" just in order to sound fair and balanced. Sometimes, it really is just that one side is a criminal...responsible for a crime of theft of land, oppression of another people. murder and genocide. Now, why on earth would you call for his or her story, what could possibly justify their heinous crimes?
For many many years, actually, the US and other parts of the western world have been hearing the news filtered from the Israeli side. The coverage of news and history as seen from Palestine has been disproportionally negligible. You hear about Hamas being the terrorists, Israel's right to defend itself, yada yada...with billions of dollars being spent on this industry of propaganda - all this is obvious to those who care to observe that its obvious. Your reality, in the US and in many other allied countries, is a fabricated and prejudiced one...and it is prejudiced towards the usurping colonizing force it has chosen to subvention and align itself with.
So, now, the likes of you start whining about not there being enough about "the other side" (ie the side that has nearly always been the nearly only one side to be presented to the US public in mainstream) because inherently you are programmed that way.
Asking for an equivalence between the "side of the story" from the rapist and that from the victim, in order to devolve this into, for instance, a general discussion on the fallibility of humanity (whomever she or he is, victim or criminal), is calculated in order to put you in an amoral (therefore immoral) stance towards the criminal who, in your apathy of neutrality, in the idiocy that precludes distinction between a historically aggressive criminal and a self-defensive victim, makes you party to the criminal's actions.
The Israel's side of the story has always been clear: colonize more land and throw the Palestinians out of their homelands. Everything they do, all their tactics, all psychological warfare and fabrications constructed to get you to sympathize with Israel's side over the credible, valid, necessary and valiant right of Palestinians to defend themselves is meant to get the world (or that deluded or complicit part of the world that falls for this poisonous bullshit) to turn against the victim, to forget and overlook each of Israel's long and continual history of massacres against the Palestinians in order to vilify and demonize the Palestinians and rob them of their right to self defense.
Israel is one of the remaining lingering evils of colonialism. Should you be fine with colonialism in principle, and with genocide and forcible displacement of people as tactics, you would be fine with Israel in principle. Are you fine with colonialism, genocide and the forced displacement of people from their homeland then? Perhaps you are; why not just be honest and say so....cut through all the ambiguating double speak, the latency of hypocricy and double standards and disclose your unified standard: that a European white population has the right to forcible eject other people from their homelands and that these other people have no right in self defense.
Israeli settlers: stealing Palestine piece by piece
IDF General's Son: If Israel Doesn't Like Rockets, Decolonize Palestine | Interview with Miko Peled
so sorry
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. By Ilan Pappe
Video description:
This is a unique opportunity to hear the renowned historian and author, Ilan Pappe speak about his book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" where he lays out the past, present, and offers suggestions for the future.
Vancouver Marsh 29, 08
Yuck! (to the badly rhetorical commentaries)
There is a mountain of posts here about;
history of the region and this particular carnage,
solutions and scenarios offered, inviting people to discuss.
I forget, most of you don't read, leave the room for a nightly entertainment and comeback for more double talk each time you remind yourselves to forget daily murders committed by Israeli army and the tugs who give the orders. So you "think" your conscience is clear and you are not taking sides. Do you realize you are defending the bloody murders of innocent people specially defenseless children and women? Do you?
Like I said before, here is a quarter, go put it in the washing machine to wash all the dirt so you can post as if nothing happened next day and ask intelligent sounding stupid questions here and keep barging, create dumb threads to defame this thread to which your equally desensitized known cohorts contribute momentarily and you don't get much in return for your stupidity, and comeback here for more quarters. You should thank tammuz for educating you, and me supplying the quarters. You are the fringe beneficiaries of the bloody and asymmetrical conflict already.
yawn.
Hey Non Sequitur, I thought we were just going to ignore this thread and not feed the trolls?
I know...
I just felt like reminding TAM & Orhan up there that they are just masturbating in circles.
seems like you are the ones keep coming back to disrupt, salivate and play with your weenies.
if you can't take it leave or don't be cowards. you seem to be growing up to be exactly that.
