Abunimah News

Today: Ali on Chicago/Online call-in on Gaza

2009-01-07T10:10:51Z

7 January 2008

Dear Friends,
Today at Noon Central/1 PM Eastern I will be a guest on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview to discuss the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip. I believe there will be a debate and listeners may call in.

You can listen in Chicago on FM 91.5 or on the website from anywhere: http://wbez.org/Program_WV.aspx

The program will also be archived.

Ali Abunimah

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Jan 8 at U Chicago: Mearsheimer, Abunimah, Finkelstein speak on Gaza

2009-01-06T14:41:33Z

Crisis in Gaza: The US, Israel, and Palestine
John Mearsheimer, Norman Finkelstein and Ali Abunimah on the crisis in Gaza

Sponsors: Muslim Students Association, Amnesty International, Center for Middle
Eastern Studies, Northwestern MSA, AAAN

Location: University of Chicago - Mandel Hall. 1131 East 57th Street
Date: Thursday, January 8th
Time: 5:30-7:30 PM

On Saturday, December 27, Israel began its onslaught against the 1.5 million besieged and imprisoned Palestinians in the Gaza Strip--one of the most densely populated areas in the world. This attack has been the deadliest since Israel's occupation of Gaza in 1967, with more than 660 Palestinians killed and thousands injured by intense bombardment from air, land and sea. One week later, on January 3rd, Israel began an invasion.

The following speakers will discuss the reasons and ramifications of the most recent Israeli campaign:

- John Mearsheimer is the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and the co-author of "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy", a New York Times Best Seller.

- Ali Abunimah is a writer, commentator, and author of "One Country: A Bold Proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse", and co-founder of the website http://electronicintifada.net.

- Norman G. Finkelstein is a scholar of political theory and the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is the author of five books including "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict", and most
recently, "Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history."

The panel will begin at 5:30 PM, on January 8th, and will be moderated by Mezna Qato, a DPhil candidate in Palestinian history at the University of Oxford, and Chicago alum.

For more information, please email alarian@uchicago.edu.

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Obama, Gaza and the blinkers of American liberals

2009-01-02T06:47:52Z

Inheriting Bush's blinkers

By Ali Abunimah

guardian.co.uk
2 January 2009 11.30 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/02/israelandthepalestinians-barackobama

"I would like to ask President-elect Obama to say
something please about the humanitarian crisis that is
being experienced right now by the people of Gaza." Former
Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney made her plea after
disembarking from the badly damaged SS Dignity that had
limped to the Lebanese port of Tyre while taking on water.

The small boat, carrying McKinney, the Green Party's
recent presidential candidate, other volunteers, and
several tons of donated medical supplies, had been trying
to reach the coast of Gaza when it was rammed by an
Israeli gunboat in international waters.
(http://bit.ly/islI)

But as more than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed or
injured - the majority civilians - since Israel began its
savage bombardment of Gaza on 27 December, Obama has
maintained his silence. "There is only one president at a
time," his spokesmen tell the media. This convenient
excuse has not applied, say, to Obama's detailed
interventions on the economy, or his condemnation of the
"coordinated attacks on innocent civilians" in Mumbai in
November.

The Mumbai attacks were a clear-cut case of innocent
people being slaughtered. The situation in the Middle East
however is seen as more "complicated" and so polite
opinion accepts Obama's silence not as the approval for
Israel's actions that it certainly is, but as responsible
statesmanship.

It ought not to be difficult to condemn Israel's murder of
civilians and bombing of civilian infrastructure including
hundreds of private homes, universities, schools, mosques,
civil police stations and ministries, and the building
housing the only freely-elected Arab parliament.
(http://bit.ly/16VlX)

It ought not to be risky or disruptive to US foreign
policy to say that Israel has an unconditional obligation
under the Fourth Geneva Convention to lift its lethal,
months-old blockade preventing adequate food, fuel,
surgical supplies, medications and other basic necessities
from reaching Gaza.

But in the looking-glass world of American politics,
Israel, with its powerful first-world army, is the victim,
and Gaza - the besieged and blockaded home to 1.5 million
immiserated people, half of them children and eighty
percent refugees - is the aggressor against whom no
cruelty is apparently too extreme. While feigning
restraint, Obama has telegraphed where he really stands;
senior adviser David Axelrod told CBS on 28 December that
Obama understood Israel's urge to "respond" to attacks on
its citizens. Axelrod claimed that "this situation has
become even more complicated in the last couple of days
and weeks as Hamas began its shelling [and] Israel
responded".

The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when
Israel attacked Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The
Guardian itself reported on 5 November. A blatant
disregard for the facts, it seems, will not leave the
White House with George Bush on 20 January.
(http://bit.ly/bRVh)

Axelrod also recalled Obama's visit to Israel last July
when he ignored Palestinians and visited the Israeli town
of Sderot (http://bit.ly/9gEpQ). There, Obama declared:
"If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my
two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything
in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do
the same thing." (http://bit.ly/324H)

This should not surprise anyone. Despite pervasive wishful
thinking that Obama would abandon America's pro-Israel
bias, his approach has been almost indistinguishable from
the Bush administration's (as I showed in a longer
analysis: http://bit.ly/1zCC)

Along with Tony Blair and George Bush, Obama staunchly
supported Israel's war against Lebanon in July-August
2006, where it used cluster bombs on civilian areas,
killing more than 1,000 people.

