tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30152098953301630762024-02-08T03:38:35.262-08:00Evenhanded Democrats"the United States needs an evenhanded approach in the conflict."
"we need to be a credible negotiator, a facilitator for peace in the Middle East. And that means we have to be trusted by both sides." - Howard Dean's statements during 2004 primariesRusty Pipeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05652828707259124940noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-39756408657600412412007-10-09T14:59:00.000-07:002008-01-08T18:51:56.657-08:00Why the U.S. is bad for Israel<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374177724/ref=sr_1_1/104-1660271-2628766?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188680716&sr=8-1">The Israel Lobby</a> by Mearsheimer and Walt should be in bookstores by September 4, but it was released on Amazon on August 27 and has already shot up to #89 on their sales ranking. The early reviews are favorable -- as I consult the site, the six initial reviewers all gave the book four or five stars.</p><br /><p>The New Yorker's David Remnick has a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/09/03/070903taco_talk_remnick">piece</a> in the current issue which pans the book, describing it as a "symptom" of "our polarized era." Remnick, in turn, inspired Time Magazine's Tony Karon to <a href="http://tonykaron.com/2007/08/31/mearshimer-walt-and-the-erudite-hysteria-of-david-remnick/">reflect</a> on Mearsheimer and Walt, the Israel Lobby, and David Remnick.</p><br /><p>On the flip, some interesting bits from Tony Karon's reflection.</p><br /><p>Perhaps the central point of Mearsheimer and Walt's analysis (judging from the <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html">original London Review of Books article</a>) is that the US relationship with Israel is strategically bad for the US. In the article, they wrote that Israel had become a "strategic burden" for the US, and they cited experiences from the Iranian Revolution and the first Gulf War to back up that assertion.</p><br /><p>A secondary point they make, however, is that the relationship as it has developed over the years is also bad <em>for Israel</em>. Karon picks up on that point, and expands on it:</p><br /><blockquote><br /><p>Like the tech-bubble and real estate-bubble, Washington’s "Israel bubble" is unhealthy and dangerous — in fact, it not only jeopardizes U.S. interests throughout the region and beyond (by serving as Exhibit A for any anti-American element anywhere in the Islamic world to win the political contest with America’s friends), but it is also exceedingly bad for Israel: Particularly over the past decade, the U.S. has essentially enabled Israeli behavior so self-destructive that it may have already precluded any chance of it being able to live at peace with its neighbors.</p><br /></blockquote><br /><p>This a major theme Karon develops throughout the essay, even though he's mostly interested in challenging Remnick's interpretation of the Mearsheimer and Walt thesis.</p><br /><p>Karon does disagree with how Mearsheimer and Walt portray the Israel Lobby. He says their "analytical approach [is] often static and institutional; [sic] insufficiently dynamic and, dare I say it, insufficiently dialectical." He's not convinced that the US's pro-Israel bias is due to the "machinations of a lobby" but rather develops from "deeply-entrenched tropes in US political and civil society -- tropes which now function quite independently of the lobby's interventions." In his critique of Remnick he gives some specific examples of what he means by "tropes"; here, I just wanted to lay out the foundation of the analytical differences with Mearsheimer and Walt he alludes to in this next passage:</p><br /><blockquote><br /><p>U.S. policy on Israel and its neighbors is grotesquely biased in favor not only of Israel, but of Israel’s most self-destructive impulses. As such, it is a policy dangerous to U.S. interests and ultimately to those of Israel itself. This biased [sic] is maintained and policed in substantial part by an aggressive lobbying effort by an elaborate pro-Israel political infrastructure. Despite its analytical weaknesses, [the book] is a refreshingly candid and courageous (given the all too common fate of those who tackle this taboo — just take a look at the important logging of this stuff at <a href="http://www.muzzlewatch.com/">Muzzlewatch</a>) embrace of what has long been the "third rail" of American foreign policy, insisting that a debate be conducted where none has been tolerated until now.</p><br /></blockquote><br /><p>Karon notes that unconditional support of Israel's occupation of the Palestinians by the US makes it "virtually impossible for any Arab leader to openly associate with U.S. goals." In the long run, given the strategic importance of the Arab world, this might eventually lead the US to distance itself from Israel. Karon goes on:</p><br /><blockquote><br /><p>It was precisely this recognition of Israel’s limited strategic value to the U.S. in a post-Cold War world that led Yitzhak Rabin, a longtime hawk, to embrace the Oslo deal presented to him by Shimon Peres. Like the leaders of apartheid South Africa in the late 80s, Rabin had come to recognize (particularly in the era of the first Bush administration) that Israel could no longer count on unconditional U.S. backing given Washington’s interests elsewhere in the region. As a result, it was compelled to seek an accomodation with the Palestinian national leadership. Of course, this was an exceedingly good thing. Unfortunately, Rabin needn’t have worried, because the changing domestic political atmosphere in the U.S. — the success of the Israel lobby beyond its wildest dreams, particularly as a result of the backing of perhaps its latterly most important constituent, the Evangelical Christian Zionists, had meant that Israel could count on U.S. backing regardless of its behavior in relation to the Palestinians. M&W are simply pointing out that this does not accord with an accurate reading of U.S. national interests.</p><br /></blockquote><br /><p>In the end, Karon states, "U.S. support for Israel is unconditional, settlements and all. The sad fact ... is that the occupation is not some aberration on Israel’s part; there really is no longer any real distinction, in practice on the ground, between Israel and its occupation of the lands it captured in 1967."</p><br /><p>Karon concludes, following Henry Siegman in the <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/print/sieg01_.html">London Review of Books</a>, that "Israel quite simply has no inclination to withdraw from the occupied territories." Not everyone agrees with that assessment -- Daniel Levy over at Prospects for Peace, for example, has a <a href="http://www.prospectsforpeace.com/2007/08/novembers_peace_summit_some_gu.html">long post up</a> analyzing the potential for Bush's planned November peace summit between Abbas, Olmert, and some Arab states. Levy isn't exactly optimistic but he does see some basis for hope.</p><br /><p>Even as it prepares for the November conference, however, the US proceeds apace with its destructive and destabilizing "Dayton Plan." Badger over at missing links <a href="http://arablinks.blogspot.com/2007/08/washingtons-role-in-west-bank.html">cites</a> Lebanon's al Akhbar:</p><br /><blockquote><br /><p>The question of Palestinian control of the West Bank has become a responsibility of Washington, which is making plans for the establishment of five Palestinian battalions for deployment throughout the West Bank, and this comes at a time when Hamas is accusing the caretaker government headed by Salam Fayyad of coordinating with Israel in the closure of over 100 charitable organizations, targeting thereby the social arm of the movement (Hamas).</p><br /></blockquote><br /><p>Badger also provides his own analysis of what he thinks is going on:</p><br /><blockquote><br /><p>The move to shut Hamas-affiliated social-assistance groups is a corollary of [the Dayton Plan's aim to deliver "a strong political blow to Hamas"], and what the Al-Akhbar reporter is doing with is calling attention to what you could call the coherence of the Dayton Plan: Shifting the balance militarily to the faction friendly to America and the Israeli occupation, while at the same time shifting the balance in terms of "supplying the Palestinian people with their immediate economic needs..." and it is clear that the corollary of that is shutting down social-aid groups that are affiliated with Hamas... What is important for Americans to understand is that the closure of Hamas-affiliated voluntary organizations is tantamount to an attack on Palestinian civil society, and that this is part and parcel of the plan that also includes military aid for the Abbas-Fayyad "government".</p><br /></blockquote><br /><p>In other words, the US continues to favor the most intransigent Israeli position -- divide the Palestinians in order to avoid any serious concessions in the peace process.</p>lithohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14375246647610022080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-31660182434621308932007-06-15T16:30:00.000-07:002007-06-23T08:23:18.503-07:00Israel Should Finally be HappyThe outcome that Israel has been wanting for a long time - that it has been manipulating and conniving to bring about - has finally come to pass. The Palestinians are fighting each other.<br /><br />Israel has long been wanting someone else to fight and kill the Palestinians. It couches its desire in terms of "fighting terror," but what it really wants is for one element of the Palestinians to turn on the others on Israel's behalf. Whenever the Israelis impose preconditions on the Palestinians, in order to prevent peace from breaking out, they have always included this requirement to "fight terror."<br /><br />Now, the Palestinian factions may not be "fighting terror," but they are at least finally fighting each other, and not Israelis.<br /><br />Beginning just about a year ago, I have written a series of essays arguing that the election of Hamas to control of the Palestinian Authority might be the last hope of peace in the region, but that Israeli policy was instead driving the factions towards civil war and anarchy.<br /><br />http://www.dailykos....<br /><br />http://www.dailykos....<br /><br />http://www.dailykos....<br /><br />http://evenhandeddem...<br /><br />As usual, I was right. By choking off the resources that Hamas would have needed to govern, by arming the al-Fatah party, discarded by the Palestinian people for corruption and ineffectiveness, Israeli policy successfully undermined the ability of the Palestinian government to control the giant prison that is Gaza. Not only were the two largest parties intermittantly fighting each other, the resulting power vacuum emboldened the armed clans to conduct operations on their own, or in concert with other marginal groups.<br /><br />The situation had gotten so bad that the only relief could come when the warring factions turned their attention to attacks on Israel instead of each other, with unifying consequences as they recalled who their real enemy is. Indeed, there have been those in Gaza who actually welcomed the Israeli air strikes as a relief from the shooting in the streets. Some have actually voiced the heretical proposal that Gaza would be better off under Israeli occupation again.<br /><br />But now things are different. Hamas has gone on the offensive against Fatah and taken control of Gaza. Now there may be order. Now there may be a single authority that can establish and maintain control. At least, this seems to be what Hamas has in mind.<br /><br /> Hamas fighters issued an ultimatum to a number of the Gaza Strip's powerful clans to hand over their weapons and submit to interrogation today, as the Islamists attempted to assert their complete authority on the war-torn area after their military takeover.<br /><br /> As the last of Fatah's defeated fighters fled over the strip's southern border with Egypt, the Islamists today demanded that the multitude of different factions, clans and groups which oppose it, and operate within the territory, hand over weapons and ammunition.<br /><br /> http://www.timesonli...<br /><br /> Hopes have been raised that kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston may soon be released as Hamas, eager to aviod alienation, has warned those holding him to free him immediately.<br /><br /> Hamas, who have now taken control of most of Gaza from President Abbas's Fatah forces, vowed to secure the reporter's quick release.<br /><br /> In a press conference in Gaza this morning, spokesman Abu Obeid said: "We will not allow his continued detention."<br /><br /> http://www.dailymail...<br /><br />So Israel should finally be happy. There is now going to be law and order in Gaza. Hamas will be too busy establishing its rule to bother with petty operations like shooting rockets across the border into the desert, which it no longer needs to distract the people from the failures of its rule. It should even be in a position, at last, to control the notoriously uncontrollable rocket-shooters.<br /><br />Ismail Haniyeh has offered to establish talks with Israel on the subject of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.<br /><br />But Israel, predictably, is not happy. Israel looks at Haniyeh and says, "There is no one to talk to." Instead of saying: Oh, good, at last there is a stable government in Gaza, Israeli is squawking: Hamas! Terrorists! The sky is falling! and doing everything it can to destabilize the situation again by funneling weapons and funds to Mamhoud Abbas and the Fatah party, and looking around for Yet Another s/u/c/k/e/r party to do their dirty work by fighting Hamas:<br /><br /> Livni: Gaza multinational force must be willing to fight Hamas<br /> A proposed multinational force deployed along the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt must be willing to fight the Islamic militant group Hamas to stop weapons smuggling in the area, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Friday.<br /><br /> At a news conference during an official visit to Portugal, Livni said Israel was not interested in any proposal involving a monitoring force for the Philadelphi corridor where Hamas uses tunnels to bring in weapons. Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip on Thursday after days of heavy fighting with Fatah forces.<br /><br /> "Those who are talking in terms of international forces have to understand that the meaning is not monitoring forces but forces that are willing to fight, to confront Hamas on the ground," Livni said.