NEWS RELEASE - 31st October 2002
Armed Badgers Storm Oxford Street Starbucks in Central London to Build Illegal Settlement - "If Israel can, we can"
On Thursday 31st October at 3.00pm, 30 badgers armed with waterpistols stormed the Starbucks on Oxford St claiming it as their ancestral home.
Using the logic of Israeli settlers1 the badgers evicted some of the customers and erected the first badger settlement in London. With placards proclaiming "If it works in Palestine why not here" and "It's ours because we say so" the self-styled Badger Defence Force set up checkpoints to inspect shoppers and tourists for concealed weapons.
"If they're not a badger, they could be a terrorist" a spokesbadger said. They handed out copies of the badger bible which proves their ownership of Starbucks and a fact sheet which answered Frequently Asked Questions about their activities (see documents attached together with 9 photos).
The badgers have selected the store for their settlement because of the role of its CEO as a major supporter of the Israeli state.
The company has become a prime target of an international boycott of companies with ties to Israel2.
A spokesbadger said "Since the chief executive of this company clearly believes it is ok for one group of people to grab land belonging to another and say they have a right to it, we believe they won't mind if we take some of theirs".
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 3:32 pm Post subject: Revenge of a Child
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from a.com/english">http://www.arabia.com, Commentary channel.
Revenge of a Child
By Uri Avnery
Since last Sunday, a question has been running around in my head and troubling my sleep: What induced the young Palestinian, who broke into Kibbutz Metzer, to aim his weapon at a mother and her two little children and kill them?
In war one does not kill children. That is a fundamental human instinct, common to all peoples and all cultures. Even a Palestinian who wants to take revenge for the hundreds of children killed by the Israeli army should not take revenge on children. No moral commandment says a child for a child.
- The persons who do these things are not known as crazy killers, blood-thirsty from birth. In almost all interviews with relatives and neighbors they are described as quite ordinary, non-violent individuals. Many of them are not religious fanatics. Indeed, Sirkhan Sirkhan, the man who committed the deed in Metzer, belonged to Fatah, a secular movement.
These persons belong to all social classes; some come from poor families who have reached the threshold of hunger, but others come from middle class families, university students, educated people. Their genes are not different from ours.
So what makes them do these things? What makes other Palestinians justify them?
In order to cope, one has to understand, and that does not mean to justify. Nothing in the world can justify a Palestinian who shoots at a child in his mothers embrace, just as nothing can justify an Israeli who drops a bomb on a house in which a child is sleeping in his bed. As the Hebrew poet Bialik wrote a hundred years ago, after the Kishinev pogrom: Even Satan has not yet invented the revenge for the blood of a little child.
But without understanding, it is impossible to cope. The chiefs of the IDF have a simple solution: hit, hit, hit. Kill the attackers. Kill their commanders. Kill the leaders of their organizations. Demolish the homes of their families and exile their relatives. But, wonder of wonders, these methods achieve the opposite. After the huge IDF bulldozer flattens the terrorist infrastructure, destroying-killing-uprooting everything on its way, within days a new infrastructure comes into being. According to the announcements of the IDF itself, since operation Protective Shield there have been some fifty warnings of imminent attacks every day.
The reason for this can be summed up in one word: rage.
Terrible rage, that fills the soul of a human being, leaving no space for anything else. Rage that dominates the persons whole life, making life itself unimportant. Rage that wipes out all limitations, eclipses all values, breaks the chains of family and responsibility. Rage that a person wakes up with in the morning, goes to sleep with in the evening, dreams about at night. Rage that tells a person: get up, take a weapon or an explosive belt, go to their homes and kill, kill, kill, no matter what the consequences.
An ordinary Israeli, who has never been in the Palestinian territories, cannot even imagine the reasons for this rage. Our media totally ignore the events there, or describe them in small, sweetened doses. The average Israeli knows somehow that the Palestinians suffer (its their own fault, of course), but he has no idea whats really happening there. It doesnt concern him, anyhow.
Homes are demolished. A merchant, lawyer, ordinary craftsman, respected in his community, turns overnight into a homeless, he and his children and grandchildren. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
Fruit-trees are being uprooted in their thousands. For the officer, its just a tree, an obstacle. For the owners, its the blood of his heart, the heritage of his forefathers, years of toil, the livelihood of his family. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
On a hill between the villages a gang of thugs has put up an outpost. The army arrives to defend them. When the villagers come to till their fields, they are shot at. They are forbidden to work in all fields and groves within a one or two kilometers range, so that the security of the outpost will not be endangered. The peasants see from afar, with longing eyes, how their fruit is rotting on the trees, how their fields are being covered by thorns and thistles waist high, while their children have nothing to eat. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
People are killed. Their torn bodies lie in the streets, for everyone to see. Some of them are martyrs who chose their lot. But many others €“ men, women, children €“ are killed by mistake, accidentally, trying to escape, were close to the source of fire - and all the hundred and one pretexts of professional spokesmen. The IDF does not apologize, officers and soldiers are never convicted, because thats how things are in war. But each of the people killed has parents, brothers, sons, cousins. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
Beyond these are the families living on the fringes of hunger, suffering from severe malnutrition. Fathers who cannot bring food to their children feel despair. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
Hundred of thousands are kept under curfew for weeks and months on end, eight persons cooped up in two or three rooms, a living hell difficult to imagine, while outside the settlers have a ball, protected by the soldiers. A vicious circle: yesterdays bombers caused the curfew, the curfew creates the bombers of tomorrow.
