Further Expansion of Israeli Settlements

Though these settlements are illegal, belligerent and extremely harmful for the Palestinians being ethnically cleansed from the area – they continue unimpeded and uncommented on in the US press.

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News

Thursday December 06, 2007  

Jordanian minister challenges Israeli settlement expansion

On Thursday, the State minister for Information in Jordan, Nasser Judeh, condemned the Israeli government’s decision to further expand the settlement of Har Homa, near Bethlehem in the West Bank.

Israel recently announced plans to build 300 more units in the Har Homa settlement, saying that this doesn’t violate the ‘settlement freeze’ because, according to Israel, Har Homa is not a settlement.  It is unknown just how many of the 250 settlements currently in place throughout the Palestinian territory known as the West Bank are considered by Israel not to be settlements.

Judeh stated Wednesday that the settlement expansion violates international resolutions which ban the transfer of civilian populations into territories occupied by a military force.

He added that the expansion will increase tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, and threaten the efforts to jumpstart negotiations and begin an actual peace process.

International Middle East Media Center

The least surprising story of the day: Israeli officials reject U.S. findings on Iran

If the US ever makes the mistake of inititating war against Iran, there will be one reason, and one reason only for it. This was discussed extensively by Mearsheimer and Walt in their book that was explored here.

By Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy Newspapers Tue Dec 4, 1:29 PM ET

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials, who’ve been warning that Iran would soon pose a nuclear threat to the world, reacted angrily Tuesday to a new U.S. intelligence finding that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 and to date hasn’t resumed trying to produce nuclear weapons.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak directly challenged the new assessment in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the new finding wouldn’t deter Israel or the United States from pressing its campaign to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.

“It seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear program, but as far as we know, it has probably since revived it,” Barak said.

“Even after this report, the American stance will still focus on preventing Iran from attaining nuclear capability,” Olmert said. “We will expend every effort along with our friends in the U.S. to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.”

Probably no country felt more blindsided than Israel by the announcement Monday that 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, in a stunning reassessment, had concluded with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003 and with “moderate confidence” that it hadn’t restarted that program as of mid-2007.

For years, Israel has been at the forefront of international efforts to isolate Iran , with Israeli intelligence estimates warning that Iran was on the brink of a nuclear “point of no return,” an ominous assessment that often fueled calls for a military strike.

Israeli officials also have sought to isolate Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , citing his calls for Israel’s destruction and his skepticism that the Holocaust took place.

The U.S. intelligence finding said that evidence “suggests” that Iran isn’t as determined as U.S. officials thought to develop a nuclear weapon and that a diplomatic approach that included economic pressure and some nod to Iranian goals for regional influence might persuade Iran to continue to suspend weapons development.

On Tuesday morning, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper called the U.S.

findings “a blow below the belt.” An analysis in the competing Haaretz newspaper suggested that Israel might come to be viewed as a “panic-stricken rabbit” and said that the U.S. intelligence estimate established “a new, dramatic reality: The military option, American or Israeli, is off the table, indefinitely.”

“This is definitely a blow to attempts to stop Iran from becoming nuclear because now everybody will be relaxed and those that were reluctant to go ahead with harsher sanctions will now have a good excuse,” said Efraim Inbar , the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University .

The estimate created an awkward situation for Israeli leaders, who mostly tried to sidestep direct criticism of the Bush administration.

Olmert sought to focus on the report’s finding that Iran had been deterred in 2003 from pursuing its nuclear weapons program by international pressure. That, said Olmert, made continued sanctions essential.

Barak was tougher and promised that the report wouldn’t influence Israeli policy.

“We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend,” he said.

Israeli officials also highlighted where the U.S. and Israeli assessments agree.

They noted that while the latest U.S. assessment said that the earliest Iran was likely to develop enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb was 2010, Israeli assessments weren’t dramatically different, finding that Iran could develop the workings for a nuclear bomb by 2009.

Gerald Steinberg , the chairman of the political science department at Bar-Ilan University , suggested that the findings might increase the chances that Israel will attack Iran because they reduce the chances that the United States will act.