<br /><br /> "The question is the effectiveness of these (multinational) forces. We don't need monitors to come in to tell us about the (smuggling), we need someone to stop it," she said.<br /><br />http://www.haaretz.c...<br /><br />It is hard to know what Hamas will do now, in the currently unstable situation, but one thing we can bet on is that Israel will be sure to make things worse. Israel never recognizes when it's better off.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-41379474385178984102007-05-24T11:47:00.000-07:002007-05-24T12:32:37.331-07:00Pariah StateOnce again, the Israeli government is asserting that Palestinian politicians are <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6684223.stm">legitimate targets</a> for arrest and assassination:<br /><br /><blockquote>Naser el-Deen al Shaer was arrested by soldiers who knocked at the door of his home in the city of Nablus, his wife said. <br />He was among several senior Hamas members who were detained by Israeli troops. <br />A former Cabinet minister, Abdel Rahman Zeidan, two lawmakers and the mayors of the towns of Nablus, Qalqiliya and Beita were also arrested. <br />An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that an "arrest operation" had taken place. <br />...<br />The emergency discussions between Mr Abbas and representatives from the five parties involved in inter-factional fighting came hours after Israel carried out more air strikes, hitting what it said were buildings used by Hamas militants to store weapons. <br />Israeli officials have repeated threats to widen their list of targets to include Hamas political leaders. </blockquote><br /><br />These recent events are further evidence of efforts by the Israeli government and the Bush administration to delegitimize and undermine the elected leadership of the Palestinian people. These efforts are most clear in their treatment of the Palestinian Prime Minister, Isma’il Haniyeh.<br /><br />A friend of mine, after overcoming many obstacles, was able to visit Gaza and meet with the Palestinian Prime Minister a few months ago. I share with you some of his experience, with his permission.<br /><br /><br />Scott Kennedy recently visited Gaza at the end of a visit to Israel and the West Bank, where he had been one of the leaders of a <a href="http://www.ifpbdel.org/del20/default.html"><br />delegation</a> from the <a href="http://www.ifpbdel.org/">Interfaith Peace-Builders.</a><br /><br /><blockquote>Interfaith Peace-Builders sends delegations to Israel/ Palestine so that U.S. citizens can see the conflict with their own eyes. Participants have the opportunity to learn directly from Israeli and Palestinian nonviolent peace/human-rights activists, to spend time in Palestinian and Israeli homes, and to experience the situation of Palestinians living under military occupation. The delegations focus on seeing, listening to, and recording the experiences and perspectives of a wide range of Palestinian and Israeli voices.<br />...<br />Building on a long history of delegation work in the Middle East, the <a href="http://www.forusa.org/about/history.html">Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR)</a> began Interfaith Peace-Builders in 2000 as a response to the intensified violence of the second intifada. Since that time IFPB has consulted and worked in partnership with Palestinian and Israeli organizations. We stand in support with Palestinians and Israelis striving to end the occupation of Palestine, working to ensure the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians, and advocating an enduring peace with justice for both peoples.</blockquote><br /><br />IFPB, which was last able to send a delegation to Gaza in 2003, carries <a href="http://www.ifpbdel.org/del20/gaza1.html">Scott’s report</a> about his individual trip:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>“Pariah State"<br />Meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Isma’il Haniyeh</strong><br />By Scott Kennedy<br /><br />Gaza is the second most dangerous place in the world for an American to visit,” a highly placed US State Department official commented to a friend and me two weeks ago (November 15, 2006) in Jerusalem. <br /><br />I first visited Gaza in 1968 and have returned more two dozen times, including many study groups and fact-finding delegations. My most recent visit was in April 2002. Since then, Israeli authorities have prevented our visiting Gaza. I was eager to return, to renew friendships and see for myself the changes that have taken place. I also wanted, if at all possible, to convey my support for those courageous people who continue to work for human rights, democracy and a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They persist despite formidable obstacles. It is imperative, therefore, for them as well as for us, that those suffering such extreme isolation are not forgotten and that their voices still be heard.<br /><br />But visiting the Gaza Strip is no easy thing. After Hamas won control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in January 2006 elections, the Bush Administration determined that the Islamic movement represents a key thread in the web of global terrorism. Israel in turn decided Hamas constitutes a mortal threat to its survival. European and other nations followed suit by supporting both a US-led international diplomatic and economic boycott of Hamas and Israel’s military siege of the Gaza Strip. By all but official Israeli accounts, these factors have created a severe humanitarian crisis for the 1.5 million people crammed into Gaza’s 140 square miles and surviving on less than $2.00 per day.<br /><br />Two months ago, a friend told me he wanted to gain a first hand view of what is happening on the ground in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. I suggested that we visit Gaza. I also told him that the US and Israeli governments would put up as many bureaucratic obstacles as possible to our going to Gaza. And then, if we persisted, they would try to scare us out of going. Nevertheless, before leaving California we had received “permission” to enter the Palestinian territory for three days through his contact at an Israeli consulate in the USA. The American government for its part was determined to dissuade us from visiting the hellhole of a fourth world country known as the Gaza Strip. <br /><br />The Jerusalem diplomat spoke in a lifeless monotone during our half-hour meeting. Mustering as much gravitas as possible, he emphasized just how dangerous Gaza is. Second most dangerous place for Americans to visit in the world, in fact. Who beat out Gaza, I mused? It must be Baghdad. Or maybe Tehran or Kabul. But I wasn’t sure. Perhaps it is St. Louis, named “murder capital” of the USA during the recent World Series.<br /><br />The diplomat and his head of security detailed the recent kidnapping of two Fox News personnel in Gaza. The cameraman, who happened to be from New Zealand, apparently persuaded his captors to look at a world map. He tried in vain to convince them that New Zealand is not part of the United States. No matter how unimportant we might be, and it was clear from the diplomat’s demeanor that he considered us altogether unimportant, we would surely be “prime targets” for kidnapping or worse, just because we’re Americans. <br /><br />We also learned that if we were taken prisoner, our government could do nothing to help us. He forewarned that the US no longer has any contacts in the Gaza Strip and we’d be on our own should anything happen. We were to believe that the sole Superpower is incapable of communicating with groups operating in or influencing events in Gaza.<br /><br />We listened with more than a bit of skepticism to the American official as he tried to prevail upon us not to visit Gaza.<br /><br />The final straw, however, came later that day during a phone conversation with Washington, DC. An official at the Department of State told my friend, “Were you to travel to Gaza, you will almost certainly be killed.” That night, my friend explained his decision against Gaza, “If we were rescuing hostages or something, I might be able to justify making such a trip. But I would be going just for my self-education. It doesn’t seem to be worth the risk.” <br /><br />I was not entirely surprised, but disappointed in his decision of course. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to counter, “But there are 1.5 million hostages in Gaza!” Since the capture of an Israeli soldier early this summer, the Gaza strip had suffered a devastating blockade and complete isolation that made it nearly impossible for anyone to visit. Growing hunger and despair reveal a civilian population held hostage to political power games by the Palestinian factions, Israel and the United States.<br /><br />I resolved that night to make the trip to Gaza on my own.<br /><br />Three days later, an hour-long taxi drive from East Jerusalem brought me to the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza. A half dozen journalists and I were the only people seeking entry into Gaza. The crossing seemed old hat to them, while for me it was an adventure. The Israeli Foreign Ministry had assured me the day before that my name was still on the list of those permitted to enter Gaza. The young solider behind the counter staring lazily at the computer screen before him, however, first told me that my name was not on the list and made a phone call. He next said that my name was on the list, but I had to wait while they checked things out. Another phone call. Still later, I was told that my name was on the list but my permission had expired on May 15, 2006. (I had only applied for permission in October, a month previously.) A few more people filtered into the transit room as I waited patiently. Still later, after checking by phone with higher ups for the umpteenth time, the soldier smiled, handed me my passport, and stated without any explanation that there was no problem for me to enter Gaza after all. <br /><br />Finished with the Israeli army step, I next handed my passport to another soldier six feet down the counter. She asked my reason for visiting and advised me it was unsafe to travel to Gaza. When I told her I was visiting a non-governmental organization, she asked why I would do that. I told her I supported their work. She asked if I work for them and if I have any friends in Gaza. Finally, she wanted to know if I had a business card demonstrating that I work for an NGO.<br /><br />I handed her a personal business card with no mention of a non-profit organization. She looked at it quizzically, raised her eyebrows, handed it back to me, and said, “Have a nice trip!”<br /><br />I had permission to pass through Erez into Gaza and there was almost nobody else at the crossing facility. Still, it took me over an hour and a half to clear the Israeli procedures. All of this fuss was occasioned by my entering a territory from which the Israelis had “disengaged” more than a year ago. I understand the need for nations to control who enters their country. It’s not entirely clear, however, why Israel would be so concerned with my visiting Palestinian Gaza. If they thought I was smuggling Qassam rockets into Gaza, they would at least have looked into my bag. Instead, the civilian employee from a private security firm simply waved me past without so much as a glance into my shoulder bag.<br /><br />I passed through a series of turnstiles and then made my way several hundred yards through a concrete corridor. The two lane street was lined by the same eight meter high concrete sections that Israel uses to build the “separation wall” through the West Bank. There were concrete benches as part of the foot of the wall for long sections, should one tire, and corrugated iron provided cover from the heat or rain. As I approached the Palestinian end of the passageway, the wall was lower and funkier. A single Arab porter waited at the halfway point with a neon vest and a wheel chair.<br /><br />At the other end of the course way, uniformed Palestinian border officials were sitting around a simple table under a metal awning with a couple of men in civilian clothes. They were chatting and drinking tea. As I approached, they smiled and welcomed me to Palestine without getting up, then wrote my name by pen in a lined register book. Getting into Gaza, as opposed to leaving Israel, took all of two minutes. They weren’t concerned the least bit about what I might be carrying into Palestine, and didn’t ask to look in my bag. <br /><br />A translator and guide from the Gaza Community Mental Health Program and the Union of Women’s Health Committees in Gaza, along with a police escort, waited for me on the Palestinian side of the border. They motioned for me to sit in the front passenger seat of a small white station wagon. For the next two days, I traveled with a police car in front and a heavily armed security detail from the Palestinian Authority’s Interior Ministry in a pickup behind. With blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, I’m still not sure if I was any safer for all the effort. But anybody gunning for me definitely knew we were coming. Children rushed to the street to see the passing attraction. They must have been disappointed to see only me waving back at them.<br /><br />We made stops at a demolished mosque in the town of Beit Hanoun, at a home where 19 people had been killed ten days before and a hospital in Jebaliya Refugee Camp, and Gaza City. We rushed from site to site because I was scheduled to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Ismai’l Haniyeh shortly after noon. When we pulled up in front of a tall office building in busy Gaza City, armed security milled around with a dozen members of the press awaiting our arrival. Several dozen other curious passersby waited to see what was going on. The Prime Minister’s staff greeted us and led us quickly up two short flights of steps and into the building. I noticed several men on their knees in prayer in a room off to the right as we hurried by, lest I forget that I’d soon be meeting with the elected head of the Hamas government. The elevator failed to move for several minutes despite multiple pushes of the button. We joked nervously when the elevator not only failed to rise but the door wouldn’t open to let us out. Finally, the man accompanying us hit the red button and a loud alarm sounded. I imagined an onslaught of armed security forces converging on the elevator, but no one seemed to notice. We soon exited the elevator on an upper floor into a spacious office suite with golden brown rug and overstuffed sofas and men in suits standing around. A few minutes later I was ushered into the Prime Minister’s office.