Obama's comments in Sderot echoed what he said in a speech
to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in March 2007. He
recalled an earlier visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat
Shmona near the border with Lebanon which he said reminded
him of an American suburb. There, he could imagine the
sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my
own daughters". He saw a home the Israelis told him was
damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the
incident).

Obama has identified his daughters repeatedly with Israeli
children, while never having uttered a word about the
thousands - thousands - of Palestinian and Lebanese
children killed and permanently maimed by Israeli attacks
just since 2006. This allegedly post-racial president
appears fully invested in the racist worldview that
considers Arab lives to be worth less than those of
Israelis and in which Arabs are always "terrorists".

The problem is much wider than Obama: American liberals in
general see no contradiction in espousing positions
supporting Israel that they would deem extremist and
racist in any other context. The cream of America's
allegedly "progressive" Democratic party vanguard - House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Foreign Relations Committee
Chairman Howard Berman, New York Senator Charles Schumer,
among others - have all offered unequivocal support for
Israel's massacres in Gaza, describing them as
"self-defence".

And then there's Hillary Clinton, the incoming secretary
of state and self-styled champion of women and the working
classes, who won't let anyone outbid her anti-Palestinian
positions.

Democrats are not simply indifferent to Palestinians. In
the recent presidential election, their efforts to win
swing states like Florida often involved espousing
positions dehumanising to Palestinians in particular and
Arabs and Muslims in general. Many liberals know this is
wrong but tolerate it silently as a price worth paying
(though not to be paid by them) to see a Democrat in
office.

Even those further to the left implicitly accept Israel's
logic. Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive,
criticised Israel's attacks on Gaza as a "reckless" and
"disproportionate response" to Hamas rocket attacks that
he deemed "immoral". There are many others who do nothing
to support nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and
colonisation, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions
but who are quick to condemn any desperate Palestinian
effort - no matter how ineffectual and symbolic - to
resist Israel's relentless aggression. Similarly, we can
expect that the American university professors who have
publicly opposed the academic boycott of Israel on grounds
of protecting "academic freedom" will remain just as
silent about Israel's bombing of the Islamic University of
Gaza as they have about Israel's other attacks on
Palestinian academic institutions.

There is no silver lining to Israel's slaughter in Gaza,
but the reactions to it should at least serve as a wake-up
call: when it comes to the struggle for peace and justice
in Palestine, the American liberal elites who are about to
assume power present as formidable an obstacle as the
outgoing Bush administration and its neoconservative
backers.

(Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada
(http://electronicintifada.net) and author of One Country:
A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse)

guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

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How to know what's really happening in Gaza

2009-01-01T21:02:27Z

Dear Friends,

The Electronic Intifada (EI) team have been working long
hours to publish comprehensive coverage of the Israeli
attack on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,
including first-hand accounts and analysis from people in
Gaza, as well as incisive analysis and opinion not found
in the mainstream media.

Because of this I have not had the time to post news
directly to this list on a regular basis, so I am writing
to encourage you to regularly visit
http://electronicintifada.net to read the latest coverage.

Alternatively, you can sign up for the "ei News" list and
we will send you one daily email with summaries and links
to our latest articles. I have included today's update
below so you know what this is like.

To sign up for ei News go here:
http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi

Thank you and best wishes for the new year

Ali Abunimah

*****************************************************

EI is an independent, nonprofit public service that
relies on support from its readers. If you think our work
is valuable and informative please consider visiting the
site and making a donation.

*****************************************************

January 1st 2009

ONGOING GAZA COVERAGE:
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/687.shtml

PALESTINE : OPINION/EDITORIAL:

IS THE UN COMPLICIT IN ISRAEL'S MASSACRE IN GAZA?
By Omar Barghouti, The Electronic Intifada, 1 January 2009

The UN's complicity in Israel's propaganda war is the
latest, albeit hardly ever mentioned, dimension of the
international organization's utter failure in defending
its principles, foremost among which are the prevention of
war and the promotion of peace, when performing such a
duty is expected to stir the wrath of the US master and
the uniquely influential Israel lobby. Not only has the UN
Secretary-General betrayed the very Charter of the UN and
all relevant international law principles by failing to
even condemn Israel's massacre of civilians and targeting
of civilian institutions and residential neighborhoods.
Omar Barghouti comments for The Electronic Intifada.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10089.shtml

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PALESTINE : DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:

I CAN'T HUG MY MOTHER IN GAZA
By Ghada Ageel, Live from Palestine, 1 January 2009

There is nothing worse in life than being glued to the TV
screen, watching one's nation being slaughtered on an
hourly basis while able to do nothing. There is nothing
more painful in this universe than hearing the tears and
cries of one's mother on the phone and be unable to hug
her, to wipe her tears or to comfort her with any words or
means. Ghada Ageel writes from the UK.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10090.shtml

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PALESTINE : DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:

"THE RADIO REPORTED THAT MY FRIEND WAS UNDER THE RUBBLE"
By Dr. Haider Eid, Live from Palestine, 31 December 2008

I was lying in my bedroom when the first strike happened,
around 1:30 in the morning. A strike isn't just one
explosion, it's a series of explosions. Boom, boom, boom,
boom. The whole building shook. I woke up and went to the
bathroom first, and within 30 seconds the second strike
hit. F-16s were bombing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
building, about 500 meters away. I could hear glass
shattering everywhere. Dr. Haider Eid reports from the
besieged Gaza Strip.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10088.shtml