And beyond all these, the total humiliation which every Palestinian, without distinction of age, gender or social standing, experiences every moment of his life. Not an abstract humiliation, but an altogether concrete one. To be dependent for life and death on the whim of an 18-year old boy in the street and at one of the innumerable checkpoints that a Palestinian has to pass wherever he goes, while gangs of settlers pass freely and visit their villages, damage property, pick the olives in their groves, set fire to the trees.
An Israeli who has not seen it cannot imagine such a life, a situation of every bastard a king and the slave who has becomes master, a situation of curses and pushes at best, threats with weapons in many cases, actual shooting in some. Not to mention the sick on the way to dialysis, the pregnant women on the way to hospital, students who dont get to their classes, children who cant reach their schools. The youngsters who see their venerable grandfather publicly humiliated by some boy in uniform with a runny nose. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
A normal Israeli cannot imagine all this. After all, the soldiers are nice boys, the sons of all of us, only yesterday they were schoolboys. But when one takes these nice boys and puts them in uniforms, pushes them through the military machine and puts them into a situation of occupation, something happens to them. Many try to keep their human face in impossible circumstances, many others become order-fulfilling robots. And always, in every company, there are some disturbed people who flourish in this situation and do repulsive things, knowing that their officers will turn a blind eye or wink approvingly.
All this does not justify the killing of children in the arms of their mother. But it helps to grasp why this is happening, and why this will go on happening as long as the occupation lasts.
Mr. Avnery is a prominent Israeli journalist.
-Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 8:35 pm Post subject: Taking a harder line
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taking a harder line
Nov 18th 2002
From The Economist Global Agenda
Ariel Sharon might use Friday’s attack on Israeli settlers and soldiers near Hebron as an excuse to beef up Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas
Reuters
More blood on the streets
ISRAEL’S prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is awaiting a detailed response from the army to his proposal to create “territorial contiguity” between the large Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the nearby West Bank city of Hebron, and the small Jewish settlement enclaves that already exist in the city. Aides said he raised the idea—not a new one—with army commanders in Hebron on November 17th, in reaction to the killing there two days earlier of 12 Israelis, most of them soldiers, in an ambush mounted by gunmen from Islamic Jihad, a militant Palestinian group. Among the Israeli dead was the colonel commanding the Hebron area, the highest-ranking soldier to have been killed during the 26 months of Palestinian uprising, or intifada.
Creating contiguity would mean building new Jewish homes next to, or in place of, Palestinian ones along a broad corridor of suburban land, and taking over several urban streets inside the city. Mr Sharon’s men say it would mean, eventually, Israel ruling over fewer Palestinian Hebronites than hitherto. But the scheme would amount to a major new encroachment by the settlers into this city of 120,000 Palestinians and just a few hundred Jews. As such, it would represent a lurch rightwards by the Sharon government, which has been ruling as a caretaker administration since the Labour Party left the governing coalition last month.
Mr Sharon is said to believe that the attack near Hebron, which stunned the country and drew sharp condemnations from the international community, gives him an opportunity to beef up the Jewish settlements in Hebron, a heartwarming prospect for many in his own Likud Party and among its rightist and religious allies. At a cabinet meeting on November 17th, the prime minister curtly dismissed demands from his new foreign minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and deport its chairman, Yasser Arafat, as Israel’s response to the killings. Mr Sharon has promised President George Bush not to harm Mr Arafat personally. The prime minister will stand against Mr Netanyahu in a Likud leadership primary on November 28th. Mr Sharon is well ahead of his rival, according to the polls.
The new defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, has ordered the army to reoccupy the whole of Hebron—it had withdrawn from much of the city just three weeks ago—and to “clean out nests of terrorism”. The homes of prominent Palestinian activists were blown up, and dozens of men were taken in for questioning. Military sources say the army’s stay is “indefinite”. In Nablus, too, the largest city in the northern West Bank, a similarly intensive search-and-arrest operation is under way following a terrorist attack on a kibbutz inside Israel.