<br /><br />After shaking hands, Prime Minster Haniyeh motioned for me to sit next to him at one end of a rectangular office. A Palestinian flag stood behind us. Another faced us from the far reach of the office where four men in dark suits sat chatting and answering cell phones during our meeting. Introductions later revealed they were the Palestinian cabinet members, representing the Ministries of Information, Transportation, and the Interior, and a spokesperson for the PA.<br /><br />Haniyeh turned to face me and through an interpreter welcomed me warmly. He wore a neat gray suit, a freshly pressed shirt opened at the neck. I introduced myself and explained that I was visiting the region on behalf of three pacifist organizations that oppose violence by all parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I had come to express my opposition to the United States’ campaign to isolate the PA because of Hamas’ victory in the January 2006 elections and to oppose the killing economic sanctions against Haniyeh’s government and Israel’s military siege of the Gaza Strip.<br />Prime Minister Haniyeh said how pleased he was to have a visitor from the United States and that Hamas bears no ill will toward the American people. He noted with irony that those calling for the spread of democratic society didn’t respect the results of the Palestinian elections, even though the January elections were universally viewed as fair. “I was shocked by the US response to the Palestinian electoral process,” he added. <br /><br />Haniyeh acknowledged that I had already seen some of the evidence of the Palestinians’ suffering and the destruction brought about by Israel’s “incursions” into Gaza. “The Gaza Strip is under total siege by sea, air and by land. This has resulted in tremendous humanitarian suffering.” He said the military escalation culminated in the recent massacre in Beit Hanoun in which 19 people from one family were killed by Israeli artillery. I had met two young survivors earlier in the day. The week before my visit, the USA vetoed a UN Security Council condemning the accidental killings in Beit Hanoun. Haniyeh said the US veto gave a green light to Israeli aggression against Gaza. The veto also sends messages that Israel is above the law and Palestinian lives are worth less than other lives.<br /><br />Many commentators say that Hamas had not expected to take control of the Palestinian government. This view is widely shared by those I met in Gaza. Hamas ran on a platform of “reform and change” and the Islamic movement’s candidates benefited from the moribund peace process, deteriorating economic situation in Gaza, and widespread corruption in the PA dominated by Arafat’s Fateh Party. Their political strength is rooted in an Islamic social program that has developed over a decade and a half. A secular woman activist told me that the Hamas political program largely focuses on the role of women in society. She described a recent attempt to alter Palestinian law in order to permit polygamy according to Hamas’ reading of the Koran. The proposed change was withdrawn after meetings with a broad coalition of grassroots human rights and women’s organizations. Hamas does not have a strong “foreign policy” agenda. They choose instead to fold themselves within the Palestinian consensus. Hence Haniyeh’s indications that Hamas will live with a political accommodation with Israel. <br /><br />I pressed the Prime Minister about the question of Hamas making peace with Israel. Haniyeh said that the problem remains that Israel has yet to determine its position towards the Palestinians. Despite all of the peace talks, “We have received no real offer” of peace from Israel, he said. Instead a series of demands have been made of the Hamas-led government: that they recognize Israel, honor agreements previously entered into by the PA, and renounce violence. He asked rhetorically whether the same demands are made of Israel. Answering his own question, Haniyeh argued that Israel must first recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinians, including a clear statement about what borders the Palestinian state will have. Only then will Hamas be able to clarify its position. <br /><br />Haniyeh reiterated his oft-stated position that Hamas is willing to enter into a ten year interim peace agreement with Israel and perhaps longer term truce to enable the Palestinians and Israelis to build a new relationship. For the past eighteen months, they had observed a unilateral cease-fire with Israel. He covered the same points he has made elsewhere, "We are strongly in favor of direct talks between Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the PLO and the head of the government, and the prime minister of Israel, Olmert.... If they reach an agreement in their discussions that's acceptable to the Palestinian people, we will accept it, also. Hamas will."<br /><br />There is an international consensus in support of a Two State Solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. This solution calls for an exchange of “land for peace” and creation of a Palestinian state consisting of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, that Israel occupied in 1967. Support for a Two State Solution has been officially adopted by every Arab state, the European Union, the United Nations, the nonaligned countries, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and every other significant grouping of world nations. Sheer exhaustion, if not a change of heart, has brought the Palestinian people to accept the international consensus in support of a Two State solution. Hamas would have had to bend to domestic Palestinian pressure and the international consensus, just as the grizzled guerilla leader Yasser Arafat had been compelled to do. Sadly, the US gave Hamas no grace period to come to terms with this Palestinian consensus. <br /><br />Meanwhile Israel’s continued annexation of Palestinian land threatens to render the “land for peace” formula meaningless and the Two State solution irrelevant. <br />I can’t claim the same gift George Bush professes -- the ability to look into a man’s eyes and size up his soul. But I did look squarely into Haniyeh’s eyes during much of our half-hour conversation. There was no evasion and no shifting of eyes. He seemed to be a kind and thoughtful person. <br /><br />When I asked Haniyeh about the so-called “clash of civilizations” that has dominated American understanding and discussion of global events since the September 11th terrorist attacks, I sensed a deep sadness. With a clear and determined voice, he slowly laid out his position on a question he obviously had answered many times: “We believe in dialogue between civilizations and not the clash of civilizations.... We know how special the relationship is between the US and Israel. We don’t look to stop this strategic alliance. We are only asking for a more balanced position.” He lamented the fact that after September 11th, the US missed a real opportunity for cooperation and coordination between East and West, based on mutual respect. The USA missed another opportunity when it chose to oppose the democratically elected government of Hamas. “Hamas is moderate and pragmatic and realistic.... We are not a terrorist organization just because we are part of the Islamic world. We can be a bridge between the US and the West and Islam and the Arab World. Instead, the US has pushed Hamas into a corner….” <br /><br />Haniyeh rose to prominence after his mentor Sheikh Yassin and other Hamas leaders were assassinated by Israel. Immediately after his election, Israel and the United States moved decisively to bring about his downfall. I couldn’t help but wonder whether this soft-spoken man is well-suited for the job. When I shared my assessment of their prime minister, my guide and translator said that Haniyeh is known among the people in Gaza as a very thoughtful and kind person both before and after his election as prime minister. His stature was enhanced in recent days when he offered to step down as Prime Minister if necessary for Israel and the United States to lift the devastating siege on the people of Gaza.<br /><br />President Bush would have none of this talk of building bridges or lifting sieges. His administration decided immediately after the election of Isma’il Haniyeh to bring down the Hamas government. Taxes that Israel has collected from the Palestinians are withheld from the Palestinian Authority in defiance of written agreements and international law. International aid has also been suspended. 150,000 government employees including teachers and police have not been paid for more than eight months.<br /><br />Standard operating procedure for the Bush Presidency includes breaking off communication with those who won’t go along with our nation’s global agenda and trying in turn to bring down governments we stigmatize as “terrorist.” Syria fought alongside the US in the first Gulf War, was taken off the list of “terrorist nations” and the US publicly thanked Assad’s regime for their active cooperation combating terror after 9/11. Bush helped force Syria out of Lebanon and then watched as that country slid into chaos and war with Israel. Now the Bush Administration faults Damascus for the situation in Lebanon and Iraq and shuns Bashar al Assad along with Iran and North Korea. <br /><br />The net effect is that relations with these countries continue to decline and drift towards escalated conflict and war. Meanwhile, the United States grows more isolated. 156 countries, including the European nations, voted for a UN General Assembly resolution expressing sympathy for the Palestinians killed in the Israeli attack on Beit Hanoun. The resolution also opposed Palestinians firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. Seven nations abstained, but only half a dozen nations, including several Pacific island nations, joined the US in voting against the resolution.<br /><br />In the five years since the World Trade Center attacks, President Bush has squandered global solidarity and support for the USA and the American people by fomenting an unprecedented anti-American sentiment around the globe. For the first time in my four decades visiting the region, I experienced explicit anti-American feeling in my two weeks in Israel and the occupied Palestinian West Bank. This rising anger at the American people for their government’s actions prompted the heavy security arrangements in Gaza, the likes of which I have never experienced before. <br /><br />In his effort to isolate Hamas as a “pariah state,” Bush has achieved quite the opposite effect. The US is increasingly isolated on the world stage and it is our nation that is viewed as bullying and warlike. The US’s continued backing for Israel, no matter how heinous its crimes, reinforces the general deterioration in world esteem for our nation and its people. Bush may very well have succeeded within our own borders in defining Hamas and other political movements as terrorist groups. But there is little doubt, from the perspective of the broad international consensus about how to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is the United States that has become the pariah state. <br /><br />President Bush sits by while Israel effectively destroys the possibility of a Two State solution, the only basis for a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that enjoys an international consensus and offers a diplomatic rather than a military solution. He may in the short run bring down the Hamas government, but at what long term cost to regional stability and peace? </blockquote><br /><br /><br /><em>“Scott Kennedy coordinates the Middle East Program of the <a href="http://www.rcnv.org/#RCNV">Resource Center for Nonviolence</a> in Santa Cruz, California. He was elected to three terms on the Santa Cruz City Council and served twice as mayor. Kennedy was elected national chairman of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and founded and chaired the FOR's Middle East Task Force. He has traveled to the Mid East four dozen times since 1968 and most recently in November 2006 when he co-led a delegation for the Interfaith Peace-Builders”.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/01/01/18342694.php">Pictures</a> of Scott Kennedy’s recent visit in Gaza are also available.Rusty Pipeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05652828707259124940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-266392239405830172007-05-05T21:00:00.000-07:002007-05-05T21:04:48.086-07:00FalatanIn January of 2006, to the surprise of most parties, including Hamas, the Islamic party won a clear majority in the Palestinian parliamentary elections. Here was an opportunity aborted at birth. Instead of accepting the results of the democratic process, instead of respecting the will of the Palestinian people, the neocon axis of Israel and the US turned on the Hamas government before it was even officially established, determined to strangle, to starve it to death before it could perform a single official act.<br /><br />The short-sightedness of such a policy is wonderful to contemplate. With the primitive reflex of the reptile brain, the axis was not capable of thinking beyond the single simplistic equation: Hamas = terrorist. A strong Hamas government, according to this equation, could only mean stronger terrorist attacks on Israel. This, despite the fact that both before and since the election, Hamas had proposed and adhered to a cease-fire with Israel. Rejectionists among the Israelis and their supporters rejoiced at the outcome, as it automatically served as a perfect excuse to call off, Yet Again, the farcial "peace process." No negotiation with terrorists, was the immediate cry. No <i>talking</i> with terrorists. Just to make sure that peace could not possibly arise, the rejectionist axis declared a set of demands – concessions Hamas would be required to make before they would consider recognition, concessions they knew quite well Hamas would refuse to make, particularly under such circumstances.<br /><br />In keeping with this reptile-brained policy, the axis proceeded to cut off all funding to the Palestinian government and to pressure the rest of the world into joining this embargo, so that it could not pay the salaries of its security services and public servants. They also suborned the leaders of the Fatah party, whom the people had rejected for their corruption, to undermine and contest the results of the election by force. The Hamas government was duly weakened, as the axis had intented. But what they entirely failed to consider were the consequences of a weakened government in Palestine. Already last year, there were clear signs that the Palestinian body politic was sliding head-first down the slope to civil war as a direct consequence of axis policies.