Orhan, I tried to address this topic seriously in the first few pages before it went off the rails into batshit crazy-town but Tammuz and your own incessant naive one-sided postings have prevented any respectable (and objective) discussions to continue.
i am incessant, naive and one sided. now get the fuck out of here and don't come back until you have something to say or post that we can learn from or discuss. you got nothing.
i was actually asking a question, and archanonymous was seeking clarification, which you guys were generally unable to address, except by providing ad-hominem attacks and a link to an hour long video. "disrupt, salivate and play with your weenies" is not an accurate portrayal of the people that you may disagree with, or perhaps just don't understand.
solutions and scenarios have not been discussed, except in passing and showing a cursory understanding at best of the difficult situation faced by both the palestinians and the israelis. if i wanted to read electronicinfatada.net, i would read their website rather than this one. as it is, i prefer to learn from two-way conversations with people, and find the opinions of the architects and students that post here to often be worthwhile of consideration, even on those occasions when i do disagree with them. i wouldn't expect tammuz to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation, but i know you're capable of more if you chose orhan.
Orhan, I'll stay as long as nonsense gets posted.
at least read it then. otherwise you are a certified loser troll.
Hamas admits to kidnapping and murdering Israeli teenagers.
From what I've been reading elsewhere - it appears that Hamas is losing power and popularity in Gaza (on account of their corruption) - and this is part of a last ditch effort to drum up outrage against Israel and rally their base. What really sucks is that they knew full well that Israel would retaliate (especially once they started firing rockets into Israel), and that their side would see far more casualties - so - many innocents have died, just so they could hold on to power, for what - a few more years? they even said the goal of the kidnapping was to "spark a popular Palestinian uprising." except it's not a popular uprising... ugh...
Yeah - I agree that Israel is an apartheid state, but it's looking like this current conflict is not about really about self-defense of Palestinians and more about the self-preservation of Hamas.
maybe everyone except tammuz and Orhan can start a new thread to discuss this.
Resistance and tear gas
in Hebron, Journals August 21, 2014
21st August 2014 | Saeeda Al-Rashid | Occupied Palestine
It’s late May [2013], and the air is stifling. Heat sizzles from the pavement, and Khalili youth, though well-adapted to these conditions, can be seen wiping sweat from their brows as they trek home from school. A few trickle through Checkpoint 56 into the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, formally designated Israeli-controlled territory under the Hebron Agreement. Soldiers search their bags and detain one, but finding no reason to arrest him, release him an hour later, a routine form of harassment youth are all too accustomed to. At some point, a school-bus turns up the road. It’s labeled in Hebrew and English, “Air-Conditioned Video.” The school bus is only for settler children, whereas many Palestinian vehicles are not allowed to drive in Tel Rumeida.
The word “apartheid” is often used to criticize Israeli racism and the Israeli state’s policies of segregation. But on the street level, what does apartheid actually look like? While living in occupied Khalil under Israeli military occupation for a few months, I experienced only the beginning of the answer to those questions. The rest is in the lived experience of businessmen and women, school children, farmers and shepherds who have lived under occupation for forty-plus years.
Apartheid Defined
In his final report as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the oPt [Occupied Palestinian Territories], Richard Falk called for an investigation into the Israeli practices, broadly referred to as hafrada meaning “separation”, that could constitute apartheid under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Offenses that come in conflict with the Convention include the unlawful taking of life, administrative detention, and torture, and also the segregation of land and parallel legal systems in the West Bank that “prevent participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the full development of a racial group” (18).
This invokes a flood of memories from my short time in Palestine, including a young couple in Masafer Yatta living in a former sheep pen because the Israeli Civil Authority won’t grant them a permit to build a house; shops forced to close down during Jewish holidays so that settlers can illegally pass into the Palestinian-controlled part of Khalil; a B’tselem caseworker laughing aloud when we asked whether any action would be taken after Abu Shamsiya documented Israeli settlers’ assault on his family and was himself arrested on false charges of spitting at the nearby soldiers throwing stones and a tomato, whilst at the same time an Israeli boy of similar age threw eggs at internationals and went unpunished.
Saeeda waits outside the IDF compound with the family of a child arrested for ‘throwing a tomato’ (Photo by Youth Against Settlements).
Apartheid, as Falk points out, is not a recurrence of isolated crimes; rather, “the combined effect of the measures designed to ensure security for Israeli citizens, to facilitate and expand settlements, and, it would appear, to annex land, is hafrada, discrimination and systematic oppression of, and domination over, the Palestinian people.” Apartheid is in the rain that flooded the Khalil Souq (market), ruining goods that provide needed income for Khalili families, because Israeli authorities have prevented the construction of appropriate drainage facilities.
Women in Hebron shop flooded (photo by Women in Hebron).