In Gaza, meanwhile, Israeli forces struck at a Palestinian Authority training complex, destroying several buildings and carting off large quantities of weapons and documents. In the haul were a number of Qassam missiles, clandestinely manufactured in Gaza, which Hamas and Islamic Jihad units fire at Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, and sometimes at towns and kibbutzim inside Israel. Mr Mofaz said the evidence “proved the close connections” between the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Service, which runs the training complex, and terrorist groups. Some fear this assault might herald a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Mr Mofaz and his generals promise a frank investigation into the disastrous Hebron firefight. The colonel involved has come under posthumous criticism for plunging into the fray (without a flak jacket) instead of taking stock and running the battle from the rear. Compounding the military’s embarrassment was the attempted hijacking on November 17th of an El Al aircraft flying from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. A young Israeli Arab reportedly carrying a small pocket-knife charged towards the cockpit but was felled by two in-flight security men. Now Israel’s airport authority is trying to explain how the knife got through what is vaunted as a fail-safe security system.
The Palestinian Authority’s response to the assault in Hebron was one of resounding silence, in contrast to its condemnation of the kibbutz attack, which left five Israelis dead. The reason is twofold. There is barely a Palestinian who does not view Islamic Jihad’s ambush as an entirely just response to a situation where 120,000 Palestinians are held hostage to the messianic ambitions of a few hundred armed settlers and their 1,500 or so army protectors. Secondly, there is a solid consensus, held by all the Palestinian factions and militias, that the armed resistance will continue inside the occupied territories as long as Israel retains control of six of the main West Bank Palestinian cities.
The Hebron attack came two days after the first round of talks between Mr Arafat’s Fatah movement and Hamas in Cairo. Fatah wants Hamas to declare a moratorium on all armed attacks, and especially suicide bombings, on civilians inside Israel. Publicly, Hamas has said the suicide or “martyrdom” operations will continue as long as “Israeli troops wage war against our people”. Less publicly, Hamas representatives in Cairo said their movement would halt attacks on Israeli civilians if Israel withdrew from the recently reoccupied Palestinian cities and ended the assassinations of Palestinian militants. Islamic Jihad, too, has said it would abide by such an “initiative”.
The Palestinian leadership is pinning its hopes not on domestic initiatives, but on some form of international rescue. Last week, it gave hedged approval to an American-drafted “roadmap”, which aims to establish a provisional Palestinian state in 2003 and to produce a fully fledged peace agreement by 2005. The Palestinian Authority is ready to quell the violence in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank cities and an internationally monitored freeze on Israel’s construction of settlements.
It is unlikely to get either, however. Last week, David Satterfield, a US State Department envoy, got a cool reception from Israeli officials for the roadmap. And Israeli analysts say Mr Sharon has already won American agreement for no new diplomatic initiatives ahead of the Israeli elections in late January and, probably, any American-led strike on Iraq. By then, he clearly hopes the region’s actual maps will have changed to Israel’s advantage.
tax0_SiteID=6&Channel=agenda&NOJS=1&PageType=printerfriendly&story_id=1453336&if_nt_c=web2
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 8:41 pm Post subject: Escalated Collective Punishment in Hebron,Nablus and Ramalla
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Escalated Collective Punishment Measures in Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah
Date: 12/3/02 12:02:36 PM Central Standard Time
iapinfo@iap.org (IAP NEWS)
Escalated Collective Punishment Measures in Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah
Hear Palestine - December 3, 2002
Hebron
---------
The occupation army was not satisfied with preventing thousands of people
from attending to prayers during the last days of Ramadan as a result of the imposed curfew but also raided a number of mosques in the city and held several people all night out in the cold.
At least 15 people were arrested from Al-Sheikh Ali Al-Bukaa Mosque. One of those held by the occupation army said they were surprised as they headed towards the mosque with 3 soldiers directing their machineguns towards them and ordering them to lift their arms. They were transferred to a military roadblock in the city where others were also held. Everyone was forced to sit on a pavement all night in the cold humiliated and verbally abused by occupation soldiers.
A curfew has been imposed on the city for the past 20 days.
Nablus
--------
Israeli occupation soldiers yesterday held around 30 people, including
several children and elderly people, in a 2-meter deep ditch for over 5
hours yesterday.
The youth Ali Daraghma said that occupation soldiers based at the entrance
of Nablus, near Zawata village held around 30 people inside a ditch dug by
Israeli bulldozers as they attempted to enter the city. Israeli soldiers
forced them inside the ditch under the threat of weapons. They were also
prevented from standing up.
Daraghma said, "When we asked the soldiers why they were keeping us when we had done nothing wrong, one soldier said that his brother was killed in an armed operation and that we all have to pay the price."
Amjad Abu Saleh was arrested today in an Israeli ambush on the
Tulkarem-Nablus road.
The occupation army also invaded Balata refugee camp under intense fire and arrested 3 men during home raids.
Ramallah
-----------
Students and teachers are unable to reach Bir Zeit University for the second
day running. Surda military roadblock separating Bir Zeit and 40 other
villages from Ramallah City is completely closed and alternative routes,
such as the 'Jawal route' is filled with danger.
The Israeli army claimed that 8 "wanted" Palestinians were arrested in the
West Bank since last night. Those were arrested from Doura, Hebron, and
Balata refugee camp, Nablus, according to the Israeli sources.