<br /><br />I wrote about these possible consequences in an essay just about a year ago: that by weaking Hamas, Israel is opening the doors of possibility to al-Qaida taking its place. And the likelihood of this outcome has not diminished at all.<br /><br /><blockquote>Sun May 21, 2006 <br /><br /><blockquote>http://www.haaretz.com/...<br />A previously unknown group that links itself to al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for a failed attempt Saturday to kill the chief of the Palestinian Authority intelligence service in the Gaza Strip, General Tareq Abu Rajab, according to a Web statement posted Sunday.<br />The group, called the Qaida Organization of the State of Palestine, also vowed to target other senior officials, including Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.</blockquote><br />Of course this report must be taken with a grain of skepticism. It is quite possible that this previously-unknown group might be a mask for rogue or actual Hamas agents acting against Fatah, which has officially denied responsibility for the attack. But the possibility of al-Qaida activity in Gaza has been growing ever since the American occupation of Iraq, which functions as an international recruiting center for terrorist groups. And just as Israel did everything in its power to destroy Fatah, only to discover that Fatah was maybe not all that bad in comparison to Hamas, it may soon discover that its attempts to destroy Hamas have opened the door for the rise of a Palestinian al-Qaida, in contrast to which, Hamas may start looking not all that bad in comparison.<br /><br />The latest pronouncement from Osama bin Laden attempted to link his cause with that of the Palestinians. Hamas was quick to repudiate this unwanted support from al-Qaida. Hamas has no interest in international jihad. Its aspirations have never extended beyond the historical borders of Palestine. <bold>A strong Hamas would be the best possible bar to the rise of al-Qaida in the territory. But the more Israel succeeds in weakening Hamas, in rendering the Hamas government ineffective, the more it encourages the potential support for the al-Qaida alternative.</bold><br /><br />The point is Israel's persistent and active attempts to bring down the Hamas government, to make it unable to rule. And where there is no rule, there is anarchy. Where there is no rule, there is a vaccuum where worse forces can enter and took root. The fact is: there is a group claiming to be al-Qaida operating in Palestine. The fact is: fomenting civil war is the same tactic al-Qaida is using in Iraq. The fact is: Palestine is devolving rapidly towards a state of civil war, towards becoming another Iraq. Israel ought to remember - Abbas ought to remember, and Hamas ought to remember - to be careful what they wish for. When they get it, they are likely to get something worse, along with it. </blockquote><br /><br />That was a year ago. When we look at Palestine now, and particularly the open-air prison that Israel has made of Gaza, what do we find? Anarchy. Or, in Arabic, <i>falatan.</i> In the absence of a strong ruling Hamas government, Gaza is increasingly in the hands of armed gangs, clans, and warlords – still including some who call themselves al-Qaida. Hamas itself is fragmenting, its various wings turning on the others. There is the political group in Syria, headed by Meshal, there is the political group in Gaza, headed by Haniyeh, there is the military wing – Izzadin al-Qassam – that has declared it no longer considers itself bound by the official partial truce. It was this group, along with members of several other Palestinian resistance organizations, including one calling itself the Army of Islam, that captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June of 2006 – a month after I wrote the above. This incident was the excuse for a major Israeli onslaught of violence against Gaza, which left it in ruins, without sufficient electricity or potable water for the needs of the population.<br /><br />Now, a year later, as Hamas has grown weaker and more divided, conditions in Gaza have only grown worse. Not just the physical and economic conditions, but the anarchy, the all-pervasive violence, the rise of independent warlords and bandits that no one is able to control, not even Hamas. In March of this year, there was yet another abduction, this one of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. Hamas spokesmen claim that they know who is holding him but are unable to free him – so far has the situation devolved into anarchy and the rule of gangs, including the so-called Army of Islam, which turns out to be no more than one lawless clan among many, still in the abduction racket.<br /><br /><br />http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/853107.html<br /><blockquote>As Gaza burns<br /> <br />By Avi Issacharoff<br /> <br />[Clan leader]Mumtaz Durmush was also apparently involved in the abductions of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. "Everyone in Gaza knows who is holding Johnston," a Palestinian officer who is a member of Fatah says bitterly. "But no one dares to take action against them. The Sabra neighborhood where the Durmush clan members live looks like a giant army camp. Hamas and Fatah are busy fighting each other rather than preparing a plan to take over Sabra." <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />...According to data released by the Ramallah Center for Human Rights, since the start of 2007, 63 Palestinians have been killed and some 400 injured in clashes because of the chaos in the security situation. Most of the casualties were in the Gaza Strip, which is beginning to resemble the Somalian capital of Mogadishu. Tens of thousands of men armed with light weapons and RPGs do whatever they think fit; the Palestinian police are not effective and the courts are not functioning. In armed feuds between clans, the Palestinian security forces do not get involved at all. <br /><br /><br />...<br /><br />Tuesday was a relatively quiet day, compared to the last few weeks in Gaza: Unknown assailants attacked and seriously injured a resident of Khan Yunis, hitting him over the head with a blunt instrument, and armed gunmen shot at the car of Majdi Arabeed, head of the Voice of Freedom radio station in Gaza, but there were no casualties. Two years and three months ago, Arabeed was very seriously wounded by shots from an Israel Defense Forces unit operating in the Gaza Strip while he was filming a report together with Channel 10 correspondent Shlomi Eldar. He recovered and went back to work. But in recent days he has once again become a target - this time of Palestinian armed men. It is not clear whether they are from one of the Islamic movements or one of the rival clans. "There is no law in Gaza," he says. "No one talks any more about negotiations or about freeing prisoners. They are all busy with the question of who killed whom and how. The police are afraid of the gunmen because if they try to arrest them, they will immediately be depicted as collaborating with Israel. In addition, the competition between the various forces of Fatah and Hamas has become destructive from their point of view, and their image is negative. Everyone stores up weapons at home to defend themselves. Even if the state prosecutor publishes an arrest order against a resident of Gaza, who is able to arrest him if he and his family are armed?" Arabeed claims that the responsibility lies with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's Hamas government, which is not able to function. Some analysts in Gaza believe that Hamas' decision to fire Qassam rockets at Israel on Independence Day was an attempt to make the Palestinian public forget the movement's failure to restore order in the streets of the Strip. It seems as if Hamas is trying to remind the Palestinian public once again of its "good old" image as a terrorist organization that fights Israel fearlessly. But the chaos in Gaza has also had an effect on its ranks. "They have become like us," one Fatah activist says. "They fight over everything: money, positions, ranks, who will be director general and who will be captain in the offices and the security mechanisms that they are responsible for. There is no longer one leader who decides everything. The authority of Khaled Meshal, the head of the political bureau, has been badly eroded since the Mecca agreement. Their message to the Palestinian people is not uniform; all of a sudden, they sound like a supermarket of different ideas, just like Fatah was at one stage: [Hamas co-founder] Mahmoud al-Zahar speaks about destroying Israel, while Haniyeh broadcasts a moderate message. The military wing does whatever it wants." </blockquote> <br /><br /> <br /><br />There are some among the enemies of the Palestinians who will gloat at the reports of this anarchy. To them, it proves the essential depravity of the Palestinian people, it proves there is "no partner for peace" among them, it justifies the harsh regime of repression and isolation that has caused this situation. To others, the weakening of Hamas is regarded as a success of their policies; they busy themselves shipping arms to Fatah and promoting the overthrow of Hamas by force, as if Fatah, any more than Hamas, would be capable of taking control over the chaotic situation.<br /><br />None of them seem capable of lifting up their eyes to see how very much conditions in Gaza are coming to resemble those in Iraq, where gangs that call themselves al-Qaida are also running loose, where there is no power capable of checking them, where even some of the Shi'ites are wishing that Saddam Hussein was alive again.<br /><br />When Gaza reaches this point, there will be many in Israel who wish that Hamas was in power again. But it will be too late.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-15869300005601670372007-04-25T12:40:00.000-07:002007-04-25T12:46:24.460-07:00Israel, Palestine, Means and EndsWe at Evenhanded Democrats, while having many differences in style and political opinion, are united in our goal of reforming the Democratic Party's policies in the Middle East. Together we are involved in seeking this change by trying to influence the debate at Progressive and Democratic blogs with reality-based arguments about Israel and Palestine. For the most part, our diaries on this site are cross-posted at Daily Kos and related sites -- blog communities in which we value being members.<br /><br />We have come to a parting of the ways with one of the contributors to this blog, shergald. While we continue to share some goals with shergald, we do not wish to share some of his chosen means. His diaries will no longer be carried on this site.Rusty Pipeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05652828707259124940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-82910328857414818632007-04-22T18:11:00.000-07:002007-04-22T18:12:38.472-07:00Democrats standing up to Olmert??<div class="intro"><p>Only in an Israeli newspaper:</p> <blockquote> <p>When Speaker of the House Nancy came back from her Mideast trip, I wrote briefly about her frustration with the Israeli government and the way it handled her visit to Damascus: "Pelosi", I wrote, "<strong>didn't like the Israeli clarification</strong>. It made her look slightly ridiculous, like a rookie in foreign policy." I also mentioned that it was not her <strong>first frustration with Olmert</strong>. He knows how politically sensitive are the issues of American policy in the region but <strong>"nonetheless decided to present an explicit Israeli policy regarding Iraq identical to that of Bush in a speech to AIPAC."</strong></p><p><br /><strong></strong></p><blockquote> <p>And this wasn't even the first time that Olmert marched into this mine field. Visiting the White House in November, right after the Midterm elections, he felt the need to say that he is <strong>"very much impressed and encouraged by the stability which the great operation of America in Iraq brought to the Middle East."</strong> snip</p> <p>As Guttman wrote Thursday: "Israeli officials and Democratic lawmakers are working to mend fences", and the Waxman-Ackerman statement is a first sign. Sources in Washington told me today that next week, when all the Democratic Presidential hopefuls will appear before delegates to the National Jewish Democratic Council conference, we will see more of this conciliatory tone coming to fore.</p> <p>However, this source said, <strong>"even as our leadership is working to calm things down, the rank and file Democrats are getting tired of these Israeli maneuvers."</strong> If Israel doesn't "get its act together" and doesn't reciprocate these pacifying moves - "if Olmert keeps doing such irresponsible things" - it will get more<strong> "difficult for Democrats who do care about Israel"</strong> to defend their position.</p> <p>It almost sounded like a threat.<br /><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=851015&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1">http://www.haaretz.com/...</a></p> </blockquote> <p>I know Bush does not seem to care that the democrats won Congress....but someone needs to tell Olmert.</p> <p>I believe Bush had Sharon's blessings to go into Iraq...and that Olmert is having problems backing away from that position.</p> <p>Here is the line up for the conference on Israel and Terrorism: </p> <blockquote> <p>NJDC WASHINGTON CONFERENCE - APRIL 23-25, 2007<br />CONFIRMED SPEAKERS INCLUDE:<br />Senator Hillary Clinton<br />Senator Barack Obama<br />Senator John Edwards<br />Senator Joe Biden<br />Senator Christopher Dodd<br />Governor Bill Richardson<br />House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer </p> </blockquote> <p>And who are they? What is their mission statement? Sounds like they could be a close mirror imagine of AIPAC:</p> <blockquote> <p>Founded in 1990, the National Jewish Democratic Council is the national voice of Jewish Democrats. Informed by our commitment to those values shared by the Democratic Party and the vast majority of American Jews - including the separation of church and state, a strong US-Israel relationship, and reproductive freedom - NJDC's singular set of priorities includes:</p> <p> * Educating Jewish voters about the very real differences between their Democratic and Republican candidates for elected office through special reports and voter guides. NJDC has distributed more than 250,000 informational guides to Jewish households in recent election cycles.