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PALESTINE : DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:

NEW YEAR IN GAZA: "OUR FIREWORKS ARE THE ISRAELI MISSILES"
By Rami Almeghari, Live from Palestine, 31 December 2008

"Look outside, F-16 jet fighters are smiling for you,
missiles are dancing for you, zannana [the Palestinian
name for pilotless drones] are singing for you. I
requested them all to wish you a happy new year." That was
the text message received by Fathi Tobal, a Gaza City
resident, on his mobile phone today. Tobal added
ironically, "While other people around the world
celebrate, it seems the Israeli air force is trying to
save us the cost of fireworks." The Electronic Intifada
correspondent Rami Almeghari reports on New Year's Eve in
the besieged Gaza Strip.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10085.shtml

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PALESTINE : DEVELOPMENT:

"CIVILIANS ARE PAYING THE PRICE IN GAZA"
By Haider Rizvi, The Electronic Intifada, 31 December 2008

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - International aid groups, including
several United Nations agencies, are warning of a
humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza if Israel does not stop
its military action there immediately. "The consequences
of [further] military action by Israel would be
disastrous," said Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam
International, a London-based aid organization that is
providing food and water for Palestinians affected by the
Israeli blockade. Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza
depend on Oxfam and other international aid agencies for
the basics of life -- clean water, food and sanitation.
Before the recent Israeli bombing campaign, Gaza had been
cut off from the outside world for 19 months.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10087.shtml

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PALESTINE : HUMAN RIGHTS:

THE CIVILIAN TARGETS OF ISRAEL'S BOMBING
Report, Al Mezan, 31 December 2008

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has continued its
military operation in the Gaza Strip for the fifth day.
Today, it targeted an ambulance and its medical crew with
a missile, killing a doctor and an orderly and critically
injuring its driver. According to Al Mezan Center's
monitoring, the number of Palestinian casualties since the
start of Israel's Operation Cast Lead at 11:30am on 27
December 2008 has risen to 315, of whom 41 were children
and nine women.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10086.shtml

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PALESTINE : DEVELOPMENT:

EGYPT SEEN AS COMPLICIT IN GAZA ASSAULT
By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani,
The Electronic Intifada, 31 December 2008

CAIRO (IPS) - As the Palestinian death toll approaches
400, much of popular anger throughout the Arab world has
been directed at Egypt -- seen by many as complicit in the
Israeli campaign. "Israel would not have hit Gaza like
this without a green light from Egypt," Hamdi Hassan, MP
for the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition
movement, told IPS. "The Egyptian government allowed this
assault on Gaza in hopes of finishing off Hamas."

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10084.shtml

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Audio/Transcript: Democracy Now on Gaza massacres

2008-12-29T10:16:43Z

December 29, 2008

Democracy Now spoke to Dr. Moussa El-Haddad and Fida Qishta in Gaza, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti in Ramallah, Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv and Ali Abunimah in the US.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in

Israeli Attacks Kill Over 310 in Gaza in One of Israelâ€™s Bloodiest Attacks on Palestinians Since 1948

Amidst worldwide protests, Israel is continuing its bombing campaign against Gaza for the third consecutive day and preparing to launch a possible ground invasion. Following months of a crippling blockade, this has been described as one of Israelâ€™s bloodiest attacks on Palestinians since 1948. Latest reports indicate that 310 people have been killed and 1,400 injured in the aerial strikes across the Gaza Strip since Saturday morning. The latest targets of the air strikes include the Hamas Interior Ministry building and the Islamic University. Israelâ€™s Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced today that Israel is in an â€œall-out war with Hamas and its proxiesâ€ in Gaza. Fears of a ground invasion are growing after Israel declared a military buffer zone around Gaza, closing off the strip and its 1.5 million residents to journalists and civilians.

For transcript, audio and video:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in

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"We have no words left" - Ali Abunimah - The Guardian

2008-12-28T20:50:43Z

Dear Friends,

The following article appears in the print and online
editions of The Guardian. It is developed and updated from
my earlier article.

Ali Abunimah

****************************************************

We have no words left

Palestinians are at a loss to describe this latest
catastrophe. International civil society must act now

By Ali Abunimah

The Guardian
29 December 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/israel-gaza-attack-palestinian-reaction

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air
force is doing." Those chilling words were spoken on
al-Jazeera on Saturday by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil
defence official in the Sderot area adjacent to the Gaza
Strip. For days Israeli planes have bombed Gaza. Almost
300 Palestinians have been killed and a thousand injured,
the majority civilians, including women and children.
Israel claims most of the dead were Hamas "terrorists". In
fact, the targets were police stations in dense
residential areas, and the dead included many police
officers and other civilians. Under international law,
police officers are civilians, and targeting them is no
less a war crime than aiming at other civilians.

Palestinians are at a loss to describe this new
catastrophe. Is it our 9/11, or is it a taste of the
"bigger shoah" Matan Vilnai, the deputy defence minister,
threatened in February, after the last round of mass
killings?

Israel says it is acting in "retaliation" for rockets
fired with increasing intensity ever since a six-month
truce expired on 19 December. But the bombs dropped on
Gaza are only a variation in Israel's method of killing
Palestinians. In recent months they died mostly silent
deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food,
cancer treatments and other medicines by an Israeli
blockade that targeted 1.5 million people - mostly
refugees and children - caged into the Gaza Strip. The
orders of Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, to
hold back medicine were just as lethal and illegal as
those to send in the warplanes.

Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, pleaded that Israel
wanted "quiet" - a continuation of the truce - while Hamas
chose "terror", forcing him to act. But what is Israel's
idea of a truce? It is very simple: Palestinians have the
right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills
them and continues to violently colonise their land.

As John Ging, the head of operations for the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees,
said in November: "The people of Gaza did not benefit;
they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence
... at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during
the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were
left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with
a few days of closure we ran out of food."

That is an Israeli truce. Any act of resistance including
the peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in the
West Bank is always met by Israeli bullets and bombs.
There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West
Bank, and yet Israel's extrajudicial killings, land theft,
settler pogroms and kidnappings never stopped for a day
during the truce. The western-backed Palestinian Authority
of Mahmoud Abbas has acceded to all Israel's demands.
Under the proud eye of United States military advisors,
Abbas has assembled "security forces" to fight the
resistance on Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a
single Palestinian in the West Bank from Israel's
relentless colonisation. The Israeli media report that the
attack on Gaza was long planned. If so, the timing in the
final days of the Bush administration may indicate an
Israeli effort to take advantage of a moment when there
might be even less criticism than usual.

Israel is no doubt emboldened by the complicity of the
European Union, which this month voted again to upgrade
its ties with Israel despite condemnation from its own
officials and those of the UN for the "collective
punishment" being visited on Gaza. Tacit Arab regime
support, and the fact that predicted uprisings in the Arab
street never materialised, were also factors.

But there is a qualitative shift with the latest horror:
as much as Arab anger has been directed at Israel, it has
also focused intensely on Arab regimes - especially
Egypt's - seen as colluding with the Israeli attack.
Contempt for these regimes and their leaders is being
expressed more openly than ever. Yet these are the
illegitimate regimes western politicians continue to
insist are their "moderate" allies.

Diplomatic fronts, such as the US-dominated Quartet,
continue to treat occupier and occupied, coloniser and
colonised, first-world high-tech army and near-starving
refugee population, as if they are on the same footing.
Hope is fading that the incoming administration of Barack
Obama is going to make any fundamental change to US
policies that are hopelessly biased towards Israel.

In Europe and the Middle East, the gap between leaders and
led could not be greater when it comes to Israel. Official
complicity and support for Israel contrast with popular
outrage at war crimes carried out against occupied people
and refugees with impunity.

With governments and international institutions failing to
do their jobs, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions National Committee - representing hundreds of
organisations - has renewed its call on international
civil society to intensify its support for the sanctions
campaign modelled on the successful anti-apartheid
movement.

Now is the time to channel our raw emotions into a
long-term effort to make sure we do not wake up to
"another Gaza" ever again.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse electronicintifada.net

Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

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Abunimah News Message

2008-12-28T20:47:56Z

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Gaza - Coverage from The Electronic Intifada

2008-12-28T07:21:11Z

Dear Friends,

We are working extra hard at The Electronic Intifada to bring you comprehensive coverage including eyewitness accounts, pictures and analysis of Israel's attack on Gaza. Below are links to some of our most recent articles. We will be publishing more today. Please check back at http://electronicintifada.net for frequent updates and please spread the word.

Ali Abunimah

******************************

PALESTINE : OPINION/EDITORIAL:

GAZA MASSACRES MUST SPUR US TO ACTION
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 27 December 2008

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air
force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al
Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense
official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of
Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.
A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes
and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of
locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at
least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of
these locations were police stations located, like police
stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas.
The US government was one of the first to offer its
support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow. The
Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah comments.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml

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PALESTINE : DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:

"THE AMOUNT OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IS INCONCEIVABLE"
By Safa Joudeh, Live from Palestine, 27 December 2008

It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion.
I rushed to my window and barely did I get there and look
out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure
of another explosion. For a few moments I didn't
understand but then I realized that Israeli promises of a
wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had
materialized. Safa Joudeh writes from the besieged Gaza
Strip.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10059.shtml

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PALESTINE : DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:

"SHABBAT SHALOM" IN GAZA
By Rami Almeghari, Live from Palestine, 27 December 2008

Shabbat Shalom! "Peaceful Saturday." I don't believe that
Israeli leaders appreciate the meaning of this Hebrew
greeting given at the start of the weekly Jewish day of
rest. No more "Shabbat Shalom," as on Saturday, 27
December 2008, just a few days before the start of a new
year, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on different parts
of the Gaza Strip. The Electronic Intifada correspondent
Rami Almeghari writes from the besieged Gaza Strip.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10060.shtml

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PALESTINE : DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:

THE RAINS OF DEATH IN GAZA
By Laila El-Haddad, Live from Palestine, 27 December 2008

We woke up this morning to the news in Gaza. It seems we
always wake up to news there -- so it has become a matter
of perspective how bad the news is each time; how remote
it seems each time; how real or not; how severe and
whether the severity warrants an "international outcry" or
whether the animals can continue to suffer in their cages
for a while longer. Laila El-Haddad writes from the US.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10058.shtml

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PALESTINE : HUMAN RIGHTS:

RIGHTS ORGS: ISRAEL'S WILLFUL KILLINGS A WAR CRIME
Press release, Various undersigned, 27 December 2008