Apartheid is in the rocky, rat-infested paths Palestinians travel on to climb the prayer road because the main roads are only for settlers. Apartheid is in the children who inhale tear gas nearly every day on the way to school, and every family stuck in the Qalandiya checkpoint during Ramadhan, barred from entering Jerusalem to worship. Apartheid is the reason ISM volunteers on the ground believe strongly in only taking actions led by Palestinians – this is their home, and their lives are impacted every day by apartheid years after we’ve flown home to our respective countries.
Resistance and Tear Gas
Richard Falk’s final report also pointed out that persecution of those who resist apartheid practices falls under article 2(f) of the Convention. Upon investigating the types of tear gas deployed by the IDF against peaceful protestors, from an organic chemistry perspective with the help of a leading chemist who was my professor, I unearthed a plethora of information on this vile substance.
The IDF principally uses CS gas (o-chlorobenzilidenemalononitrile). Exposure to CS gas has been implicated in a number of deaths in the West Bank as well as South Korea because it’s a potent Michael acceptor, making it able to inhibit many important chemicals in our bodies including the amino acid cysteine, which can be found on the TRPA1 protein channel that mediates our continued responsiveness to a wide variety of irritants and has been implicated in the prolonged sense of irritation experienced by some who are exposed to tear gas. (This is potentially the reason biting into an onion, a popular on-the-ground treatment for tear gas exposure, also counteracts the toxicity of CS gas – the inert sulfur-containing compounds in onions serve as alternate Michael donors).
Additionally, CS and CN gas produce methylene chloride, which as a nervous depressant and mild carcinogen reaches dangerous levels at exposure above 250 ppm by the constant barrage of intense tear gas deployment I witnessed at demonstrations. Finally, CS gas has been shown to be a mild mutagen (via intercalation with DNA) and thus it is also a potential carcinogen. Much has been said about the disparity in living conditions that results from the Israeli military occupation; prolonged exposure to dangerous chemicals for not only activists who resist the wall but shop-keepers and schoolchildren intertwines with the many different ways the system of apartheid and physical and legal segregation impact the daily lives of Palestinian people.
I believe this apartheid in and of itself is violence; there is no state of peace from which the more obvious forms of violence such as stone-throwing and shootings arise. There will only be peace when real justice is served – when apartheid is nothing more than a history lesson for our children.
shocking!
From Palestinian teen: I was used as a human shield in Gaza
An affidavit obtained exclusively by +972 reveals what appears to be the first documented case of a ‘human shield’ used by the Israeli military during its invasion of the eastern Gaza town of Khuza’a.
Abu Raida’s case was documented by Defense for Children International-Palestine, which released a statement Thursday based on the affidavit it collected. +972 spoke with the 17-year-old earlier today.
Trying to escape
Abu Raida’s ordeal followed two days of intense shelling from Israeli tanks, which had crossed the Gaza border near to his home. When his family decided to try and escape on foot, they were stopped by Israeli soldiers.
“I heard a soldier on one of the tanks ordering women, children and old people to stand on one side, and those between 20 and 40 years old to stand on the other side of the street,” Abu Raida said in the affidavit.
After seeing that men in the 20-40 group were taken to an empty field and made to strip down to their underwear, the 17-year-old “took two steps back to see what was going on.”
When he did, Abu Raida said an Israeli soldier took him to the open field, about 100 meters from the group of men, tied his hands with a plastic chord, and forced him to kneel down. According to Abu Raida, the soldier then proceeded to punch him in the stomach and face while saying repeatedly, “You’re not human, you’re a dog.”
At around 4 p.m., according to the affidavit, the men were taken away for questioning and the women, children and older residents were released. Abu Raida was blindfolded, made to strip to his underwear, and taken to a house.
Ahmad Abu Raida holds a the letter he wrote while detained by Israeli soldiers and used as a human shield in Gaza for five days from July 23, 2014 in Khuza’a, Gaza Strip. (photo: DCI-Palestine)
‘Are you Hamas?’
“When the blindfold was removed, I found myself inside the house surrounded by more than 20 soldiers,” Abu Raida told DCI-Palestine. Someone “in military uniform” then approached him and shouted in broken Arabic: “I need to settle the score with Hamas. Are you Hamas?”
After the questioning, Abu Raida was taken to a nearby house, with soldiers forcing him to walk in front of them, the affidavit said. After they gave him “water, two cookies and some nuts,” the soldiers made Abu Raida sit in a chair and tied his hands behind his back.
Abu Raida told +972 that the fear he felt that first night was compounded because he “had no idea what was going to happen.” He added that “there was no one else in the area,” as most of Khuza’a's residents had fled following the Israeli ground invasion.