<br /> * Informing candidates for public office about the need to address and support issues of concern to the Jewish community.<br /> * Advocating on behalf of Jewish and Democratic ideals on Capitol Hill and in Jewish and national media.<br /> * Fighting the radical right agenda at every turn through research and reports, grassroots advocacy, working directly with lawmakers in Washington, and educating journalists.<br /> * Engaging and cultivating a new generation of young Jewish Democratic leaders by replicating our highly successful Washington-based Young Leadership program in other major cities, including New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Cleveland and South Florida.<br /> * Expanding Jewish awareness of critical legislative activity through quarterly and biweekly publications, as well as Breakfast Roundtables and Domestic Issues Forums featuring congressional and executive branch leaders.<br /><a href="http://www.njdc.org/about/">http://www.njdc.org/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>Their articles tend to focus on Israel more than internal issues, for example: Robert Novak...(our one Anti-Israel neo-con?).</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>"THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING"<br />Why Won’t Prominent Republicans Criticize Novak<br />for Anti-Israel Writings?</strong></p> <p>Today, the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) called on Republican party leaders to offer a public rebuke of right wing pundit Bob Novak’s harsh anti-Israel stance and string of unbalanced columns.</p> <p>In recent columns, Novak has suggested Israel’s policies are <strong>"worse than apartheid," </strong>implied that Israel is oppressing Christians, claimed that terror organization Hamas wants peace, and chastised President Bush for failing to pressure the Israeli government. [Washington Post, 4/9/07, 4/16/07 and 4/5/07]</p> <p>"This is a major example of Republican hypocrisy," said NJDC Executive Director Ira Forman. <strong>"Republicans jump up and down and paint Democrats with a broad brush whenever anyone on the left says anything remotely questionable about the Middle East. Yet, here is right wing pundit Bob Novak writing a series of awful columns and the silence from Republican leaders is deafening."</strong></p> <p>snip Novak has also blamed Israel for the Iraq war. [Newsday, 12/7/01; Townhall.com 4/18/05; CNN 12/23/03]</p> <p><a href="http://www.njdc.org/newsdigest/detail.php?id=687">http://www.njdc.org/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>And their message to Olmert last year:</p> <blockquote> <p>As NJDC's leadership noted in the letter,<strong> "The leaders and supporters of the NJDC are committed to doing everything in our power to preserve the longstanding friendship and strategic military alliance between the United States and Israel.</strong> We look forward to continuing our work with you and your administration as Israel continues its quest for lasting peace and security."<br />snip<br />We at the National Jewish Democratic Council pledge our full cooperation in working to uphold the ever-strengthening relationship between America and Israel.<br /><a href="http://njdc.typepad.com/njdcs_blog/2006/03/njdc_congratula.html">http://njdc.typepad.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>I wonder what they are thinking of Olmert now.</p> <p>Meanwhile another excellent article from Harretz, Olmert does not need to negotiate from a position of strength to end the conflict...he just has to show-up.</p> <blockquote> <p>Olmert does not need to be an outstanding rhetorician or even a statesman to market the Arab initiative. <strong>It almost sells itself.</strong> The way in which it is now presented by the Arab leaders offers a plan with two floors of the same building: <strong>immediate tactical conditions for initiating Arab negotiations with Israel - not only Palestinian negotiations - and strategic conditions for establishing full relations, including normalization.</strong> The tactical conditions entail freezing Israel's policy vis-a-vis the territories - <strong>including a halt to construction in settlements and the separation wall -</strong> a return to the status quo of September 2000, lifting the boycott on the Palestinian people and stopping the excavations near Al-Aqsa Mosque.</p> <p> The first several conditions do not require negotiations; most of them are even included in the road map proposed by the Quartet. They constitute a gesture of goodwill, with the aim of building trust and generating momentum for the start of Arab-Israeli negotiations.<strong> The familiar strategic conditions are a full Israeli withdrawal, a solution for the status of Jerusalem, and a resolution of the refugee problem. </strong>Saud al-Faisal, who elaborated on these conditions, did not speak about the right of return and did not draw a map of the Holy Basin - <strong>everything is subject to negotiation.<br /></strong><br />There is a bonus attached to these conditions. They constitute a paved route to the ultimate vision, as defined by the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa: <strong>"There is no normalization free of charge. But the Arabs are prepared, in accordance with the initiative, to enter into a final peace process and to regard the Israeli-Arab conflict as a thing of the past if we carry out and they carry out the mutual obligations."</strong></p> <p>Here are the explicit words: <strong>the end of the conflict.</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/851080.html">http://www.haaretz.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> Until further notice... </blockquote> </div>DreamingGypsyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17425341351673381009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-23517676707982081022007-04-21T12:12:00.000-07:002007-04-21T12:14:47.110-07:00<p>This week Puerto Rican peace activist Tito Kayak and Nobel peace laureate Mairead Corrigan participated in peace demonstrations in Palestinian village of Bilin, <strong>where a wall continues to be build taking valuable farm land from the Palestinian owners.</strong></p> <p><br /></p><p> Corrigan, who won the prize in 1976 for her work in encouraging a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland dispute, was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet and was transferred to a hospital for treatment. She was also said to have inhaled large quantities of teargas.</p> Policemen and soldiers used teargas grenades and rubber bullets to disperse the routine Friday protest against the security fence near the Palestinian village of Bilin and were confronted by a hail of stones.<br /><br /><div id="extended"><blockquote> <p><strong>"I salute the residents of Bilin for their peaceful struggle in a region that is so violent and I call on the Israeli public, whom I know<br />is for justice and peace, to support the residents' struggle,"</strong> Corrigan told Ynet.</p> <p><strong>"I want to say that this separation wall, contrary to what the Israeli say, will not prevent attacks and violence. What will prevent attacks and violence is a peace agreement between the two peoples, and I sure the Israeli people, like the Palestinian people, wants peace,"</strong> Corrigan added. </p> </blockquote> <p>Kayak was a key figure in the sucessful 1999 Navy-Vieques protests in Puerto Rico against the US Navy's use of the Vieques Island for bombing exercises. The navy was forced to end the use of the island.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>"All I did was to express my identification with the villagers against the wall which is believed to evil and illegal by the whole world and many leaders like Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and the United Nations,"</strong> Kayak said.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3390314,00.html">http://www.ynetnews.com/...</a></p> <p>As previously been noted, the Palestine economy is failing and the children suffer most:</p> <blockquote> <p>'Malnutrition common for Gaza kids'</p> <p>About <strong>10 percent of Palestinian children suffer permanent effects from malnutrition</strong>, according to a survey published Wednesday, a result of widespread poverty in the West Bank and Gaza.</p> <p>The root cause is poverty, according to Khaled Abu Khaled, who directed the study for the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. He said the numbers are up slightly over the past two years.</p> <p>One obvious effect of malnutrition is stunted growth among children, which has increased about three percent in the last two years, he said.</p> <p><strong>"This is chronic. Even with interventions, the rates don't go down fast,"</strong> he said.<br /><a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152773887&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">http://www.jpost.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>I wrote a diary last week on the power of the settlers/coloniziers in the West Bank <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/16/131725/069">The Cottage Industry of Settlements in the West Bank</a> and their influence over Israeli politicians. Some kossacks said the settlers have little power, well an Israeli newspaper differs in opinion.</p> <blockquote> <p>In the year that has come and gone since last Independence Day, the settler showdown, which was really the basis for the political change the current government was relying on, was all but forgotten. New troubles pushed out the old. Preoccupation with the war in Lebanon and political corruption created a distraction. Moreover, the art of distraction is a field in which Ehud Olmert excels: He gave up the "convergence plan," on the strength of which he was elected, almost parenthetically. His colleagues in the Labor Party accepted the shelving of this plan with the same meek indifference with which they accepted the National Union as a coalition partner and the systematic rejection (until recently) of every peace plan or proposal for withdrawal.</p> <p><strong>It is no coincidence that Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin, the toughest of our generals, dared to stand up to the settlers. Both were cut down, and the battle ended with their fall, perhaps forever</strong>. What Sharon never managed to do is not going to be done by someone else. And we don't need a slippery wimp like Olmert and his bewildered ministers to understand that. Who is going to be the "bulldozer," and move something around here? Olmert? Ophir Pines-Paz? Benjamin Netanyahu? Beilin, who yelled "Crazies, go home" at the settlers this week, like some grouchy neighbor?</p> <p>snip<br />A year has passed, and everyone has gone back to being themselves - <strong>the settlers, brazen and defiant; and the politicians, shuffling and weak.</strong> The statement by the Yesha Council (of Jewish settlements) this week about the <strong>"great strategic importance of the house in Hebron"</strong> and the important link it provides in <strong>"territorial contiguity,"</strong> issued in that same overlording tone, was a <strong>victory whoop to remind us who the real boss was for 40 out of the 59 years that Israel has been around. Was, and still is.</strong><br /><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/850719.html">http://www.haaretz.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>I hope in our new budget for Israeli foreign aid, not one penny for the Wall (easily marked for security), or loan guarantees the settlers.</p> <p>With permission: </p> <blockquote> <p>Hagit Borer: There is little question in anybody’s mind about the special relation between Israel and the United States. <strong>Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid to the tune of more than $3 billion dollars a year, plus miscellaneous additions like surplus weaponry, <em>debt waivers</em> and other perks.</strong> Israel is the only country that receives its entire aid package in the beginning of the fiscal year allowing it to accrue interest on it during the year. It is the only country which is allowed to spend up to <strong>25% of its aid outside of the United States, placing such expenditures outside US control</strong>.</p> <p>Apart from financial support, the United States has offered unwavering support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and for the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, and has systematically supported Israel’s refusal to make any effective peace negotiations or peace agreements. <strong>It has vetoed countless UN resolutions seeking to bring Israel into compliance with international law. It has allowed Israel to develop nuclear weapons and not to sign the nuclear anti-proliferation treaty and most recently it strongly supported Israel’s attack on Lebanon in July of 2006.</strong> Support for Israel <strong>cuts across party lines</strong> and is extremely strong in Congress <strong>where criticism of Israel is rarely if ever heard. </strong> It also characterizes almost all American administrations from Johnson onwards, <strong>with George W. Bush being possible the most pro-Israel ever.</strong></p> <p><strong>What is the reason for this strong support? </strong> Opinions on this matter vary greatly. Within strong pro-Israeli circles, one often hears that the reason is primarily moral: <strong>the debt that the United States owes Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust; the nature of Israel as the sole democracy in the Middle East; Israel as the moral and possible strategic ally of the United States in its War on Terror. </strong> Within circles that are less supportive of Israel and which are less inclined to view Israel and Israel’s conduct as moral, opinions vary as well. One opinion stems from the position of Israel being a strategic ally of the United States – its support is simply payment for services rendered coupled with the stable pro-American stance of the Jewish Israeli population. Noam Chomsky, among others, is a proponent of this view. <strong>According to the opposing view, the United States’ support for Israel does not advance American aims, it jeopardizes them. </strong> The explanation for the support is to be found in the activities of the Israel Lobby, also known as the Jewish Lobby, or as AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), which uses its formidable influence to shape American foreign policy in accordance with Israeli interests. The opinion as most recently been associated with an article published in the London Book Review, co-authored by Professor Merscheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Walt of Harvard University. <br /><a href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-04170775251.htm">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> </div>DreamingGypsyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17425341351673381009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-33680680822428906872007-04-19T14:10:00.000-07:002007-04-19T14:14:20.566-07:00Determining Historical Consensus on Israeli Ethnic Cleansing<span style="font-style: italic;">Cross-posted from </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/18/0153/30497">Daily Kos</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> and </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://progressivehistorians.