Palestinian human rights organizations strongly condemn
the recent military attacks carried out by the Israeli
occupying forces in the Gaza Strip on 27 December 2008.
The attacks began at approximately 11:30am and lasted for
approximately three hours. These attacks have destroyed
most of the Gaza security offices including police
stations, resulting in the deaths of more than 200
Palestinians.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10057.shtml

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PALESTINE : ACTIVISM NEWS:

BOYCOTT COMMITTEE: "STOP THE MASSACRE IN GAZA - BOYCOTT
ISRAEL NOW!" Press release, Palestinian Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, 27 December
2008

Today, the Israeli occupation army committed a new
massacre in Gaza, causing the death and injury of hundreds
of Palestinian civilians, including a yet unknown number
of school children who were headed home from school when
the first Israeli military strikes started. This latest
bloodbath, although far more ruthless than all its
predecessors, is not Israel's first.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10056.shtml

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PALESTINE : DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:

NO BREAD IN GAZA
By Rami Almeghari, Live from Palestine, 25 December 2008

Yesterday, after I finished my lecture at one of Gaza's
universities, my wife asked me to bring some bread from
Gaza City. All bakeries in our area have stopped operating
because of the lack of flour and cooking gas due to
Israel's 18-month siege of the territory. I drove
throughout Gaza City to try to find some bread for my four
children, instead finding a miserable scene. The
Electronic Intifada correspondent Rami Almeghari writes
from the occupied Gaza Strip.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10054.shtml

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PALESTINE : DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:

HUNGER BEFORE THE STORM
By Sameh A. Habeeb, Live from Palestine, 25 December 2008

Israeli politicians, in the run-up to elections, are
promising to deal a severe blow to Gaza as this is how
Israeli policy is made. However, every household in Gaza
is already under siege. In Gaza you can only find pale,
angry and frustrated faces. If you visit my house you
won't find power, while my neighbor is out of gas. Another
neighbor seeks potable water as power outages have left
him without for four days. A third neighbor desparately
looks for milk for his child but does so in vain. Sameh A.
Habeeb writes from the occupied Gaza Strip.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10053.shtml

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Gaza massacres must spur us to action

2008-12-27T10:02:39Z

Gaza massacres must spur us to action

By Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada
27 December 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air
force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al
Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense
official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of
Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes
and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of
locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at
least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of
these locations were police stations located, like police
stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas.
The US government was one of the first to offer its
support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police
officers. Among those Israel labels "terrorists" were more
than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training.
An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and
injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead
children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time
thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on
their way home from school.

Shmerling's joy has been echoed by Israelis and their
supporters around the world; their violence is righteous
violence. It is "self-defense" against "terrorists" and
therefore justified. Israeli bombing -- like American and
NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is bombing for
freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel's massacres, already being
faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is
that Israel is acting in "retaliation" for Palestinian
rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the
six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no
Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rockets
attacks).

But today's horrific attacks mark only a change in
Israel's method of killing Palestinians recently. In
recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly
and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary
medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated
and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5
million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and
children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians
died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin,
cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from
reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel's idea of a truce.
It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce,
Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel
starves them, kills them and continues to violently
colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and
medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is
also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there
is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for
schoolchildren.

As John Ging, the head of operations of the United Nations
agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told The Electronic
Intifada in November: "there was five months of a
ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people
of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration
of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our
supplies were also restricted during the period of the
ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very
vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of
closure we ran out of food."

That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks
-- whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in
Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and
bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the
West Bank, and yet Israel's attacks, killings, land theft,
settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one
single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in
Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel's demands, even
assembling "security forces" to fight the resistance on
Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single
Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel's
relentless violent colonization. It did not save, for
instance, the al-Kurd family from seeing their home of 50
years in occupied East Jerusalem demolished on 9 November,
so the land it sits on could be taken by settlers.

Once again we are watching massacres in Gaza, as we did
last March when 110 Palestinians, including dozens of
children, were killed by Israel in just a few days. Once
again people everywhere feel rage, anger and despair that
this outlaw state carries out such crimes with impunity.

But all over the Arab media and internet today the rage
being expressed is not directed solely at Israel. Notably,
it is directed more sharply than ever at Arab states. The
images that stick are of Israel's foreign minister Tzipi
Livni in Cairo on Christmas day. There she sat smiling
with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Then there are the
pictures of Livni and Egypt's foreign minister smiling and
slapping their palms together.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that last
wednesday the Israeli "cabinet authorized the prime
minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister
to determine the timing and the method" of Israel's
attacks on Gaza. Everywhere people ask, what did Livni
tell the Egyptians and more importantly what did they tell
her? Did Israel get a green light to turn Gaza's streets
red once again? Few are ready to give Egypt the benefit of
the doubt after it has helped Israel besiege Gaza by
keeping the Rafah border crossing closed for more than a
year.

On top of the intense anger and sadness so many people
feel at Israel's renewed mass killings in Gaza is a sense
of frustration that there seem to be so few ways to
channel it into a political response that can change the
course of events, end the suffering, and bring justice.

But there are ways, and this is a moment to focus on them.
Already I have received notices of demonstrations and
solidarity actions being planned in cities all over the
world. That is important. But what will happen after the
demonstrations disperse and the anger dies down? Will we
continue to let Palestinians in Gaza die in silence?

Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real
solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political
action. The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group
reaffirmed this today as it "called upon all civil society
organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately
in any possible way to put pressure on their governments
to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute
sanctions against it."