“I was blindfolded at night,” Abu Raida told +972, “but I always tried to see where I was before they put the blindfold on.”
Looking for tunnels
Abu Raida described being taken out of the house the following day, at about 1 p.m., by a soldier who “made me walk in front of him and [ordered] me in broken Arabic to [turn] ‘left and right’. He was walking about three meters behind me.”
The soldiers then took Abu Raida to two houses, ordering him to “[g]et in and see if there are tunnels or not,” according to the 17-year-old. He told them that he did not find any, which prompted the “captain” to physically assault the child.
“He started punching and kicking me. He even brought a wire and hit me with it on my back,” Abu Raida told DCI-Palestine.
Here is Abu Raida’s complete account of the abuse:
“I was crying and begging him to stop, but he did not show any mercy. He kept hitting me over and over. He poured a glass of water on my trousers. He insulted me using very dirty words that I am familiar with, and other dirty words that I have never heard of. Even soldiers who did not speak Arabic insulted me as well. They threatened to ‘shove a stick into my … bottom’ if I did not tell them where the tunnels were.”
Writing his will
Abu Raida described a similar experience that occurred the following day. After being forced to enter two more houses “to search for tunnels” and finding none, he was again scolded by one of the soldiers and placed in a room by himself. “While I was in the room, I found a notebook and a pen inside a bag… so I decided to write my will and leave it for my family,” Abu Raida said in the affidavit.
DCI-Palestine provided an English translation of Abu Raida’s letter (pictured below in Arabic):
“I spent Friday, 25 July with Israel occupation soldiers who were locking me in this room. I do not know whether I am going to live or they would kill me. I do not know anything about what would happen next to me. I am writing this letter hoping someone would find it and inform my family about it. In case I die or get arrested, please send my greetings to my family. Ahmad Jamal Abu Raida.”
Later that day, Abu Raida was fed “three bites” of sardine.
The original letter written by Ahmad Abu Raida while detained by Israeli soldiers and used as a human shield in Gaza for five days from July 23, 2014 in Khuza’a, Gaza Strip. (photo: DCI-Palestine)
An ‘offer’ to spy
On July 26, according to the affidavit, Abu Raida was ordered to climb down into a hole and dig for tunnels. When he replied that the hole was the beginnings of “a sanitation well,” the captain “took off his helmet and hit me with it on my head,” said Abu Raida.
After complaining that he was feeling ill and could not dig anymore, Abu Raida was taken to a relative’s house, where soldiers again interrogated him about alleged Hamas tunnels:
“I told them I did not know anything about the tunnels, so they would slap me across the face or on my neck, or punch me or kick me whenever they wanted,” Abu Raida said.
After a night of repeated questioning and physical abuse – including being forced “to sit and stand up again more than 60 times” – Abu Raida was asked the following morning if he would “work for them as a spy.” After he refused, a soldier “pointed to the police dogs they had with them and said, ‘You see that dog, it’s better than you.’”
According to the affidavit, at around 1 p.m. on July 27, the fifth day of Abu Raida’s captivity, the soldiers allowed him to put his clothes back on and released him.
Clear case
“The Israeli military has consistently accused Hamas of using civilians – particularly children – as human shields, but this incident represents a clear case of their soldiers forcing a child to directly assist in military operations,” Rifat Kassis, executive director of DCI-Palestine, said in a statement the group released on the case..
Gaza: Whole Villages Have Been Wiped Off the Map
The smell and the sights we saw were shocking. The moment we parked and I got out, a very strange smell hit us—the smell of dead bodies. That smell will never leave me; it is still stuck in my nose. We saw totally flattened houses and other houses partially destroyed. It reminded me of pictures from war-torn areas where years of fighting erased a village
by Dr. MONA EL-FARRA Counterpunch
I’m writing now from my home, but I still feel dizzy from shock and nauseated by the sights and smells on my visit to Khan Younis and Khuza’a.
Yesterday I decided to use the opportunity of the ceasefire to visit my family in Khan Younis. I especially wanted to see my sister who had open heart surgery before Israel’s assault. I hadn’t seen her for 36 days. I’m lucky that I have enough fuel in my car to drive 24 kilometers (15 miles) so I struck out towards the south.
I drove down Salaheddin Road and passed rubble from mosques, houses, and factories. Some buildings were destroyed completely and some partially. Later on in my drive, I saw dozens of big trees uprooted and smashed, fruit trees destroyed and farms and gardens decimated and ruined. The Israeli bombs were aimed to destroy the infrastructure, to destroy Gaza’s economy. Even the main cookie factory was targeted and destroyed.