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1302">Progressive Historians</a><br /><br />There's been this debate going on in the Israel/Palestine diaries over what historians believe about the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. In particular, I've been positing a degree of historical consensus over the New Historians ethnic cleansing thesis (see <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/24/105932/990">this diary</a> for some of the arguments). Others have argued that because we can identify two or three historians who disagree with the New Historians, therefore no consensus exists.<br /><br />Over the last few days, I've been conducting a search in the Social Sciences Citation Index, looking for recent scholarly articles that cite Benny Morris's work, especially his landmark <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-Refugee-Problem-19471949-Cambridge/dp/0521338891/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/103-2323839-0807063?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176861389&sr=8-3">Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem</a>. I found 228 of them, and I sampled a few of the ones that looked interesting.<br /><br />The first article I checked was Asher Kaufman, "Between Palestine and Lebanon: seven Shi'i villages as a case study of boundaries, identities, and conflict" <i>The Middle East Journal</i> 60.4 (Autumn 2006): p685(22). As a case study of seven Arab villages in the north of Israel, Kaufman doesn't address the broad historical question of whether or not Israel committed ethnic cleansing; he simply cites the evidence confirming that his seven villages were cleansed. First the Israeli account of the cleansing of the village of Hunin:<br /><br /><blockquote>On September 2nd, 1948 and as a result of patrolling operations in the area of Manara (on the Lebanese border) a battle broke out between a unit of our military and a Lebanese unit. Four of our men were killed and two went missing in this clash. During the withdrawal of our unit near the village of Hunin, a number of shots were fired at us, and in retaliation, our forces penetrated the above village and blew up 24 houses. The son of the mukhtar was killed, and a number of people were taken prisoner. The rest fled. In the wake of this event, the negotiation which had begun with people from the village of Hunin, the details of which were forwarded to your office in a report of 14.8.48, has, (for the time being) been removed from the agenda. </blockquote><br /><br />Here's how the village elders of Hunin reported the incident to the Lebanese government:<br /><br /><blockquote>Our houses have been blown up, places of worship destroyed, our elders and young ones have been massacred and taken captive, our wives are prisoners in the hands of the Zionists. We appeal to your sense of justice and request the assistance of the Lebanese guard in the nearby region to rescue what is left of us.</blockquote><br /><br />A little further on Kaufman uncritically cites Benny Morris to support the following statement:<br /><br /><blockquote>All in all, the Jewish forces did not spare the villages in the region and the seven Shi'i villages were no exception. In Salha, one of the seven villages, moreover, there was a massacre of 60-70 inhabitants of the village in the course of Operation Hiram.</blockquote><br /><br />The next article I checked was Fiona B. Adamson, "Crossing borders - International migration and national security" <i>International Security</i> 31.1 (Summer 2006) 165-. Adamson also is not interested in a broader discussion of the historiography of the 1948 war, but rather cites what she understands to be the state of the research:<br /><br /><blockquote>Many of the major migrations throughout history have occurred as a result of forced migration or expulsion. The formation of the Jewish diaspora after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in B.C.; the mass migration flows that occurred during the transatlantic slave trade, in which approximately 15 million Africans were transferred to the Americas prior to 1850; the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey at the end of World War I; the forced migration of Jews during the Russian pogroms and later during the Holocaust; the expulsion of Germans from the Sudetenland following World War II; <b>the expulsion of indigenous Arab populations with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948</b>; the ethnic cleansing that characterized the Balkan wars in the 1990s; and the coerced trafficking of women in many parts of the world (especially Eastern Europe and East Asia) that has been referred to by many as a contemporary form of slavery—all are examples of largely involuntary waves of migration.</blockquote><br /><br />The footnote supporting that passage cites four general studies of migration and Benny Morris on the Palestinians.<br /><br />The next piece I looked at was Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela, "Myths and historiography of the 1948 Palestine War revisited: the case of Lydda" <em>The Middle East Journal </em>59.4 (Autumn 2005): p617(18). Kadish and Sela frame their article as a critique of the New Historians, stating in their abstract:<br /><br /><blockquote>Arab and Israeli revisionist historiography has taken the events in the town of Lydda (Lod, al-Lud) during the 1948 Palestine War (Israeli War of Independence) as an example of Israel's premeditated expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948, coupled with a massacre of civilian Arabs by the Israeli forces. Using newly released documents, the article explains the origins of these claims. It concludes that the expulsion was not pre-meditated but a consequence of a complex and ill-conducted battle, nor is there any direct evidence that a massacre took place.</blockquote><br /><br />Specifically, they wish to challenge two claims of the New Historians, that the expulsion in Lydda was "pre-planned and deliberate" and that in the wake of the fighting POWs were murdered. What they don't challenge, however, is that civilians were massacred in the battle, nor that civilians were expelled by the IDF from Lydda on July 12, 1948:<br /><br /><blockquote>It is indisputable that unarmed civilians had been killed in the streets of Lydda, especially when the situation turned chaotic following the arrival of the Legion's armored cars at midday July 12....<br /><br />Regarding the question of expulsion of the Arabs of Lydda, it is noteworthy that <strong>throughout Operation Dani, the IDF encouraged the local population to escape eastwards</strong>. On the night of the July 12-13, following events in Lydda, the <strong>Dani headquarters concluded that pressure should be exerted to encourage Lydda's inhabitants to leave.</strong> The action, however, required the authorization of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. After consultations with Dani Operation commanders, Yigal Allon and Yitzhak Rabin, <strong>Ben-Gurion approved the request by waving his hand in a gesture, which was interpreted as "expel them.</strong>" Later on, Allon disputed this by saying "there was no expulsion order but rather a provoked exodus." </blockquote><br /><br />This article is quite telling. Even though it challenges details of the New Historians' interpretation of the 1948, it winds up supporting the general outlines of their narrative. Far from standing as evidence of ongoing controversy, it shows how fully the New Historian consensus has been established, even as the authors continue to insist on fundamental differences. Morris himself, of course, wrote in the first edition of his book:<br /><br /><blockquote>the Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab (Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 286).</blockquote><br /><br />The next piece I looked at was Robert Blecher, "Citizens without sovereignty: Transfer and ethnic cleansing in Israel" <em>Comparative Studies in Society and History</em> 47.4 (October 2005) 725-754. Blecher's focus is the ideology of "transfer" in contemporary Israel, but he briefly reviews the literature on 1948. Here's what he says:<br /><br /><blockquote>The War of 1948—known to Israelis as the “War of Independence” and to Palestinians as “The Nakbah [Disaster]”—partook of this zeitgeist.6 Within a few years, 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced and 450,000 Arab Jews were “ingathered” in Israel, partially unscrambling the region’s own “belt of mixed populations.”7</blockquote><br /><br />The passage contains two extensive footnotes, which I reproduce here:<br /><br /><blockquote>6 The literature on the Palestinian refugees is now vast, but the classic treatment remains Benny Morris’ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Crisis 1947–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). One of the few scholars to argue specifically for ethnic cleansing in the Israeli-Palestinian context is Meron Benvenisti, although the way he delimits the war and haltingly uses the term indicates uncertainty. See his Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), especially chapters three and four. Nur Masalha argues that the displacement of the Palestinians was intentional, yet generally uses the more specific term “transfer”: Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); and “A Critique of Benny Morris,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, 1 (Autumn 1991), 90–97. Laila Parson’s work on the Druze during the 1948 War also suggests a certain (though lesser) amount of intentionality on the part of Zionists/Israelis: The Druze Between Palestine and Israel, 1947–49 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). On the significance of preventing the refugee’s return, see Gabi Piterberg, “Erasures,” New Left Review 10 ( Jul./Aug. 2001), 31–46. As of 31 March 2003, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) put the total number of Palestinian refugees at 4,055,758 (http://www.un.org/unrwa/publications/statis-01.html).<br /><br />7 Estimates of the number of Palestinian refugees produced by the 1948 War range from 550,000 to one million; 700,000 is a conservative yet realistic figure. 450,369 Jews immigrated from Asia and Africa from 15 May 1948 through 1956. S. N. Eisenstadt, The Transformation of Israeli Society: An Essay in Interpretation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), 295. The quotation is from Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1973), 276.</blockquote><br /><br />One thing Blecher shows is that when scholars are looking for a shorthand on the 1948, they resort to Morris. Morris is the standard work on the period.<br /><br />I'll finish with the conclusion of a review essay written by an Australian graduate student and published in the Australian Journal of Political Science. Kristen Blomely, "The ‘New Historians’ and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict," <em>Australian Journal of Political Science</em>, 40.1, (March 2005), pp. 125–139. Although Blomely considers all the major critics of the New Historians (Teveth, Karsh, and Shapiro), she concludes her review like this:<br /><br /><blockquote>As the debate within Israel continues it is clear that the scholarship of the ‘new historians’ has <strong>fundamentally altered</strong> the discourse and common understanding of the events of 1948 for ever. The investigation of ‘myths’ has led to a wider examination of the history of the Zionist project and what it meant for those who encountered it, namely the Arab population of Palestine. Though not setting out with an agenda for change, the work of the ‘new historians’ has inevitably led to a shift in Israeli discourse with the emergence of ‘post-Zionism’. Whether this shift will bring the whole pack of Zionist cards down, as Shapiro fears, or will lead simply to a more honest and realistic understanding of Israeli history, is yet to be experienced. Perhaps the most crucial contribution of the ‘new historians’ is that they have created hope where before there was none. Hope that one day soon Israeli and Palestinian history books might vaguely resemble one another. Hope that one day Israelis and Palestinians will share a common history and a common narrative. And hope that one day this might lead to a just peace.</blockquote><br /><br />Historical consensus does not mean that all historians agree on all particulars. It does, however, mean that most historians agree on the broad outlines. In the case of the New Historians, their critique of the traditional Zionist narratives of the founding of Israel has come to dominate the field of Israeli history.<br /><br />There's no doubt about it.lithohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14375246647610022080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-54382869397644915812007-03-17T14:00:00.000-07:002007-03-17T16:07:54.357-07:00Peace in Palestine<div class="intro"><p>I can only hope, that the little we do on dailykos to keep the Israeli Palestinian conflict in the public's eye will <em>help</em> bring this issue to a final resolution.</p> <p>The rock is being pushed up hill an inch at a time. We can't stop now, the world is watching.</p> <p>Somehow, we need to convince the powers that be, that there is more success and joy in building instead of destroying.</p> <p>Time to decommission the war machine and fund organizations like an international Army Corp of Engineers. Build infrastructure, quit bombing it.<br /></p> </div><div id="ie"><br /></div> <!