“I think it may introduce a lot of stress in the Israeli-American relationship,” he said.

But Emily Landau , the director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies , said it would be very difficult for Israel to launch an attack without explicit support from the United States .

“If Israel were to carry out a military action, it would have to be in coordination with the United States , so if the United States is moving away from that option, it would have implications for Israel as well,” she said.

( McClatchy special correspondent Cliff Churgin contributed to this report from Jerusalem .)

A must read book – Review of Lords of the Land

This an excellent review of what is certainly an important book. The only problem I have with the review is that I wish people would call “anti-Arab fanaticism” what it is, viz, “anti-Semitic fanaticism”. The monopoly of that invective by the Zionist movement has been impressive. However, it is yet one more way in which the Arab identity, and thereby existence, has been usurped. A serious insult indeed is when one powerful group denies a weaker group their racial identity; the dominant group then proceeds to act as if they are the only holders of this identity; and then, in a final act of chutzpah, they morph the term into a vituperation for use against the victimized group! The end result of this process is that Arabs (Semites) who are against the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel (also Semites), are labeled anti-Semites.

Review of Lords of the Land

“The Wild Wild West” of the Israeli Settler Movement

Editor’s Introduction: During the week of November 28, George Bush convened a Mid-East summit in Annapolis, Maryland that brought together Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The rhetoric was of a “peace process” and a “democratic Palestinian state.” The reality behind the rhetoric is the state of Israel, which claims a mandate from “god” to occupy Palestine, and that serves as a nuclear-armed enforcer for U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. The following article and “We—Israeli soldiers—were put there to punish the Palestinians” were drawn from exposures produced by critical supporters of Israel, shed light on the nature of that state.

On the morning of February 25, 1994, an orthodox Jew named Baruch Goldstein barged into the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, on the West Bank in Palestine. At the height of the Islamic observance of Ramadan, the mosque was crowded with over 800 Muslim worshippers. Goldstein forced his way past mosque security guards, pulled out his Uzi submachine gun, and began to fire into the dense crowd. Goldstein emptied four magazines of bullets and as he was loading his fifth clip, he was subdued and killed. By then he had murdered 29 people and wounded another 125.

Goldstein was a doctor who had chosen to move from his home in Brooklyn, New York to be part of a growing movement of fundamentalist Jews in Israel who for many years have been penetrating deeper and deeper into Palestinian-owned land. Goldstein’s adopted residence was the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron.

This particular act of terror was condemned by the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin. Yet the mass murderer was hailed by mourners at his funeral as a hero, a martyr in the cause of creating “Greater Israel.” Beyond Rabin’s statement, Israel’s government took no actions to suppress or even restrain the settler movement, the soil from which Goldstein had grown. To this day, Jewish “settlements” that sometimes consist only of a trailer or a pre-fabricated shelter, continue to be established across the West Bank and the land they occupy continues to in effect be annexed by the state of Israel.

A new book that has just been published in the U.S. (it first came out in Israel, written in Hebrew, in 2005) provides a detailed study of the development of the settler movement in Israel and how it is closely tied to government policy and Zionist ideology, as well as to fanatical Jewish religious cults. Lords of the Land: the War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007 (New York, Nation Books, 2007) is authored by Professor Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, the chief political columnist and editorial writer for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. As supporters of the state of Israel, their exposure cannot be dismissed as being motivated by anti-Israel bias.

The West Bank and Gaza were seized by Israel in the June 1967 war against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel then accepted—in words—that it had the status of being an occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza. As a signatory to the Geneva Convention, an occupying power such as Israel is prohibited from transferring its civilian population into occupied territory.

The story of how this basic prohibition has been systematically shredded by Israel, how bit by bit the West Bank is being swallowed by Israel, is in large part the story of Lords of the Land.

“The Wild Wild West”

Approximately 2.4 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. But by the end of 2006, there were some 270,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and another 220,000 in neighborhoods surrounding Jerusalem. Since the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005, nearly 20,000 new settlers have been added to the West Bank.