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 8:45 pm Post subject: Stance on Israel hurts Hansen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: http://www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.d8.1115w
:
: Publication date: 11/15/2002
:
: Stance on Israel hurts Hansen
: BY ADRIEL HAMPTON
: Of The Examiner Staff
:
: Eileen Hansen's views on the Jewish state may cost
: her some crucial votes in the District 8 supervisor's
: runoff Dec 10.
:
: Hansen has recently drawn a storm of criticism for
: her participation in what some have called anti-Israel
: efforts. A growing number of local Jewish activists
: believe Hansen, were she to win a Board of Supervisors
: seat, might use the position as a platform to
: criticize the efforts of the Israeli government.
:
: Hansen's presence at a Jews for a Free Palestine
: rally against a Jewish humanitarian group brought the
: issue into the spotlight.
:
: Although Hansen attended the May protest -- which
: led to several arrests -- as an observer for the
: National Lawyers Guild, some likened the event to a
: KKK rally.
:
: The group's chants were "so hurtful, so spiteful
: and so wrong," Lauter said. "If there were things
: there that offended her, she should have left."
:
: About 150 protesters carried "Jews against
: Zionism" and "Zionism = racism" signs, chanted "JCF
: (Jewish Community Federation) you can't hide, you're
: supporting genocide," according to photos and media
: and eyewitness reports from the rally.
:
: Zionism is the support of a Jewish state in
: Israel.
:
: Jews for a Free Palestine advocates an immediate
: end to all U.S. support of Israel and the right of
: return for all expelled Palestinians to their towns
: and homes of origin.
:
: A call to the group's listed number reached a
: recording for "Jews for Divestment from Israel" and
: was not returned by press time.
:
: "People don't begrudge her her opinion," said Sam
: Lauter, "but they aren't ashamed of trying to beat
: her."
:
: Lauter, a political consultant for Barnes, Mosher,
: Whitehurst & Lauter, is one of a number of local Jews
: -- many of whom backed BART board member Tom
: Radulovich in the general election -- who are
: supporting Hansen's opponent, Bevan Dufty, in the
: runoff.
:
: Both candidates are likeable, knowledgeable gay
: Jews, and said a supervisor should stay out of
: international politics.
:
: It's not so simple, however, with a board known
: for taking on such issues as the Iraq war and China's
: treatment of Falun Gong practitioners.
:
: Hansen told The Examiner that if constituents
: brought an issue such as financial divestment from
: Israel to her office, she would work it out with
: various factions of the Jewish community.
:
: "I don't really want to get into a discussion of
: Zionism. What I do have is a history of working for
: peace in the Middle East," Hansen said. "It is
: important that the rights of both peoples be respected
: and I respect the rights of both people to exist and
: I've worked toward that."
:
: Dufty supports a two-state solution to the
: conflict, based on negotiations.
:
: "Everyday it pains me to read about the tragic
: loss of life in the Middle East and I pray for a
: peaceful settlement but I 100 percent support Israel's
: existence and know that peace can only come from
: negotiations, not from terrorism," Dufty said.
:
: Neither candidate, or their four rivals, made
: Israel-Palestine relations an issue in the general
: election, but there's no question that Hansen has been
: hurt by the issue in the runoff.
:
: For example, the political action committee of the
: Raoul Wallenberg Jewish Democratic Club, which sends a
: slate card to every Jewish voter, has recommended
: Dufty, at least in part based on Hansen's position on
: the Jewish state. The full membership votes on
: Wednesday.
:
: No candidate met the clubs 60-percent approval
: threshold for an endorsement in the November election.
:
: "The Wallenberg Club is not trying to stifle
: people's opinions, but we are going to support people
: who support a secure and safe Israel and support the
: U.S. in that effort," said Dan Cohen, a club board
: member.
: _____________________________
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 4:02 am Post subject: Little joy for homeless Palestinians on Muslim holiday
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Little joy for homeless Palestinians on Muslim holiday
RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Dec 3 (Reuters) - There will be no decorations or
home baked cookies for the homeless Palestinians of southern Gaza's
Rafah refugee camp this Muslim holiday of Eid el-Fitr.
For the dozens of Palestinians whose houses were destroyed by Israeli
forces in Rafah, near the Israeli-controlled Gaza-Egypt border, this
year's holiday will be celebrated modestly and with much bitterness.
"What Eid? Eid is not for people like us," said Nea'ma al-Akhras, a
mother of eight. The festival, which ends the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan, is expected to begin on Thursday or Friday with the start of
the full moon.
"It is a sad Eid. I lost my house and my son," Akhras told Reuters.
Her 28-year-old son Wael was killed by Israeli gunfire shortly after
the house was demolished in January.
His mother said Wael was shot dead as he passed a street near the
border fence where gunbattles between Israeli soldiers and
Palestinian gunmen have become an almost daily occurence since the
outbreak of a Palestinian revolt two years ago.