The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement for
Palestine (http://www.bdsmovement.net/) provides the
framework for this. Now is the time to channel our raw
emotions into a long-term commitment to make sure we do
not wake up to "another Gaza" ever again.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

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"No bread in Gaza" and "Hunger before the storm"

2008-12-26T07:29:52Z

Dear Friends

Two articles from The Electronic Intifada which illustrate
the effects on every day families of the starvation siege
imposed by Israel.

Ali Abunimah

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No bread in Gaza

By Rami Almeghari

The Electronic Intifada
25 December 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10054.shtml

The Gaza Strip, home to more than 1.5 million
Palestinians, will soon be without its most basic
commodity: bread. While families around the world
celebrate Christmas, gathering around tables of abundance,
Gaza parents like me will not even be able provide bread
for their children unless Israel opens the commercial
crossings to Gaza from the outside world.

Yesterday, after I finished my lecture at one of Gaza's
universities, my wife asked me to bring some bread from
Gaza City. All bakeries in our area have stopped operating
because of the lack of flour and cooking gas due to
Israel's 18-month siege of the territory.

I drove throughout Gaza City to try to find some bread for
my four children, instead finding a miserable scene. On
the drive back to my home in the Maghazi refugee camp in
the central Gaza Strip, I saw dozens of people lining up
in rows to get bread from al-Yazji Bakery. I quickly
realized that it would take one or two hours until it
would be my turn in line, by which time I might not find
bread at all. So I continued my drive back to Maghazi,
without bread.

"Father, we want to eat, we don't have bread," my eldest
daughter complained. I paused and then thought to ask my
son Munir to bring some felafel sandwiches -- our answer
to fast food -- so we can quickly fill our empty stomachs.
Fortunately, after a while Munir returned carrying
sandwiches bought at an inflated price.

While we were eating, my wife asked me to drive early to
Gaza City the next day so we might buy some bread. Imagine
that today in Gaza, acquiring a simple package of bread
requires getting up at daybreak, purchasing a gallon of
expensive gas because it is smuggled in from Egypt, and
that it will take two or three hours to complete the task!
Of course, my family's story is not special. It is the
story of all families in Gaza who are trying to survive a
deliberate humanitarian crisis created by Israel.

According to Abdel Naser al-Ajrami, head of the bakers
association in Gaza, more than 27 bakeries out of a total
of 47 in Gaza City have been shut down completely due to a
lack of cooking gas and wheat, as Israel has sealed the
commercial border crossings for almost two months now.
Al-Ajrami explained yesterday that sufficient quantities
will be distributed to bakeries in the next three days,
adding that there have been relentless efforts by
officials of the ruling Hamas government to ensure that
the necessary amounts cooking gas and wheat are supplied
throughout Gaza.

On 18 December, the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees
(UNRWA) halted food distribution to 750,000 refugees in
Gaza, including my family, because their stocks of wheat
flour have run out. According to the United Nations Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
Israel is only allowing 16 truckloads of goods to enter
Gaza per day. In contrast, 475 trucks per day entered the
Strip in May 2007 when the militia loyal to Hamas took
control of the Gaza Strip amidst factional fighting with
forces loyal to the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas.

As the new year approaches, it is unclear what is in store
for Gaza as a six-month ceasefire between Israel and
Palestinian resistance groups ended earlier this week. In
response to the closure and the extrajudicial killing of
Palestinians by Israeli forces, resistance groups in Gaza
have renewed the firing of crude rockets into southern
Israel. As Israel gears up for an election, the fate of
families like mine becomes a matter of political rhetoric,
each candidate trying to outdo the other in its promises
to do harm to our lives. Gaza remains the world's largest
open-air prison. However, unlike other prisons, the
inmates are allowed to go hungry. Meanwhile, the Israeli
warden goes unpunished by the United States and the
European Union for its cruelty.

Rami Almeghari is contributor to The Electronic Intifada,
IMEMC.org and Free Speech Radio News. Rami is also a
former senior English translator at and editor-in-chief of
the international press center of the Gaza-based
Palestinian Information Service and a part-time lecturer
on media and political translation at the Islamic
University of Gaza. He can be contacted at rami_almeghari
A T hotmail D O T com.

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Hunger before the storm

By Sameh A. Habeeb

The Electronic Intifada
25 December 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10053.shtml

Israeli politicians, in the run-up to elections, are
promising to deal a severe blow to Gaza as this is how
Israeli policy is made. However, every household in Gaza
is already under siege. In Gaza you can only find pale,
angry and frustrated faces. If you visit my house you
won't find power, while my neighbor is out of gas. Another
neighbor seeks potable water as power outages have left
him without for four days. A third neighbor desparately
looks for milk for his child but does so in vain. Another
friend who lives on the corner needs medicine that can't
currently be found in Gaza.

There is no shortage of such stories in Gaza (though there
is a shortage of nearly everything else). Perhaps
broadcasting such stories would result in pressure on
Israeli leaders to stop the siege. Because what is
happening is that the entire Gaza population of 1.5
million -- densely packed into a small area -- is being
punished for crude rockets being fired into Israel by a
few.

Shaher Mazen, 25, holds a degree in political science but
works as a taxi driver to put bread on the table for his
family. I spoke to him while I was on my way to some of
the Gaza bakeries to cover some news that was happening
there. Shaher was frustrated because of siege and furious
towards the two rival Palestinian governments, considering
them as weak in the face of Israel.