Lords of the Land reports that over 40% of Jewish settlement in the West Bank has been on private land owned by Palestinians “and that 130 settlements were established wholly or in part on lands that the state itself had determined to be ‘private.’ The settlers took control of these lands, but it was the state that had confiscated them and enabled the settlement of its citizens in contravention of international law, of some government decisions and in many cases of court orders.” (p. xiii) The authors cite a November 2006 report by the Israeli group Peace Now which used records from the Israeli government to present the above figures.

The violent, viciously anti-Arab fanaticism of Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 massacre in Hebron was a concentrated example of how the Israelis first occupied and then proceeded to outright steal the West Bank. Today, Jewish settlers in the West Bank regularly carry submachine guns and act as vigilantes, often firing at Palestinian demonstrators and even at civilians who are not even confronting them.

From its inception, the settler movement has elevated its mystical vision of an expanded Israel where the “messiah” returns, above the value of human lives, especially Arab lives. When the first Palestinian Intifada (Arabic for “the shaking off”) rebellion against Israeli occupation and oppression broke out in December 1987, the settler publication Nekudah called it the “harshest test since the settlement project began.” Settler leader Hannan Porat called for “massive expulsions” of Palestinians from their own land. Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat of the large settlement of Maaleh Adumin declared that “anything we do as a result of distress and anger, even killing, is good, is acceptable and will help. Killing is just a matter for the Kingdom.”

Lords of the Land quotes a settler in 1988 who invoked a comparison to the conquest of Indian land by U.S. settlers: “Everyone can do whatever he wants. It’s a different planet. You are the law…they used to say ‘the Wild West’ as a joke. Today, this is no longer a joke. We go out at night, cover the license plates, go into the nearby Arab village and the fun begins.” (pp. 105-106)

In April 1988, a group of Israeli teenaged hikers, with armed settlers as guards, were confronted by some young Palestinians near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Elon Moreh. One of the armed settlers began firing his gun.

Two teenaged Palestinians were killed and one of the Israeli teens, Tirtza Porat, the daughter of one

of the founders of the settlement, was also killed.

The story was spread that she was killed by a rock that had been thrown by a Palestinian. In response, the settlers and the Israeli government blamed the Palestinians from the village of Beita. Collective punishment was carried out by demolishing thirteen Palestinian homes in Beita. Tirtza Porat’s funeral was an occasion for the unleashing of fanatic fundamentalist Jewish religious wrath. “At moments, the funeral turned into a near-lynching. In the presence of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, his deputy David Levy, and Minister Ariel Sharon…Rabbi Haim Druckman called for wiping Beita off the face of the earth. Minister of Religious Affairs Zevulun Hammer followed suit and also demanded that Beita be destroyed and that a settlement named after Tirtza be established immediately in Samaria [the ancient Hebrew name for the region]. ‘Lord of Vengeance our God, Lord of Vengeance appear,’ cried Benny Katzover [a leader of the settler movement].” The prime minister said that “every act of murder strengthens the Jewish people, unites it, and connects it to this land, deepening its roots here.” (p. 109)

The truth is that Tirtza had not been killed by a stone thrown by an Arab, but in fact by a bullet fired by the settler-vigilante Romem Aldovi who had shot wildly at the Palestinian teenagers. This was the conclusion of the official government investigation into the incident.

Again, the vigilante atmosphere was not an aberration. Soon after the Intifada began, in January 1988, Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister and a few years later prime minister, declared that the way to crush the Intifada was with “force, might, and beatings.” (p. 112)

“Facts on the Ground”

In one of many case studies in the book, Lords of the Land describes what would become a template for carving up and seizing Palestinian land. In 1968, within one year of the occupation of the West Bank by the Israeli military, one of the first of many Jewish settlements was created, this time in Hebron.

The land grab took place like this: A group of fanatic orthodox Jews, led by a certain Rabbi Levinger, declared that it was god’s will for the state of Israel to annex the West Bank. They proposed to the Labor Party-led government that they be allowed to temporarily reside in Hebron in order to observe a major Jewish religious event. They went to Hebron for the religious observance and never left.