Since her house was demolished, Akhras and her family first lived in
a tent erected in the main square of Rafah refugee camp before
renting a small house inside the camp.
Israel says the houses it demolishes are used by Palestinian gunmen
as cover to launch attacks against soldiers or to hide tunnels under
the border with Egypt through which weapons and explosives are
smuggled.
Palestinian officials said Israeli army forces had demolished at
least 400 houses since the uprising began.
Amna al-Masri whose house along with those of her three sons were
demolished said she was homeless.
"My sons moved to live with families of their wives. Now I spend my
day inside the tent and at night I go to my brother's house to spend
the night," she said.
MOURNING TENTS
Masri said staying inside the tent everyday was symbolic.
"It is a message to the whole world that we need to rebuild our
houses," she said.
Instead of adorning houses with flowers or repainting them, as
millions of Muslims do round the globe, many Palestinian families
will be opening mourning tents to receive condolences for the deaths
of loved ones over the past year.
"I will spend the first day of Eid next to the grave of my son,"
Akhras said, collapsing in tears.
Cemeteries are usually packed with bereaved families at first day of
the festival. Family members tend to distribute sweets for people
passing the graves of their relatives.
Although markets looked busy with shoppers, merchants said customers
were buying only the cheapest of products.
On Tuesday, a group of Palestinian children under the age of 18
distributed 300 packages containing new clothes for children who lost
their houses. They said the clothes were donations.
Ana'am Nasser said she could not afford to make festive cookies this
year nor could she buy her children new clothing.
"No cookies and no joy," she said.
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/story.jsp?floc=FF-PLS-
PLS&id=12031018000272477&dt=20021203101800&w=RTR&coview=
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 4:03 am Post subject: Little joy for homeless Palestinians on Muslim holiday
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Little joy for homeless Palestinians on Muslim holiday
RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Dec 3 (Reuters) - There will be no decorations or
home baked cookies for the homeless Palestinians of southern Gaza's
Rafah refugee camp this Muslim holiday of Eid el-Fitr.
For the dozens of Palestinians whose houses were destroyed by Israeli
forces in Rafah, near the Israeli-controlled Gaza-Egypt border, this
year's holiday will be celebrated modestly and with much bitterness.
"What Eid? Eid is not for people like us," said Nea'ma al-Akhras, a
mother of eight. The festival, which ends the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan, is expected to begin on Thursday or Friday with the start of
the full moon.
"It is a sad Eid. I lost my house and my son," Akhras told Reuters.
Her 28-year-old son Wael was killed by Israeli gunfire shortly after
the house was demolished in January.
His mother said Wael was shot dead as he passed a street near the
border fence where gunbattles between Israeli soldiers and
Palestinian gunmen have become an almost daily occurence since the
outbreak of a Palestinian revolt two years ago.
Since her house was demolished, Akhras and her family first lived in
a tent erected in the main square of Rafah refugee camp before
renting a small house inside the camp.
Israel says the houses it demolishes are used by Palestinian gunmen
as cover to launch attacks against soldiers or to hide tunnels under
the border with Egypt through which weapons and explosives are
smuggled.
Palestinian officials said Israeli army forces had demolished at
least 400 houses since the uprising began.
Amna al-Masri whose house along with those of her three sons were
demolished said she was homeless.
"My sons moved to live with families of their wives. Now I spend my
day inside the tent and at night I go to my brother's house to spend
the night," she said.
MOURNING TENTS
Masri said staying inside the tent everyday was symbolic.
"It is a message to the whole world that we need to rebuild our
houses," she said.
Instead of adorning houses with flowers or repainting them, as
millions of Muslims do round the globe, many Palestinian families
will be opening mourning tents to receive condolences for the deaths
of loved ones over the past year.
"I will spend the first day of Eid next to the grave of my son,"
Akhras said, collapsing in tears.
Cemeteries are usually packed with bereaved families at first day of
the festival. Family members tend to distribute sweets for people
passing the graves of their relatives.
Although markets looked busy with shoppers, merchants said customers
were buying only the cheapest of products.
On Tuesday, a group of Palestinian children under the age of 18
distributed 300 packages containing new clothes for children who lost
their houses. They said the clothes were donations.
Ana'am Nasser said she could not afford to make festive cookies this
year nor could she buy her children new clothing.
"No cookies and no joy," she said.
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/story.jsp?floc=FF-PLS-
PLS&id=12031018000272477&dt=20021203101800&w=RTR&coview=
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 5:02 pm Post subject: Press Highlights Israeli Atrocities Ahead of Eid
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20021203195717416
International Press Highlights Israeli Atrocities Ahead of Eid
Tuesday, December 03 2002 @ 07:57 PM GMT
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES - Several reports on Tuesday’s, December 3, morning media highlighted the atrocities committed by the Israeli army in the occupied territories.