Mazen said, "We are under an organized Israeli media
campaign. We are being starved and victimized by Israel.
The world think we are besieging Israel, not the other way
around. Israel is playing up the issue of rocket fire to
besiege us more and more."

Al-Shanty bakery in Gaza City is one of the Strip's
largest, supplying tens of thousands with bread.
Yesterday, hundreds of people crowded outside the bakery
in a very long queue, waiting for a bag of bread.
Children, women and men were awaiting the chance to buy
some bread, which has become scarce as Israel has not
allowed the import of adequate supplies of flour and
cooking gas.

"Our bakery is out of bread for days now and what we have
will only last for another 24 hours. In fact, we stopped
our work yesterday as we ran out of flour. Now, we use
animal feed which will finish in a matter of hours,"
explained 24-year-old Abed Masod while he busily worked at
the bakery.

A woman's voice arose above the crowd. She started to
scream and appealed to God for salvation and relief from
Gaza's dire situation. Forty-five-year-old Om Ali Shoman's
weary face bore the impact of Gaza's suffering. "This is
our destiny," she said. "It's a conspiracy designed
against us. What did my children do to stay at home with
no bread? Did they fire rockets? Did they kill Israelis?
Are they holding guns?"

Only about a dozen of Gaza's 47 bakeries are currently
operating as of yesterday, but with rapidly diminishing
supplies. The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) had
to stop its food aid deliveries because Israel has not
allowed it to replenish its stores. This affects 750,000
refugees in the Gaza Strip.

Gazans fear that the worst, however, is yet to come as the
Israeli government renews its threats of a major offense
against the Gaza Strip, irrespective of the civilian toll
an invasion would inevitably incur.

Time is running out in Gaza and mass starvation looms as
Gaza's skies are further darkened with threats of an
Israeli military incursion. As a journalist, peace
activist, and one of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans
who are being collectively punished by Israel, I urge
those who read this to appeal their governments to hold
Israel accountable to international law, including the
Fourth Geneva Convention, article 33 of which forbids the
collective punishment of a civilian population. Though it
unilaterally removed its illegal settlement population
from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel has remained in
control of Gaza's borders, sea and airspace, as well as
its population registry, and remains the occupying power,
and as such is obligated to abide by international
humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

I urge readers to press their governments to force Israel
to respect the countless United Nations resolutions that
affirm Palestinian rights, and which Palestinian leaders
demand must be immediately implemented.

Please don't let Gaza's plight be forgotten, and urge
those around you to act as well.

All photos by Sameh A. Habeeb.

Sameh A. Habeeb is a photojournalist, humanitarian and
peace activist based in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. He
writes for several news websites on a freelance basis.

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On Palestine, Security Council undermines justice and UN Charter

2008-12-24T06:07:50Z

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Security Council undermines justice and UN Charter

Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada
24 December 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10048.shtml

The United Nations Security Council passed its first
resolution on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in almost
five years, on 16 December. But far from marking a break
with the Council's abdication of responsibility for the
fate of the Palestinian people, United States- and
Russian-sponsored resolution 1850 is the final nail in the
coffin for even the pretense that international law and
institutions will play any serious role in ending 60 years
of dispossession and occupation, and bringing about a just
peace.

Adopted 14-0, with Libya abstaining, the resolution also
attempts to give the UN body's official seal of approval
to the ongoing usurpation of Palestinian democracy by the
puppet regime of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas and his external sponsors.

Before analyzing what is in the resolution, it is
important to note what is not. Under the UN Charter, the
Security Council's primary responsibility is to act to
maintain "international peace and security." And yet the
new resolution makes no mention of Israel's 4 November
ground and air attack on the Gaza Strip killing six
Palestinians and leading to the collapse of the
six-month-long truce Israel negotiated with Palestinian
resistance factions. It does not mention the blockade
Israel has imposed on Gaza deliberately reducing 1.5
million people to eating animal feed and scavenging
garbage while dozens die for lack of medical care. It
ignores the desperate warnings of a mounting humanitarian
crisis by officials of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine
refugees, as they shut down food distribution to hundreds
of thousands of persons because Israel would not allow
supplies in to Gaza.

The resolution makes no mention of these unconscionable
crimes even UN officials have termed "collective
punishment" -- a grave breach of the 1949 Fourth Geneva
Conventions by which Israel is bound as the Occupying
Power in the Gaza Strip (Israel's so-called
"disengagement" in 2005 does not absolve it of these
responsibilities). If the Security Council were minimally
abiding by its own responsibilities it would refer Israeli
political and military leaders to the International
Criminal Court for arrest and trial at The Hague for these
crimes as well as their escalating threats against an
occupied, colonized people who have few means of
self-defense. Indeed, the resolution does not even mention
the word "occupation."

For the Security Council to ignore Israel's detention and
expulsion of UN human rights envoy Richard Falk just a day
before it passed the new resolution sends a clear message
to other outlaw regimes that UN authority can be trampled
on with impunity.

Instead, resolution 1850 is full of deceptive language.
The world's highest international body welcomes, for
instance, the 9 November "statement from the Quartet," and
the "Israeli-Palestinian Joint Understanding" announced at
the Annapolis summit a year earlier. The Security Council
also "Declares its support for the negotiations initiated
at Annapolis" and its "commitment" to their
"irreversibility" -- whatever that means.