When Palestinians became angered at this affront, the Israeli army was called in to protect the settlers. The military encampment and the collection of settlers grew larger until the government “realized” it had to provide for more permanent settlement. In later years, a variation of this scheme would label the initial colonizing settlers as “workers” for a military construction project (since Israel held the West Bank under military occupation) so that no pretext was required for military intrusion into civilian Palestinian areas.

The leaders in the Israeli government who had responsibility for ruling on the settlers’ initial request to briefly stay in Hebron were non-committal. The fanatics, some secular Zionist organizations, and other government leaders who supported them, took government refusal to outright prohibit the settlers as a green light to go ahead. In January 1968, Menachem Begin, a leader of the Likud Bloc party (and who had led an underground Zionist militia in the years before the founding of Israel) was a minister without portfolio. Begin proposed to the government to “plan and build townships with Jewish inhabitants in Jericho, Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus, Tul Karm, Jenin and Qalqilya.” All of these were major Palestinian towns in the West Bank. In September 1968, a special committee appointed by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan recommended establishing a Jewish settlement in Hebron.

Government labor minister Yigal Allon (who had also commanded another Zionist militia before 1948) along with other government leaders, “…not only became the advocates for the settlers inside the government but also helped them with advice, material, weapons, and, most important, the seal of approval of the pioneering Labor movement. Their militant, constructive sense of vocation combined with the settlers’ godly sense of mission.” (p. 15) In December 1968, Allon proposed that the government support a major settlement outside of the city limits of Hebron. Lords of the Land recalls Allon declared “that Israel had accustomed itself ‘and the entire world to relate to the act of settlement as facts that carry unique weight. This has become one of the weapons of our national revival movement. Presumably, therefore, they will make no mistake in understanding the importance of this act.’” (p. 23)

By early 1970, the settlement of Kiryat Arba was formally established just outside of Hebron, beginning with the construction of a military camp. The original settlement inside Hebron remained as well.

Methods the Zionist Movement Sanctified from its Inception

While the authors of Lords of the Land do not oppose Zionism, they shed revealing light on how the pattern of settlement in the West Bank is consistent with the Zionist project in Palestine as a whole.“The process of the settlement of Jewish civilians in the territories in breach of the Geneva Convention, which does not permit the transfer of inhabitants from the occupier’s territory to the occupied territory, was gradual and systematic, and was accomplished in ways that the Zionist movement had nurtured and sanctified from its inception. The methods that characterized the struggle before 1948 to obtain a Jewish state, a combination of overt and clandestine acts carried out by underground or semiunderground organizations, were resurrected in the territories occupied in 1967. In their capacity as the custodians of the law, and as the dominant organized system on the ground, the army and its commanders were the settlers’ main support in their illegal activities.” (pp. 345-346)

Referring to the Hebron example, the authors point out “This tried-and-true Zionist outlook, which was now copied into the context of Hebron, dated back to the days of the ‘tower and stockade’ settlements of the 1930s—the establishment overnight of controlling Jewish settlements like elevated observation points surrounded by fences and walls in the heart of an Arab population.” (p. 23) The “stockade and tower” method is explained later in more detail: “The method was the establishment of a tiny settlement within a single day, surrounded by a stockade of wood and gravel, and in its center a wooden tower topped by a searchlight. Dozens of Jewish settlements were thus established especially along the contours of Arab population centers and integrated into the improvised defense system.” (p. 278)

Today, Palestinian land in the West Bank is being chopped up left and right. There are the expanding settlements that seize Palestinian land. There is the construction of a system of highways in the West Bank that connects Jewish settlements and that Palestinians are forbidden to use. On top of this, there is the physical “security wall” being built around the West Bank which already actually intrudes well into Palestinian land, cutting off many Palestinian villages from their cultivated land and effectively annexing more Palestinian land into Israel. For example, on October 9, 2007, Israel expropriated 110 hectares (272 acres) of land near the Palestinian town of Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem. This area is near a section of the separation wall near the Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim that alone already extends 60 sq. kilometers (23 sq. miles) into Palestinian land.