I passed UN trucks distributing food to people in long lines. This siege and assault by the Israelis has made everyone in the Gaza Strip live as a refugee, missing basic needs and struggling to survive.
When I drove up to my family’s place in Khan Younis, it was a very emotional moment. We’ve lost many family members and, excuse me, my friends, I’m not going to talk about this meeting because every family in Gaza is going through the same thing.
My sister and relatives decided they wanted to go to see Khuza’a, a village located east of Khan Younis. At first I didn’t want to go to Khuza’a. I didn’t want to be reminded of the massacre, to witness more horrors. But I decided to go so I could give you, my friends from the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), and others living outside of Gaza my first-hand account. I know you are following the news closely but I also know the news might not tell you what has gone on and is going on in Gaza.
As we set out to the east, my niece pointed out the devastation, “You can see where the Israeli tanks were—here and here.” When we came to the village Abbasan, there was an Israeli military vehicle destroyed. Palestinian flags were flying from it and Palestinian children were playing on it while their families stood watching them.
We continued toward Khuza’a. It was a model Palestinian agricultural village with open fields and green everywhere. They had fruit trees and vegetable fields. But there was nothing left of the village I remembered.
Suspected IDF mass execution in Khuza’a
The smell and the sights we saw were shocking. The moment we parked and I got out, a very strange smell hit us—the smell of dead bodies. That smell will never leave me; it is still stuck in my nose. We saw totally flattened houses and other houses partially destroyed. It reminded me of pictures from war-torn areas where years of fighting erased a village. I could tell that something huge and terrible had happened here, the rubble and the destruction were extreme. Some villagers told us they had found two bodies in the rubble a couple of hours before we arrived. Still people were searching the ruins for their relative’s remains. Many times I had to stop myself from vomiting because the smell was so strong.
This Israeli assault has hit the Palestinian people more deeply than the last two military attacks. This one is even more deadly and destructive. Whole neighborhoods and villages have been wiped off the map.
I ask myself now how can we start again?
________________________________
Dr. Mona El-Farra, Director of Gaza Projects, is a physician by training and a human rights and women’s rights activist by practice in the occupied Gaza Strip.
Israeli airstrikes kill 38 despite Palestinian ceasefire offer
Published yesterday (updated) 22/08/2014 12:28
(MaanImages)
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- At least 38 Palestinians died on Thursday as Israeli planes bombarded Gaza for the second day in a row after a temporary ceasefire fell apart after weeks of fighting, as the Palestinian negotiations delegation accused Israel of failing to respond to an offer for peace.
The deaths brought the death toll in Israel's nearly 50-day assault on the besieged coastal enclave to at least 2,087, a number that was expected to rise Thursday night as Israeli airstrikes continued pounding targets all over the Strip.
From 469 Gaza children killed, over 370,000 need ‘psychosocial aid’ – UNICEF
At least 469 children have been killed and over 3,000 injured in Gaza since the start of the Israeli offensive, a senior UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official said, adding that more than 370,000 Palestinian kids require “immediate psychosocial first aid.”
Follow RT's LIVE UPDATES on IDF operation in Gaza Strip
Nine children have died in Gaza violence since Wednesday, the chief of UNICEF’s Gaza field office, Pernilla Ironside, said at a press conference on Thursday in New York.
“There isn’t a single family in Gaza who hasn’t experienced personally death, injury, the loss of their home, extensive damage, displacement,” Ironside said.
...“The impact has truly been vast, both at a very physical level, in terms of casualties, injuries, the infrastructure that's been damaged, but also importantly, emotionally and psychologically in terms of the destabilizing impact that not knowing, not truly feeling like there is anywhere safe place to go in Gaza,” Ironside said.
...To demonstrate the extent of the damage in Gaza, Ironside estimated that it could take up to 18 years to rebuild the 17,000 housing units that were damaged in the conflict and in light of the ongoing blockade of the region limiting the movement of goods and people.
yep
all about keeping children safe
hmm
from COREY ROBIN
2700 Scholars Boycott UI; Philosopher Cancels Prestigious Lecture; Salaita Deemed Excellent Teacher; and UI Trustees Meet Again
In the mean time,
Univ. of Illinois admits pre-emptive firing of Israel critic Steven Salaita
The Steven Salaita Case
Steven Salaita
Steven Salaita, an Arab-American Professor of American Indian Studies, was just fired from his job for tweeting criticisms of the Israeli massacre in Gaza.