-- polls come after this --> <div id="extended"> <blockquote> <p>NEWS:<br /></p><p>GAZA CITY (AP) -- Political rivals <strong>Hamas and Fatah reached a final agreement on forming a unity government </strong>Wednesday, wrapping up months of coalition negotiations aimed at ending bloody internal fighting and lifting international sanctions against the Palestinians.</p> <p>Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said he would present the new government to parliament this weekend for final approval.</p> <p>snip</p> <p>Both sides hope the alliance will <strong>bring the Palestinians out of international isolation after a yearlong boycott of the Hamas-led government. </strong>Israel and Western countries have reacted coolly to the deal, but say they are <strong>waiting for final details before deciding whether to lift the embargo.</strong><br /><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/03/14/palestinian.government.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest">http://www.cnn.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>New goverment:<br /><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FDCE63B6-0864-4B4F-A71D-6EF52A7887D2.htm">http://english.aljazeera.net/...</a> </p> <blockquote> <p>The new government's platform includes only a vague pledge to "respect" past peace deals, falling short of explicit recognition of Israel.</p> <p>It also affirms the Palestinians' right to resist and "defend themselves against any Israeli aggression."</p> <p>While many in the West consider "resistance" to be a code-word for violent attacks, Palestinians have a wide variety of definitions that can encompass anything from armed attacks to street protests.</p> <p>Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said his government will boycott the coalition government and encourage other countries to do the same because its program falls short of the international conditions for acceptance that include recognition of the Jewish state.</p> <p>"Unfortunately the new Palestinian government seems to have said no to the three benchmarks of the international community," Regev said. "Accordingly, Israel will not deal with this new government and we hope the international community will stand firmly by its own principles and refuse to deal with a government that says no to peace and no to reconciliation."</p> <p><a href="http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2007/03/15/3756086-ap.html">http://cnews.canoe.ca/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>The only way to influence the new government is to <strong>ENGAGE</strong> it.</p> <p>To be a fly on the wall: </p> <blockquote> <p>Olmert to tackle withdrawal, Iran<br />in <strong>Washington meetings this week</strong></p> <p>Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faces his first major diplomatic meeting this week in Washington, where he hopes to win Bush’s backing for his West Bank withdrawal plan and close ranks on Iran’s nuclear program.<br /><a href="http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/Olmerttotacklewit.html">http://www.jta.org/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>Building a potent future: </p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Japan, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians have agreed on a plan to build an agro-industrial park in the occupied West Bank at a conference hosted by Tokyo.</strong></p> <p>A Japan-backed agreement for economic co-operation between Israel and the Palestinians could help to stem violence in the Middle East, a joint statement said.</p> <p>But they also said that such economic co-operation, though important, was predicated on security and political progress.</p> <p><strong>Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, told the conference session on Thursday that a political solution was necessary for economic co-operation to flourish.</strong></p> <p><strong>"Can regional co-operation be translated into a political solution? Can we achieve prosperity for Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians while the Israeli occupation continues?</strong></p> <p><strong>"Any plans will be meaningless without progress in the peace process," </strong>he said.</p> <p>Water issues</p> <p><strong>Erekat also urged Israel to take immediate steps to show its commitment to economic co-operation, such as giving Palestinians in the West Bank more control over water resources. </strong><br /><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/95C4AD91-5EA0-4CF2-85E1-0C9B0E0A27F4.htm">http://english.aljazeera.net/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>Glad to hear this: </p> <blockquote> <p>The Bush administration´s <strong>opposition to aspects of Israel´s West Bank security barrier</strong> is spurring the U.S. to stay out of a case over the fence at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.<br /><a href="http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/OnfencecaseatThe.html">http://www.jta.org/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>What Israel can do to quit inflaming Arabs:</p> <blockquote> <p>Unesco urges <strong>halt to Jerusalem dig </strong><br />Unesco says Israel has already excavated the site enough to complete their pathway project [AP]<br />A report by UN experts has called on Israel to halt excavations near Jerusalem's most sacred Islamic site and proceed only under international supervision.</p> <p>Israel's archaeological excavation, taking place 50m from a compound revered by both Muslims and Jews, have led to protests across the world.</p> <p>The Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), whose experts have visited the site, issued a report on Wednesday <strong>questioning a "lack of a clear work plan setting the limits of the activity, opening the possibility of extensive and unnecessary excavations".</strong><br /><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A02A9408-68B9-453C-9F8C-6555DE906C24.htm">http://english.aljazeera.net/...</a></p> </blockquote> <p>Still in the news: </p> <blockquote> <p>West Bank Sites on Private Land, Data Shows</p> <p> </p> <p>JERUSALEM, March 13 — <strong>An up-to-date Israeli government register shows that 32.4 percent of the property held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is private, according to the advocacy group that sued the government to obtain the data.</strong></p> <p>The group, Peace Now, prepared an earlier report in November, also provided to The New York Times, based on a 2004 version of the Israeli government database that had been provided by an official who wanted the information published. Those figures showed that 38.8 percent of the land on which Israeli settlements were built was listed as private Palestinian land.</p> <p>The data shows a pattern of illegal seizure of private land that the Israeli government has been reluctant to acknowledge or to prosecute, according to the Peace Now report. Israel has long asserted that it fully respects Palestinian private property in the West Bank and takes land there only legally or, for security reasons, temporarily. <strong>That large sections of those settlements are now confirmed by official data to be privately held land is bound to create embarrassment for Israel and further complicate the already distant prospect of a negotiated peace. </strong><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/world/middleeast/14israel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin">http://www.nytimes.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>Olmert finally begins baby steps in the West Bank? </p> <blockquote> <p>With West Bank withdrawal looming,<br />Israel prepares to move on outposts</p> <p>In a <strong>first major test of Israel’s plans for a large-scale West Bank withdrawal</strong>, the government is gearing up for a showdown with extremists in <strong>four unauthorized outposts.</strong><br /><a href="http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/WithWestBankwithd.html">http://www.jta.org/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>American Jewish organizations influencing USA foreign policies, not all good:</p> <blockquote> <p> Aside from that brief reference, however, the Times made no mention of the role that money, or lobbying in general, may have played in the lopsided vote. More specifically, the Times made no mention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It's a remarkable oversight. AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington. <strong>Its 60,000 members shower millions of dollars on hundreds of members of Congress on both sides of the ai</strong>sle. It also maintains a network of wealthy and influential citizens around the country, whom it can regularly mobilize to support its main goal, <strong>which is making sure there is "no daylight" between the policies of Israel and of the United States.</strong></p> <p> So, when Congress votes so decisively in support of Israel, <strong>it's no accident.</strong> Yet, surveying US newspaper coverage of the Middle East in recent months, I found next to nothing about AIPAC and its influence. The one account of any substance appeared in the Washington Post, in late April. Reporting on AIPAC's annual conference, correspondent Mike Allen <strong>noted that the attendees included half the Senate, ninety members of the House and thirteen senior Administration officials</strong>, including White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who drew a standing ovation when he declared in Hebrew, "The people of Israel live." Showing its "clout," Allen wrote, AIPAC held "a lively roll call of the hundreds of dignitaries, with individual cheers for each." Even this article, however, failed to probe beneath the surface and examine the lobbying and fundraising techniques AIPAC uses to lock up support in Congress.</p> <p> <strong> AIPAC is not the only pro-Israel organization to escape scrutiny. <strong>The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,</strong> though little known to the general public, has tremendous influence in Washington, especially with the executive branch.</strong> Based in New York, the conference is supposed to give voice to the fifty-two Jewish organizations that sit on its board, but in reality it tends to reflect the views of its executive vice chairman, <strong>Malcolm Hoenlein. Hoenlein has long had close ties to Israel's Likud Party.</strong> In the <strong>1990s he helped raise money for settlers' groups on the West Bank, and today he regularly refers to that region as "Judea and Samaria," </strong>a biblically inspired catch phrase used by conservatives to justify the presence of Jewish settlers there. A skilled and articulate operative, Hoenlein uses his access to the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council to push for a strong Israel. <strong>He's so effective at it that the Jewish newspaper the Forward, in its annual list of the fifty most important American Jews, has ranked Hoenlein first.</strong><br /> <a href="http://www.webcom.com/...">http://www.webcom.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> </div>DreamingGypsyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17425341351673381009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-50079679567794041172007-03-17T13:57:00.000-07:002007-03-17T13:59:44.482-07:00AIPAC message to American Jewry:<div class="intro"><p>This year AIPAC Conference turned out to be a three day event attended by 6,000 activists and 200 politicians.</p> <p>And the bottom line? </p> <blockquote> <p>The conference observer suggested that there seemed to be a message throughout the event that the <em>pro-Israel community</em> <strong>"is not doing more on Iraq and isn't <em>helping</em> the <em>administration</em> more on Iraq."</strong></p> <p>In other words, <strong>that American Jewry needs to speak more loudly.</strong> </p> </blockquote> <p><strong>Support Bushco!</strong></p><p><br /><strong></strong></p><div id="extended"><p>Even though throughout the conference, Iraq was the unspoken elephant in the room, Olmert spoke {to the distress of some of the Democrats} backing Bushco's actions in Iraq/Iran:</p> <blockquote> <p>On Iran, Olmert warned <em>against</em> any effort - as has been proposed by some <em>Democratic congressmen</em> - to <strong>tie</strong> US President George W. Bush's hands. <strong>"I know that... all of you who are concerned about the security and the future of the State of Israel understand the importance of strong American leadership addressing the Iranian threat, and I am sure you will not hamper or restrain that strong leadership unnecessarily." </strong><br /><a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1173879095364&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">http://www.jpost.com/...</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>Hopefully, people are realizing the Olmert/Bush Regime is not good for either country.</p>Dailykos comments:<br />http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/16/184830/191<br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p> </div> </div>DreamingGypsyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17425341351673381009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-57367214840370917542007-03-10T12:51:00.000-08:002007-03-10T12:57:39.621-08:00Palestinian Refugees - Stateless Forever?This year the Palestinian Diaspora will be sixty years old. During the war that began in 1947 and concluded with the establishment of the State of Israel, a quarter of a million Palestinians were expelled from their homes at gunpoint and driven across the borders of the neighboring Arab states, where they became refugees - an event they now refer to as the Naqba: the Catastrophe. Despite UN Resolution 194,<br /><br /> <blockquote>that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible</blockquote><br /><br />the State of Israel has never allowed them to return. In 1967, hundreds of thousands more refugees fled the West Bank. Most of both groups remain, with their descendants, refugees to this day, four million persons without a state of their own.<br /><br /><br />The Palestinians as a people have a home nowhere on Earth. Of all the Arab states where they took refuge during the Naqba, none wanted them to remain. Only Jordan has offered a substantial number of them citizenship. Some have been able to emmigrate to the United States and other western nations, where citizenship is open to them. The remainder are officially homeless, often confined for generations to refugee camps under restrictive and discriminatory rules, without the same rights as citizens. In some places, they may not own property or work in certain jobs. Without rights, their presence in other nations is always precarious. As many as 400,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait as punishment for the PLO's support of Saddam Hussein's invasion of 1991.