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POPSIsrael Will Not Let Its Arab Citizens Read Bambi Jeremiah Haber (aka The Magnes Zionist) translates a Haaretz article on Israel banning the importation of books published in Syria and Lebanon, where 80% of Arabic books used by Israeli Arabs are published. For shame.
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POPSZionist assassin Yehoshua Zettler dies After the Bernadotte murder, David Ben Gurion disbanded Lehi and arrested its members for being members of a banned organization. But miraculously, they were all released five months later under a political amnesty. No one was ever charged with the killing. Lehi’s brave members revealed their participation in the assassination in 1977 after the statue of limitations had expired.
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POPSUri Avnery: Israel Officially Declares War on the Palestinian People Until 2002, Palestinians who married Israeli Arabs (which was very common, because the 1948 borders of Israel cut across Arab villages and clans) became Israeli citizens. Then the Knesset passed a law preventing Israeli Arabs from bringing their spouses with them into Israel. Jewish and Arab petitioners challenged the law in the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Ministry of Justice lawyers defending the law blatantly asserted that Israel is at war with the Palestinian people. Via Philip Weiss
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POPSIsrael investigating soldier testimony of war crimes against Palestinians
Another veteran described an officer who ordered machine-gunners to fire at an elderly woman In the testimony, the soldiers admitted that excessive force was used because the lives of Palestinian civilians were valued far less than those of the soldiers. When asked about the revelations, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that he believed the stories described were an exception, and insisted the Israeli Defense Forces are the "most moral army in the world" Danny Zamir, the chairman of the preparatory school that hosted the seminar, said that the soldiers' testimony showed that the disregard for Palestinian civilians was not an exception. "The new release testimonies raise a grave suspicion that the rules of engagement in the infantry violated the basic principles of the international laws of war," he said. "If the alleged rules of engagement are true, both the officers who gave the order and the soldiers who obeyed them might have committed war crimes."
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POPSZionism Is The Problem This is a well-written Los Angeles Times opinion piece by Ben Ehrenreich, writing in response to Judea Pearl's article claiming that anti-Zionism is more dangerous than anti-Semitism.
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POPSAbnormal State Who demanded in every diplomatic encounter that the Security Council impose sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear program and punish Syria for smuggling weapons to Hezbollah, and then accused Iran and Syria of ignoring U.N. resolutions? And when, over Israel's objections, that very council passed Resolution 1860 calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, who proclaimed that it would not accept it and intended to continue fighting? The government of Israel, of course.
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POPSThe best American analogy for Hamas Of course it is unimaginable, even in the U.S. And actually, when something like that did happen, during the 60s in the South, you saw the overwhelming response from northern liberals...
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POPSIntentions vs. Actions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict throughout the “peace process” years — through the good ones and through the bad ones — Israel continued expanding both the geographical footprint of its settlements and the population living upon them. For most of this time, Israel has often appeared unwilling to enforce domestic Israeli law on the settler population, to say nothing of abiding by international law or agreements made. And while Israel has stated a desire to leave the Gaza Palestinians alone in their tiny, overcrowded, economically unviable enclave, the “disengagement” from Gaza has never entailed letting Palestinians control their borders or exercise meaningful sovereignty over the area. The proposal has basically been that if Palestinians cease violence against Israel, then the Gaza Strip will be treated like an Indian reservation.
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POPSWhere is the outrage over bombing of Gaza university? ...Israel has tried to justify the bombing. An army spokeswoman told The Chronicle that the targeted buildings were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons, including Qassam rockets." … Islamic University officials deny the Israeli allegations. Yet even if there is some merit in them, it is common knowledge that practically all major American and Israeli universities are engaged in research and development of military applications and receive money from the Pentagon and defense corporations. Weapon development and even manufacturing have, unfortunately, become major projects at universities worldwide — a fact that does not justify bombing them.
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POPSPalestinian youth killed, settlers accused According to investigations conducted by PCHR, which includes eye-witness statements, during the afternoon of 27 September, Yahia Ateya Fahmi Bani Maneya, age 18, from Aqraba village southeast of Nablus city, went to graze his sheep on land east of his village. When the teenager had not returned home by 18:00, dozens of locals gathered and went in search of him. They searched the area between Aqraba village and the Israeli settlement of Jetit, which lies approximately 10 kilometers east of Aqraba village. At about midnight, locals found Yahia Maneya's dead body covered in blood in al-Fajen area, one kilometer west of Jetit settlement. ... According to eyewitnesses, his body had been hit by about 20 bullets to the neck, chest and legs.
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POPSIsrael's Front-Line Thugs The security forces are, of course, by no means scared to act when it suits them. Palestinian demonstrations are routinely put down with excessive force: rocks flung by pre-teens are countered with rubber bullets, tear gas, and – often – live and indiscriminate fire. But when it comes to clamping down on violence emanating from the settler community, a different set of rules apply, and the authorities' reeking hypocrisy is exposed as endemic to the way in which they view the different strands of Israeli society. Via Philip Weiss
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POPSHaaretz editor: Israel facing existential crisis The outgoing editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz spoke at the London Jewish Book Week. On the 2005 Chris McGreal series that appeared in the Guardian, comparing Israel to South Africa: Landau was "outraged" by the articles at the time, but went on: "I don't feel like that any more. I don't feel that my outrage did sufficient justice to that piece of journalism because I feel that we in Israel have got ourselves into a situation in which we will indeed be facing a South African dilemma. "We will have a country in which we will become the minority and the majority will be denied their political and civil rights. When I re-read the Chris McGreal reports I no longer feel necessarily that that was totally tendentious. It might have been a prophetic piece of journalism. But the point is that the outrage which I gave voice to was an inadequate reaction. The reaction should have been: 'has he got a point?'"
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POPS'Worse than apartheid' Nablus is closed off by six checkpoints. Until 2005, one of them was open. "The checkpoints are supposedly for security purposes, but anyone who wants to perpetrate an attack can pay NIS 10 for a taxi and travel by bypass roads, or walk through the hills. The real purpose is to make life hard for the inhabitants. The civilian population suffers," says Said Abu Hijla, a lecturer at Al-Najah University in the city. In the bus I get acquainted with my two neighbours: Andrew Feinstein, a son of Holocaust survivors who is married to a Muslim woman from Bangladesh and served six years as an MP for the ANC ; and Nathan Gefen, who has a male Muslim partner and was a member of the right-wing Betar movement in his youth. Gefen is active on the Committee against AIDS in his AIDS-ravaged country.
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POPS'They've Stolen our Water, now our SEA' "The illegality of the actions and orders of the army cries out to the heavens. This is a clear case of misusing security considerations as camouflage for achieving other goals which are unrelated to security matters and unacceptable." The Association of Civil Rights (Acri) petition said.
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POPSBrandeis Student Gov Tables Resolution Commemorating Israel's 60th bday About half of the Brandeis student body identifies itself as Jewish. Brandeis, which has 3,400 undergraduates, was founded by members of the American-Jewish community in 1948, when there were quotas limiting the number of Jewish students at prestigious universities. Via Philip Weiss , who argues this portends a more critical apporach to Israel among young Jewish Americans.
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