The U.S. newspaper, the Washington Post, reported an incident which took place on Monday, December 2, in which the Israeli soldiers opened fire at a busy Jenin Market, which led to the death of 15-year-old Mutaz Odeh, the son of a Palestinian merchant.
Odeh, was on his way to the market to purchase sweets to sell at his father’s stand in downtown Jenin but returned home dead with a bullet in his lower back, the paper reported.
The market place was busy with people buying supplies for the Eid-ul-Fitr which starts after the end of the month of Ramadan.
“So tonight, when the family would have been breaking the Ramadan fast at a festive meal, the Odeh men instead were grieving over the youngster they had buried just after noon prayers,” said the post.
Odeh’s cousin told the Post that the soldiers were randomly shooting in all directions. The Israeli military, however, claimed that he was killed as he tried to climb onto an armored personnel carrier that witnesses said was about 150 yards from the shop, the Post reported.
“Odeh and other relatives described Mutaz as too overweight to clamber up a tank or armored personnel carrier,” the paper added.
The paper quoted Mohammed Abu Ghali, director of the Jenin Government Hospital saying that twenty-three Palestinians were injured during the shooting.
U.K. newspaper, the Independent, reported that in their incursion in the town of Beit Lahia in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, November 30, the Israeli army demolished a house on top of a 68-year-old deaf man.
Maher Salem, the man’s son told the Independent that when they found his father his head was “like a bar of chocolate, it was only two centimeters thick”.
The man whom the Israeli army were looking for was the old man’s son, Hisham, whom they claim was a senior official in the Islamic Jihad resistance group, and who allegedly planned a resistance operation in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street in 1996 that killed 20 Israelis, said the Independent. However, Hisham survived and was at his father’s funeral.
Salem was sleeping on the sixth-floor of the building, in which three generations of the family lives, when the Israeli army evacuated the building. The soldiers did not allow family members to bring the man out of the building and instead told them to leave immediately, then dynamited the house.
The Independent, said that while there were previous controversies about Palestinian claims that people have been buried alive in demolished houses, this time, there was a body.
“It had been buried when we arrived. We saw the freshly dug grave. And hundreds had turned up for the wake. This was not a show for the media: there were no other journalists in sight,” the paper said, adding that this is not the first time the claims of the sort turned out to be true.
“In Nablus in April, eight members of a single family died when a soldier bulldozed their house on top of them. Their bodies were found, and the case has been well documented by international human rights groups,” the paper reported.
Meanwhile, the UPI news agency reported that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was concerned at Israel’s demolition of a World Food Program warehouse in the northern part of the Gaza Strip over the weekend.
Fred Eckhard, Annan’s chief spokesman, said that Anan supports the request by WFP that the government of Israel thoroughly investigate this incident, reported UPI.
“The secretary-general once again calls on the Israeli authorities to live up to their commitments and obligations to facilitate emergency humanitarian assistance in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
UPI quoted Jean-Luc Siblot, WFP country director, saying: “The food, which was housed on the ground floor of a three-story building and clearly marked as WFP property, mainly comprised donations from the European Commission and Sweden and was to be distributed by the Ministry of Social Affairs to some 41,300 destitute people affected by the ongoing humanitarian crises in the Gaza Strip.”
On Saturday, at about 10:50 p.m., the Israeli troops surrounded the area and parked six tanks in front of the building. They requested residents to evacuate their homes before entering the building and searching the premises.
“Despite the fact that the storage area was well marked as a WFP warehouse, with a large WFP flag and three WFP stickers on the doors, the soldiers proceeded to destroy the doors of the warehouse using tanks,” the agency reported.
The building’s owner saw dynamite sticks being placed in various parts and several blasts were heard at approximately midnight. These were followed by a large explosion from a projectile dropped from a helicopter.
“The building collapsed and everything left in it, including 413 metric tons of wheat flour, 107 metric tons of rice and 17 metric tons of vegetable oil, was destroyed,” the agency said.
-IslamOnline & News Agencies (islamonline.net). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 5:29 pm Post subject: Israeli Law Mocks Justice, Shatters Decency
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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20021203202241654
Israeli Law Mocks Justice, Shatters Decency
Tuesday, December 03 2002 @ 08:22 PM GMT
Why haven’t the American legal eagles spoken out about the ongoing human rights abuses in Israel?
By William Hughes
BALTIMORE (PC) - American law schools regularly hold seminars and workshops in Israel. Usually, the subject matters deal with topics like Comparative or International Law. These legal sojourns are generally led by fully tenured professors, who have been able, quite amazingly, to go about their teaching business, in the mother of all colonial police states, without publicly addressing the systematic violations of the legal and human rights of the Palestinians. Now, this is all a mystery to me.
Why haven’t the American legal eagles spoken out about the ongoing human rights abuses in Israel? Why don’t they get their noses out of the law books, and tell the world what is really going on in occupied Palestine? It’s nice to visit Haifa and Jerusalem, but why not check in on Jenin and Nablus, too? And what about the legality of the U.S. government funding the state sponsored terrorism of Ariel Sharon’s government? Don’t these kind of important legal and moral questions ever cross their minds? If they haven’t, then it is high time that they did.