The resolution "Supports the parties' agreed principles
for the bilateral negotiating process and their determined
efforts to reach their goal of concluding a peace treaty
resolving all outstanding issues."

The frequent references to Annapolis and subsequent
negotiations are meaningless because one year of intensive
talks did not result in one single word of an agreement on
any issues being written down as the parties have
themselves repeatedly confirmed. Thus, this "support"
amounts to no more than a statement saying "wouldn't it be
nice if there were a solution to one of the world's
toughest and most dangerous conflicts? What a pity we're
not going to do anything to help."

But what is also hidden in this language is very dangerous
indeed. By defining the so-called "core issues" as
"bilateral," to be subjected to "negotiations" between two
hopelessly unequal parties, the Security Council is in
effect sidelining decades of international law,
undermining its own authority, and writing off Palestinian
rights.

To see just how cynical and dishonest the "peace process"
has become, let us go back to an earlier Security Council
Resolution, 465 of 1980. In that resolution, the Security
Council:

"Determine[d] that all measures taken by Israel to change
the physical character, demographic composition,
institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and
other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including
Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and
that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of
its population and new immigrants in those territories
constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva
Convention ..."

Resolution 465 -- only one of many to do so -- called on
Israel "to rescind those measures, to dismantle the
existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an
urgent basis," new settlement construction. It called on
all UN member states not to provide Israel with any
support facilitating colonization.

Under normal circumstances, outlaw states are not invited
to negotiate with their victims over whether or not they
will abide by basic tenets of international law, while the
Security Council sits idly by, or worse, supports the
aggressor as is the case now.

Resolution 1850 does not even bother to pay lip service,
as the Security Council did in the past, to Israel's
obligations under international law. Instead, it merely
"Calls on both parties to fulfill their obligations" under
the Quartet's "Roadmap," and "refrain from any steps that
could undermine confidence or prejudice the outcome of
negotiations." Hence, it places occupier and occupied on
the same footing, and reduces the right for Palestinians
not to be violently thrown off their land to a mere matter
of "confidence" between "negotiators."

By deferring to the Quartet and its failed "Roadmap," the
Security Council demeans itself. What is the Quartet? It
is a self-appointed, ad hoc committee made up of
representatives of the US, EU, Russia and the UN
secretary-general. In practice, however, the other members
have merely been decorative while the US calls the shots.
But how can the UN, representing 200 member states, reduce
itself to a single member of a committee itself composed
of a self-selected club of UN member states? And how can
the Security Council abdicate its own authority to such a
body, especially one that has proven so unremittingly
ineffective?

As absurd and bad as these things are, they are the
culmination of creeping trends evident also in the way the
UN allowed itself to legitimize post facto the US-led
invasion and occupation of Iraq. What is new, and equally
disturbing about resolution 1850 is its frontal attack on
Palestinian democracy.

The resolution "Calls on all States and international
organizations to contribute to an atmosphere conducive to
negotiations and to support the Palestinian government
that is committed to the Quartet principles and the Arab
Peace Initiative and respects the commitments of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization ..."

This translates as a call to continue boycotting the
democratically-elected Palestinian government that is now
caged in the Gaza Strip, while the so-called international
community continues to grant legitimacy and money to the
"government" headed by Salam Fayyad and appointed by Abbas
in violation of Palestinian law, after the failed
US-sponsored attempts to overthrow the elected government
in June 2007. Abbas' own term as Palestinian Authority
president expires on 9 January. By all indications he will
simply remain in his chair illegally. Lacking all
democratic legitimacy, Abbas will now be able to point to
the UN resolution as his basis for clinging to power just
because he, unlike the elected government, has capitulated
to the Quartet's one-sided conditions.

In short, the Security Council has decided that it, not
the Palestinian people, has the right to choose
Palestinian leaders. This is not only a usurpation of a
fundamental aspect of Palestinians' right to
self-determination, but an assault on democracy
everywhere.

While masquerading as an attempt to support peace,
resolution 1850 is replete with other cynical gestures.
Corrupt Palestinian Authority officials and external peace
process industry consultants and non-governmental
organizations will no doubt be thrilled by the Security
Council's call on "States and international organizations"
to "maximize resources available to the Palestinian
Authority," and to continue to fund the failed
"Palestinian institution-building program." This is also
an indirect way to legitimize the efforts of outside
powers to arm and train the militias loyal to Abbas whose
purpose is to crush Palestinian resistance to the
occupation.

The Arab League's irrelevance is confirmed when the
resolution merely notes in passing "the importance of the
2002 Arab Peace Initiative." And, the declaration that
"the two-state solution" is the "only" possible solution
is an effort to cover up decades of failure, and silence
the growing debate about democratic alternatives.

It is disappointing that Russia, after it was subjected to
the same kind of arbitrary and illogical decisions from
the West after Georgia's surprise attack on South Ossetia
last August, should collude in the further erosion of
Palestinian rights and UN authority. But that was probably
the price Russia had to pay for a petty reward: the
resolution promises yet another sterile "international
meeting" of the Quartet in Moscow next year. It is not the
first time that Palestinian rights have been traded for
such insignificant benefits for others.

With its latest intervention, the Security Council sought
to bestow legitimacy on Israeli occupation, colonization
and those who abet its oppression. Instead it simply
exposed ever more shamelessly its own illegitimacy and
subservience to powers who have no regard for
international law and for the rights of those it is
supposed to protect.

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of
Jordan at the United Nations.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

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