This is all on top of the continual Israeli military assaults against Palestinian towns and villages, the constant arbitrary searches and arrests, the assassination of Palestinian activists and militants. Israeli troops also continue their practice of demolishing the houses of families with the justification that a member of the family has been accused of resistance against Israel. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions says that 18,147 homes have been demolished since 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza (see http://www.icahd.org).

And in the wake of the conference on the “Israeli-Palestinian peace process” staged by Bush this week in Annapolis, Maryland, it is worth keeping in mind that none of the negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership, all sponsored by the United States government, have ever resulted in serious action by the Israelis to curtail or reverse the expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank.  The so-called document of “joint understanding” released by the participants at Annapolis did not even mention the settlements.

Money over Lives

Gentle reader, the following has nothing directly to do with the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It does, however, have everything to do with the dangerous mix of militarism and capitalism that is presently dominant in the US policy making community. For that reason, it demands comment. The next time you hear some pundit pontificating on how the military takes care of its troops, think about what’s below. As always, my comments are in red.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer

The Marines plan to buy fewer bomb-resistant vehicles than planned despite pressure from lawmakers who are determined to spend billions of dollars on the vehicles. Such vehicles are, of course, the only proven way to save lives in this misbegotten war against “terrorists”.

The Marine Corps’ requirement for mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles would drop from the planned 3,700 to about 2,400, The Associated Press has learned. The Marines would not comment on the decision, but defense officials confirmed the cut. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced.

About a month ago, Marine Commandant Gen. T. James Conway signaled the possibility of a new examination of the commitment to the vehicles, saying he was concerned his force was getting too heavy. “I’m a little bit concerned about us keeping our expeditionary flavor,” he said. The good General has just told the next widow, mother, widower, or father of a dead Marine that his force’s “flavor” comes before her or his husband’s/wife’s, son’s/daughter’s, brother’s/sister’s life. And yes, women have died in combat here.

At the same time, an independent study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington questioned whether the Pentagon was buying too many of the pricey vehicles, which can cost as much as $1 million each. And how much does a life cost? The study found that in some cases, the heavily armored vehicles, with their bomb-deflecting V-shaped hulls, might not be the answer that many believe they are.

Military officials and other experts have said that while the vehicles, known as MRAPs, are lifesavers in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are not as useful or mobile in some terrain. But they are “lifesavers”, right?

The Marine Corps was criticized this year for not responding quickly enough to urgent requests for the vehicles from troops in Iraq. In May, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the vehicles were the military’s highest priority acquisition program.

In his comments last month, Conway said the Marine Corps has emerged as a “second land Army,” assigned to secure Iraq, and must buy heavy equipment, including the mine-resistant vehicles, for protection against roadside bombs. I don’t even know what that means: Is the General saying that because he doesn’t want the Corps to be like the Army, he’s willing to sacrifice the lives of his Marines? I’ve heard of Marine pride, but I would suggest that the General may not be speaking for his combat troops.

“Can I give a satisfactory answer to what we’re going to be doing with those things in five or 10 years? Probably not,” Conway said at an event sponsored by the Center for a New American Security. “Wrap them in shrink wrap and put them in asphalt somewhere is about the best thing that we can describe at this point. And as expensive as they are, that is probably not a good use of the taxpayers money.” The crude vulgarity of this comment is shocking. The cost of a car is literally dictating the likelihood of a Marine’s survival. The dollar figure wins.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, buoyed by the vehicle’s solid record — to date no troops have died in one — have consistently said the military must buy more and must buy them faster. There you have it; a 100% survival rate, but too expensive.

When Nixon and Kissinger are “vexed” about your integrity- there’s a problem

For the New York Times, this in an excellent article about recently declassified documents pertaining to the relationship between the US and Israel. Cold war calculations and political maneuvering allowed Israel to steal nuclear information and maintain an undisclosed nuclear program without ever signing the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty – this continues to the present.

Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Vexed Nixon

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28

President Richard M. Nixon and his close advisers were quietly fretting about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Their main worry was not a potential enemy of the United States, but one of America’s closest friends.