For instance, I would like to know about the highly dubious Israeli procedure that permits its officials to get a “warrant” to destroy the home of a Palestinian. In Hebron, recently, the Israelis secured warrants to destroy 15 homes, belonging to 30 Palestinian families. Can the homeowner protest or challenge this kind of warrant? If he does, will he get a due process hearing before an impartial tribunal? Is there a right of appeal? What legal safeguards are there to protect a homeowner from an Israeli official exercising his authority in an arbitrary or capricious manner? We know that the collective punishment of a people is a war crime. Is this warrant procedure a clever device to paper over that kind of wrongdoing?
As an American, I watch on television, every week, in horror, as the ubiquitous Israeli bulldozers destroy home after home and also the orchards of the Palestinians. It reminds me of the British imperialists dispossessing the Irish peasants during the horrific days of great famine (1845-50). The Israelis claim that they have a “demolition order.” Who gave them that demolition order? Is this so-called “demolition warrant procedure” yet another one of the cruel legal jokes of the Zionists, like their notorious “torture warrants,” championed by that old softy and Sharonist, Alan Dershowitz? From 1967 to 1999, Israel demolished over 8,500 Palestinian homes, according to the LINK, April-May, 2002 issue.
Because the Israeli warrant system is supposedly “legal,” (I use that word advisedly), does that make it also just and moral and beyond the condemnation of the rest of humanity?
On another subject, when the Israelis send their death squads out to target Palestinians for summary and extra-judicial executions-there have been at least 95 such killings since 02/09/ 2000-do they also get a “warrant” from a legal authority to murder that individual? Does someone sign a “death warrant” that is placed in a file? Or, do they prefer, like their death squad counterparts in Central America, not to leave a paper trail of their crimes? As Central America has proven, the truth will come out.
What effect, if any, does administering these kinds of draconian laws have on the Israeli bureaucrats themselves? Back in the 70s, a Baltimore lawyer, Fred E. Weisgal, now deceased, emigrated to Israel. There was a lot of positive publicity about it at the time. When he lived in America, he was known as a flaming liberal and a civil rights advocate. His Op Ed pieces, too, when he was at the top of his legal crusading, were always a joy to read. I recall trying cases against him, when I was in the State’s Attorney’s office in the mid 60s. He was a terrific lawyer and a very engaging individual. He was also a respected musician and had a sprightly personality. In Israel, however, he had a Franz Kafka-like transformation. He went from defending the needy in America to representing the greedy in Israel: its national government!
I visited Weisgal at his home in Jerusalem, in December, 1977. It was like I was talking to an entirely different man then the person I had once known. The spirit had somehow been driven out of him. I remember, too, the last time he returned to Baltimore for a visit. He had penned an Op Ed piece for the local paper. It was about getting a flat tire on one of our major highways. It was boring drivel and embarrassing to read. The truth is that he no longer had anything worthwhile to say. He didn’t even bother to try to defend his “new” legal career or his new “beloved” fatherland.
Since then, I’ve always been curious if the government work that Weisgal had done in Jerusalem, hadn’t deprived him of his humanity. If so, it was, indeed, a heavy personal price for him to pay for serving the political cause of Zionism, whose very essence depends on the subjugation of another people. For someone, like Weisgal, once a compassionate person, who had dedicated his earlier life to fighting for civil rights and justice, it must have an abrupt change. Did he feel at the end like a hapless character in Kafka’s “The Trial,” sentenced by some arbitrary authority to a slow but certain spiritual death? I suspect that he did, knowing, too, that he had chosen, willfully, to put himself in that position.
There are many sides to this evil. It is clear that Israeli law mocks justice, and that many have turned a blind eye to it, and to its victims, the Palestinians. But, I also suggest, that there may be a few Fred E. Weisgal-like souls out there, who have also paid a severe personal price for serving such an oppressive system.
William Hughes is the author of “Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order” (Authors Choice Press) and “Baltimore Iconoclast” (Writer’s Showcase), which are available online. He can be reached at liamhughes@mindspring.com.
-Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 5:37 pm Post subject: Why Does the Leopard Hide its Spots?
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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=2002120319051127
Why Does the Leopard Hide its Spots?
Tuesday, December 03 2002 @ 07:05 PM GMT
"So why did I prefer Netanyahu? Because Netanyahu is an unprincipled politician, ready to change his positions any time .."
By Uri Avnery
(PC) - I loath Binyamin Netanyahu, and therefore I hoped that he would be elected leader of the Likud. I am sorry that Sharon won the primary election instead.
“ I loath Binyamin Netanyahu ..”