The University of Illinois, which fired Salaita, will try to tell you his job was ‘rescinded.’
But he was fired.
Here’s why the University and mainstream media don’t want to say he was fired.
Because firing a tenured professor purely for his political opinions, especially one with multiple academic publications to his record, means the University has violated the following:
1) His First amendment rights.
2) His academic freedom.
3) His rights as an employee at a public university, as well his rights to due process.
Here’s the single reason why we claim he was fired: more than one month ago, Steven Salaita signed a contract to work at the University of Illinois.
Approximately three weeks later, he was told he no longer had that job.
That’s a firing, not a rescission.
This incident signals the following:
—For those of us who have tenure in the academy, it tells us that our private expressions on social media may now outweigh our academic work.
From Slaughter in Gaza: the lessons of history
The doctrine of eliminating or subduing Palestinians as the only way to build Israel on Palestine’s land was established early on, first by Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the leading ideologues of the Zionist movement. In his seminal work of 1923, The Iron Wall, he wrote:
“This [Zionist] colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs.”
While Netanyahu, following in the footsteps of Jabotinsky and Dayan, continues to attack Palestinian refugees in bouts of death and destruction, it is clear that Palestinians will never surrender and will not vanish overnight.
The policy was followed by Moshe Dayan 33 years later. Mourning a settler who was killed near Gaza in April 1956 on the land of the refugees, Dayan gave a candid speech which became the guiding light for subsequent Israeli military operations against Palestinian refugees. He said:
“For eight years now, they [the Palestinians] have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how, before their very eyes we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home…We are a generation of settlement and without the steel helmet and the gun’s muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree and build a house…That is the fate of our generation. This is our choice – to be ready and armed, tough and hard – or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.”
Sixty-six years after al-Nakba (The Catastrophe), the dispossessed Palestinians are still in refugee camps yearning to return to their homes across the barbed wire. Not far from Dayan’s eulogy lies the colony of Sederot built on the land of Najd and Huj villages. The 10,000 refugees from these villages live in refugee camps 3 km away. When they aim poorly-guided rockets on Sederot they are throwing them on the occupants of their land, reminding them that they still insist on returning home.
Why should they not return? The UN affirmed their right of return 135 times since 1948. The refugees are now crowded in the tiny Gaza Strip, 1.3 percent of the area of Palestine, at a density of 7,000 persons per km2 while the settlers on their land have a density of only 7 persons per km2. Meanwhile, the refugees’ land in the Israeli-occupied rural areas is still empty.
While Netanyahu, following in the footsteps of Jabotinsky and Dayan, continues to attack Palestinian refugees in bouts of death and destruction, it is clear that Palestinians will never surrender and will not vanish overnight. This stalemate can only be broken by a determined action on the part of the international community – some of whom bear a heavy historical responsibility for creating the suffering of Palestinians in the first place – to take the only possible course and apply the principles of justice, international law and UN resolutions. As a measure of urgency Israel must release its grip on the jugular vein of the Palestinians living in Gaza, and remove its air, land and sea blockade. Gaza must breathe.
From Why American liberals failed on Gaza
During the July-August slaughter of Gaza residents, few liberal American commentators could muster the support for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, or even their right to not be mass murdered, that these same analysts can conjure for certain domestic issues or for people they see as oppressed by states other than American or its allies. By misrepresenting or ignoring evidence and overlooking crucial contexts, analysts such as Kevin Drum, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, and Michael Walzer asserted a false symmetry between Palestinians and the Israeli state or outright sided with the latter.
...Thus it is inaccurate to describe Israel’s bombing as a reaction to fire from Gaza because the Israeli airstrike came first while it is accurate to describe the fire from Gaza’s militants as a response to Israeli attacks. Meanwhile, Remnick claims that the murder of three Israeli settler teens initiated the Gaza 2014 war even though that happened in the West Bank on 12 June, a day after the Israeli airstrikes noted in the HRW, weeks after the Israeli military’s 15 May killing of two unarmed Palestinian teenagers, and after consistent Israeli violations of the November 2012 ceasefire. Apologists for the Israeli state are therefore simply wrong when they claim that it was acting defensively, even if one removes from the discussion that Israel’s occupation and siege of Gaza mean that it cannot legitimately claim to be acting in self-defence against Gaza.
......It should not surprise that American liberals would get Gaza disastrously wrong. Liberals do not wish to end colonialism but occasionally seek to tweak the terms on which it is administered. They do not oppose imperialism, they oppose anti-imperialist resistance.
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ok then