“The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons,” Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser, warned Mr. Nixon in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969 — part of a newly released trove of documents.

Israel’s nuclear arms program, which Israel has never officially conceded exists, was believed to have begun at least several years before, but it was causing special problems for the young Nixon administration. For one thing, the president was preparing for a visit by its prime minister, Golda Meir, who was also in her first year in office and whose toughness was already legendary.

The Nixon White House’s concerns over Israel’s weapons were detailed in documents from the Nixon Presidential Library that were released on Wednesday by the National Archives under an executive order that requires that classified documents be reviewed and possibly declassified after 25 years.

The documents provide insights into America’s close, but by no means problem-free, relationship with Israel. They also serve as a reminder that concerns over nuclear arms proliferation in the Middle East, now focused on Iran, are decades old.

But perhaps the most interesting material, and the most pertinent given the just-completed peace conference in Annapolis, Md., concerns Israel and its relations with its neighbors, as well as with the United States.

“There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel’s weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States about 1965,” Mr. Kissinger noted in his long memorandum.

He also said that one problem with trying to persuade Israel to freeze its nuclear program was that inspections would be useless, conceding that “we could never cover all conceivable Israeli hiding places.”

“This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us,” Mr. Kissinger said, “and may even have stolen from us.”

Although Israel has never publicly acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, scientists and arms experts have no doubt that it has them, and the United States’ reluctance to pressure Israel to disarm has made America vulnerable to accusations that it has a double standard when it comes to stopping the spread of weapons in the Middle East.

But Mr. Kissinger reflected at length on the quandary faced by the United States. “Israel will not take us seriously on the nuclear issue unless they believe we are prepared to withhold something they very much need,” he wrote, referring to a pending sale of Phantom fighter jets to Israel.

“On the other hand, if we withhold the Phantoms and they make this fact public in the United States, enormous political pressure will be mounted on us,” Mr. Kissinger went on. “We will be in an indefensible position if we cannot state why we are withholding the planes. Yet if we explain our position publicly, we will be the ones to make Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons public with all the international consequences this entails.”

One of those consequences might be to “spark a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the Arabs, tighten the Soviet hold on the Arabs and increase the danger of our involvement,” Mr. Kissinger wrote at another point.

But Avner Cohen, the author of “Israel and the Bomb,” (Columbia University Press, 1998) who is a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, said on Wednesday that there was enough historical evidence to indicate that the president and the prime minister had reached a secret understanding on at least one issue: Israel would keep its nuclear devices out of sight and not test them, and the United States would tolerate the situation and not press Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that has been embraced by scores of countries around the world.

“That understanding remains to this day,” Mr. Cohen said.

NYT

Israeli troops execute injured Palestinian in Gaza, eyewitnesses say

If true, and there is a great deal of history to suggest that it is, this is yet another outrage committed by the Israeli Defense Force against the Palestinians. It is because these sorts of crimes against humanity continue contemporaneously with the absurd “peace talks” at Annapolis that I am not expending more time and energy covering that particular waste of time. I do, however, have several posts below which discuss the talks, what each side wants, and the ultimate futility of this exercise in photo taking.

Gaza – Ma’an – Local residents in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip told Ma’an’s correspondent that Israeli forces executed a Palestinian man after he was wounded in the Israeli air strike on Wednesday afternoon.

Jabir Khalil from Jabalia, near the former Erez industrial zone, in the northern Gaza Strip, was shot.

Nineteen-year-old Amina Abu Jarad said Israeli troops, stationed in northern Beit Hanoun, discharged machinegun fire at two injured Palestinians lying on the ground in front of her uncle’s house.

Twenty-eight-year-old Samahir Abu Jarad said: “What I saw with my own eyes was unbelievable. Israeli forces executed two people using tank machine guns after they were injured by a missile. My eight-year-old daughter Hadil and my five-year-old son Muhammad went into shock and they refused to enter the house where the young men were killed.”