How’s that? After all, Netanyahu presented himself as a man of the extreme right and demanded to “expel” (the code-word for “kill”) Yasser Arafat. He is ready to fight to the last drop of (our) blood against the creation of a Palestinian state. Unlike Sharon, who says that he is ready to accept a Palestinian state and does not talk anymore about expelling Arafat.
So why did I prefer Netanyahu?
Because Netanyahu is an unprincipled politician, ready to change his positions any time. He reminds me of Groucho Marx, who once declared: “These are my views. If you don’t like them, I have others, too.” He could easily exchange his rightist slogan for leftist ones. Sharon is very different: He has a rigid outlook, which he has not changed for decades. He resembles an IDF bulldozer in Jenin, destroying walls on his way and demolishing houses on top of their inhabitants. His aim in life is to destroy the Palestinian entity and imprison the Palestinians in isolated enclaves, until the time is ripe for their expulsion from the country altogether. Nowadays he hides his unwavering attachment to this plan behind the mask of a benevolent, moderate grandfather, who has settled down and wants nothing more than to crown his career by making peace.
I prefer at the head of the Likud an unprincipled politician to a disguised true believer. He would have been easier for Mitzna to defeat. In the competition for the Likud leadership, Netanyahu was a sheep in wolf’s clothing, while Sharon was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Likud members preferred the clothing of the sheep to that of the wolf. And that is significant.
Netanyahu did not understand that the mood of the Likud members has changed. He made a big mistake – one of many – when he decided, in the middle of the campaign, to adopt ultraright positions, demanding Arafat’s expulsion and coming out against a Palestinian state. It appears that most of the Likud members do not believe anymore that that is practical – a conclusion confirmed the next day by a public opinion poll that showed that half of the Likud members accept a Palestinian state and agree to evacuate settlements.
Sharon, on the other hand, knows how to read maps. He pretends to accept a Palestinian state and to make “concessions that hurt”. This, of course, is a mere make-believe. He made his acceptance of the Palestinian state dependent on so many impossible “ifs” that it has been emptied of any content. Sharon remains the same Sharon and will never be anything but the same Sharon. The leopard will not change his spots, but he understands that he has to hide them. To the trusting public he presented himself as a moderate, as against the extreme Netanyahu. And, wonder of wonders, the Likud, the party of the extreme right, preferred the candidate posing as a moderate to the candidate posing as an extremist.
This is not the only miracle: A few days before, something very similar happened in the Labor party, when Binjamin Ben-Eliezer was trounced by Amram Mitzna.
There is some similarity between the two Binyamins: Ben-Eliezer, like Netanyahu, is a man without principles, who is ready to change his views like socks. Mitzna, on the other side, is a man of clear principles.
Mitzna is a declared dove. As against the right-wing line of Ben-Eliezer, he presents to the voters a clear, left-wing alternative: Negotiations with Arafat, evacuation of most settlements, immediate withdrawal from the whole Gaza Strip, compromise over Jerusalem, a Palestinian state. Yet by an overwhelming majority, the Labor party voters chose him over Ben-Eliezer.
Let there be no mistake: Mitzna is not a Gush Shalom member. Some of his slogans are anathema to me. But he is firmly located on the left of the political arena. If one does not grasp the significance of his election as Labor leader, one does not understand what’s happening under the surface of Israeli society.
One miracle can be accidental. Two testify to a tendency. If in both the big parties – Likud and Labor – the candidates with the more “leftist” program defeats the candidates with a more “rightist” one, it proves that new public currents are at work.
One may add the happenings in the National Religious party. Once upon a time, this was a very moderate party. In the 50s, when the moderate Moshe Sharett was struggling against the extremist line of David Ben-Gurion, it generally supported Sharett. Since then it has – like almost the whole religious camp – moved steadily to the extreme right. A year ago it crowned as its leader Effi Eytam, compared to whom Haider and Le Pen look like bleeding-heart liberals. Yet lo and behold: This week, when choosing its candidates for the Knesset elections, it turned against its new leader and filled the most coveted spots on the list with people who are (comparatively) more moderate.
If one puts all these facts together, what do they say? They say that the whole system is slowly moving to the left. The public is fed up with the war, the unceasing bloodshed, the economic crisis and the social breakdown. People want a solution. They are looking for compromise. They are ready to pay for it.
This gives Mitzna a chance. It will be very difficult for him to win, but it is definitely possible. And even if he does not succeed this time, he can do it the next time, which may be in a year or so. Provided, of course, he does not fall into the trap of a National Unity government.
Something is changing in the country. People are speaking again about things which had seemingly died: The Green Line, evacuation of (most) settlements, exchange of territory, speaking with Arafat, the Taba and Clinton plans, international monitors.
Ahead of us the tunnel is still dark. But after two years of anguish and despair, it seems that at least a small light has appeared at the end of the tunnel. To quote Winston Churchill once more: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
— Uri Avnery, award-winning Israeli journalist and writer, three-time member of Knesset and a columnist for the Ma’ariv daily is a founding member of the Gush Shalom peace movement.
-Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