Israeli forces withdrew from the area on Wednesday afternoon, following a week incursion leaving behind vast destruction of areas of the Erez industrial zone, in addition to demolishing house and bulldozing about 10 dunums of fields.
Ma’an News

Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them

_{The below article is from the Israeli online paper haaretz.com. I ask the reader to think of what the probable outcome would be if – anywhere in the world, much less in Israel – if it were Christians, Muslims or anyone else going around spitting on Jews because they’re Jewish.  Yes; this is only a tiny problem in the lives of non-Jews in Israel, but it is noteworthy because these metanarratives can be used to discuss and understand the larger forces at work.}  

_{By Amiram Barkat}

A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

The clergyman prefered not to lodge a complaint with the police and told an acquaintance that he was used to being spat at by Jews. Many Jerusalem clergy have been subjected to abuse of this kind. For the most part, they ignore it but sometimes they cannot.

On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop’s 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.

Both were questioned by police and the yeshiva student will be brought to trial. The Jerusalem District Court has meanwhile banned the student from approaching the Old City for 75 days.

But the Armenians are far from satisfied by the police action and say this sort of thing has been going on for years. Archbishop Nourhan Manougian says he expects the education minister to say something.

“When there is an attack against Jews anywhere in the world, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don’t they take harsher measures?” he asks.

According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, “as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country.”

Rossing says there are certain common characeristics from the point of view of time and location to the incidents. He points to the fact that there are more incidents in areas where Jews and Christians mingle, such as the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City and the Jaffa Gate.

There are an increased number at certain times of year, such as during the Purim holiday.”I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday,” he says.

Former adviser to the mayor on Christian affairs, Shmuel Evyatar, describes the situation as “a huge disgrace.” He says most of the instigators are yeshiva students studying in the Old City who view the Christian religion with disdain.

“I’m sure the phenomenon would end as soon as rabbis and well-known educators denounce it. In practice, rabbis of yeshivas ignore or even encourage it,” he says.

Evyatar says he himself was spat at while walking with a Serbian bishop in the Jewish quarter, near his home. “A group of yeshiva students spat at us and their teacher just stood by and watched.”

Jerusalem municipal officials said they are aware of the problem but it has to be dealt with by the police. Shmuel Ben-Ruby, the police spokesman, said they had only two complaints from Christians in the past two years. He said that, in both cases, the culprits were caught and punished.

He said the police deploy an inordinately high number of patrols and special technology in the Old City and its surroundings in an attempt to keep order.

Haaretz

Israeli children signing bombs bound for Lebanese childern

 We often read of how “those Arab children” are raised to hate – in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine (Nov 25) there is a 14 page article entitled…wait for it…”Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jihadis”. It would, of course be unthinkable for such an august paper to run a story about what sort of indoctrination it takes to produce such a scene as documented below. 

 

Here we see Israeli children signing bombs bound for Lebanese childern.

For this and other important pictures from see here.

Life in Israel as an Arab

From

What Palestinians want at Annapolis

Sadly, though the expectations are low, it is doubtful that Israel will accept them. At the end of this facade of an effort for peace, Palestinians will still be illegally occupied and Israel will still be receiving more aid from the US than any other state in the world. 

Low Expectations

From the conference, the Palestinians were hoping for a joint declaration with the Israelis on this principle.

They were also hoping for a clear timetable of how and when this state would come into being, which would be overseen by a third party – possibly the US or the European Union.

On these two issues, the Palestinian negotiators say that they are not close to any agreement with their counterparts.

They say that both sides know the broad outline of a future Palestinian state and that Israeli officials need to stop dragging their heels and start implementing the process.

The Palestinians also wanted Israel to freeze all settlement construction and remove all illegal outposts in the West Bank ahead of the conference.

This was a requirement of the peace initiative known as the roadmap which the Palestinians say Israel failed to honour. Mr Olmert said Israel would not build new settlements and would start removing outposts. It will also release 450 prisoners.

But while these issues are crucially important to the Palestinians they give no real indication of what form a Palestinian state will take.

In spite of lowered expectations, the Palestinians are expected to attend the conference.

“We have no choice,” said one senior Palestinian official, “we need to keep knocking on doors.”

By Martin Patience
BBC News, Ramallah