<br /><br />Saddam Hussein's Iraq was for some time one of the more welcoming of the Arab states to Palestinian exiles. Being seen to support the Palestinians was one of Saddam's ways of expressing his antagonism to Israel. Palestinians were given incentives to immigrate to Iraq - although not citizenship or the right to own land - and special privileges not available to ordinary Iraqis.<br /><br />These privileges, however, caused resentment of the Palestinians, particularly on the part of the Shi'ites, and almost immediately after the war, the Iraqi population began to turn on the foreigners living among them. Hundreds of Palestinians have been murdered in Baghdad, and the violence has only increased since, as Shi'ite militias conduct campaigns of ethnic cleansing.<br /><br /><blockquote> Many of the approximately 34,000 Palestinians in Iraq have been living in the country since 1948 and have known no other home. Stereotyped as supporters of Saddam Hussein, and prime candidates for the insurgency, many today face harassment, threats of deportation, media scapegoating, arbitrary detention, torture and murder.<br /><br /> Palestinian refugees came to Iraq in several waves. The first group, some 5,000 persons from Haifa and Jaffa, came in 1948. Others arrived after the 1967 War and a third group arrived in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War when many Palestinian refugees were forced to leave Kuwait.<br /><br /> ...<br /><br /> Palestinian refugees were provided protection by successive Iraqi governments and enjoyed a relatively high standard of treatment, mainly guided by the Casablanca Protocol ratified by the League of Arab States in 1965.1 Palestinians were issued special travel documents, had the right to work and were given full access to health, education and other government services. In addition, they were provided with government-owned housing or fixed, subsidised rent in privately-owned houses and apartments. In effect, Palestinians enjoyed many of the same rights and relative prosperity as Iraq citizens. However, in the aftermath of wars, Palestinians, like the Iraqis among whom they live, have witnessed dramatic declines in their standards of living. <br /><br /> The fall of the former regime in April 2003 left Palestinians particularly vulnerable, given their uncertain legal status and the loss of benefits previously provided to them. They have been harassed by segments of the Iraqi population and armed militias who resent their perceived close affiliation with the Ba’athist regime. The ongoing insurgency, which has taken the lives of thousands of Iraqis, is blamed on foreign agents, Palestinians and other refugees of Arab origin, who are accused of acts of terrorism.<br /><br /> When the former regime fell, hundreds of Palestinian families were evicted from their homes by landlords resentful that they had been forced to house subsidised Palestinian tenants. There was an intense climate of hostility to Palestinians and many received verbal or physical threats. In May 2005, Palestinians were widely blamed in the media for a bombing incident in the al-Jadida area of Baghdad after a televised ‘confession’ by four Palestinians. They bore visible signs of beating and according to their lawyer had undergone torture while in detention.</blockquote><br /><br />http://www.fmreview.org/...<br /><br /> <blockquote> In mid-March, a militant group calling itself the "Judgment Day Brigades" distributed leaflets in Palestinian neighborhoods, accusing the Palestinians of collaborating with the insurgents, and stating, "We warn that we will eliminate you all if you do not leave this area for good within ten days." The killings and death threats put the Palestinian community in a "state of shock," according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and led Palestinian National Authority President Mahmud Abbas and the High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres to each call upon Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to intervene to stop the killings of Palestinians. Fear continues to grip Palestinian communities in Baghdad, and thousands more Palestinians in Iraq are eager to leave the country. And the killings continue: UNHCR reported at least six more killings of Iraqi Palestinians in Baghdad and renewed death threats against Iraqi Palestinians in the last two weeks of May.</blockquote><br /><br /> http://www.reliefweb.int/...<br /><br />In February three Palestinian men were abducted in Baghdad.<br /><br /> <blockquote> The three were identified as lawyer Ibrahim Saleh Abu Abdoun, Ayman Baha’ Ed Deen Al Marzouqi, and Waleed Khalid Sadeq.<br /><br /> ...<br /><br /> Armed groups in Iraq have carried out several abductions of Palestinian refugees, and are responsible for several bombings that targeted Palestinian areas; dozens were killed and injured in these attacks.<br /><br /> ...<br /><br /> Several Palestinian refugees were abducted in January by gunmen who attacked areas inhabited by Palestinian refugees, especially Al Ameen neighborhood, Al Sina’a and Al Nidal in Baghdad.</blockquote><br /><br />In response to this violence, thousands of Palestinians are attempting to flee the country, along with many times the number of Iraqis. There is, however, one difference. While Iraqi citizens will be able eventually, in theory, to return one day to Iraq, the Palestinian refugees are stateless. There is no country that will take them in for fear they may never leave, having nowhere else to go. Jordan and Syria, in particular, while they have allowed in large numbers of Iraqis, have closed their borders to Palestinian Iraqi refugees.<br /><br />In consequence, an increasing number of Palestinian refugees from Iraq are trapped on these border in no-man's-land, existing in tents, in limbo. They can neither return to Iraq nor leave it.<br /><br /> <blockquote> "All our lives we've been refugees. My family fled, we fled. My family stayed in tents, they saw similar war, now we're sitting in tents, seeing war and not knowing what the future will bring."<br /> Miriam, Iraqi refugee of Palestinian descent</blockquote><br /><br />http://www.cbsnews.com/...<br /><br /> <blockquote> Meanwhile in a related development, the number of Palestinian refugees stranded at Al Waleed on the Iraq-Syria border has now [February 2007] reached more than 750 after the arrival over the last two days of 73 refugees fleeing the violence, harassment and killings in Baghdad. More are reported to be following. The total of Palestinians at this border area has now reached 753, with 354 stuck in no-man's land and 399 remaining on the Iraqi side. An abandoned school close to the border site has been opened to accommodate the new arrivals but is already full and any new arrivals will have to live in tents.</blockquote><br /><br />http://www.unhcr.org/...<br /><br />If it is a human right for any people to have a state, a home to which they can return in times of distress, the Palestinian people have long been deprived of such a right. For 60 years, they have been homeless. The State of Israel persists in its refusal to allow them to return to the land of their birth and ancestry, within its borders. For most of this period, Israel also worked to prevent the establishment of a state for the Palestinians, but in the last decade, this has finally changed. Israel now officially supports the idea of a Palestine state, and in doing so, insists that the human rights of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes must be fulfilled by their returning to Palestine, not Israel.<br /><br />And surely this is only right and just, when all the world refuses to accept them, that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return, of all places in the world, to Palestine. However, Israel, which controls all the borders of the Palestinian territory, refuses to allow this. Despite its declaration that Palestine is the only acceptable homeland for the Palestinian refugees, it will not let them in.<br /><br />Now, with the urgency of the situation of the refugees fleeing Iraq, would be the perfect time for the world to urge Israel to reverse this policy. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has urged the Israelis to allow those refugees from Iraq who were born in Gaza to return there. Israel has refused.<br /><br />Israelis claim that their state was established so that Jewish people anywhere in the world would have a homeland, a place to which they could turn for refuge and escape from danger. They have claimed that this is a human right which justified the establishment of this state, even when it created as a consequence another stateless people. Surely the Israelis, of all the people in the world, ought to recognize that what is a human right for one people must be a right for all.<br /><br />For 60 years, the Palestinian exiles have remained stateless in a world where people lacking a state have nowhere to turn for safety and refuge from danger. Now, the crisis in Iraq dictates that it is time to put an end to this failure of the international community to fulfill their human rights. Let the Palestinians fleeing Iraq take refuge - in Palestine.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-72456728017519000732007-03-06T19:00:00.000-08:002007-03-06T19:03:33.252-08:00Refuting Israel's New HistoriansIn a series of diaries recently (on DailyKos <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/22/15830/3420">here</a>, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/21/121041/872">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/24/105932/990">here</a>), I've been citing Israel's New Historians -- a generation of scholars that first came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s -- to argue that Israeli military forces committed ethnic cleansing during the country's 1948 Independence war. The New Historian interpretation, though solidly grounded in archival research and generally accepted by historians, directly challenges Zionist accounts of national history, and it is still controversial in Israel and especially among Zionists. <br /><br />In this diary, I'm going to use two contrasting accounts of the Zionist siege of Haifa in April 1948 to illustrate how the New Historians have changed our understanding of the 1948 war. I will also show what must be done to refute the New Historian interpretation -- though I am skeptical that such a refutation is actually possible.<br /><br />One criticism <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/3/2/205346/4417/113#c113">I've heard</a> of the New Historians is that they "are fringe views that have never stood up to peer review." This argument, which would be valid if true, in fact ignores the actual publication history of historians like Benny Morris (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-Refugee-Problem-Revisited-Cambridge/dp/0521009677/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173220312&sr=8-2">Cambridge University Press</a>), Avi Shlaim (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Partition-Abdullah-Palestine-1921-1951/dp/019829459X/ref=sr_1_6/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173220366&sr=1-6">Oxford University Press</a>), Tom Segev (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/ISRAELIS-HOLOCAUST-controversial-monumental-Holocaust/dp/B000GLGQ9M/ref=sr_1_14/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173220440&sr=1-14">Hill and Wang</a>), or Baruch Kimmerling (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Decline-Israeliness-Society-Military/dp/0520229681/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product/102-1677751-5189730">University of California Press</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-People-History-Baruch-Kimmerling/dp/0674011295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173220597&sr=1-2">Harvard University Press</a>). Clearly, these New Historians have published with some of the most prestigious academic publishers in the English language -- an indication that someone, at least, with credentials takes their work seriously.<br /><br />Another criticism often leveled at some of the New Historians is that they have manipulated data. The most <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-debate_97/article_2451.jsp">sensational case</a> involves an alleged massacre in the Palestinian village of Tantura on May 22, 1948. Teddy Katz, a graduate student at the University of Haifa, used oral history techniques, interviewing Palestinian refugees from Tantura and Israeli veterans who participated in the occupation, to reconstruct a story of a brutal massacre perpetrated by the Israelis. This research then became the foundation of his Masters thesis, subsequently publicized in the Israeli press. Upon seeing their stories in the newspapers, the veterans sued Katz for libel and -- because of discrepancies between his taped interviews and the citations included in his thesis -- Katz was stripped of his degree. Eventually, he was granted what the university has called a "<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/amit05112005.html">non-research</a>" degree, and Katz continues to hold that a massacre took place at Tantura in May 1948.<br /><br />Katz's interpretation has been <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=167664">defended by Ilan Pappe</a>, a senior historian at Haifa University and a particularly radical voice within the New Historians movement. Pappe's position in the Katz affair, and his subsequent call for an economic boycott of Israel in order to pressure the university to restore Katz's degree (among other complaints), has led many people to challenge all of his research. If Katz was wrong on Tantura, and Pappe agrees with Katz, then Pappe must be wrong about other things as well.<br /><br />I honestly don't enough about the specific details of what happened at Tantura to offer an opinion as to whether there was a massacre or not. In Pappe's 2006 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851684670/ref=sr_1_1/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173222365&sr=8-1">The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine</a> he treats the massacre as fact, devoting an entire subsection of a chapter (pp. 133-137) to it. Although Pappe mentions the lawsuit against Katz (p. 136), he gives no indication in the book of the sanctions against the historian or of the serious academic challenges to the validity of his work. (Pappe does have a <a href="http://www.palestine-studies.org/final/en/journals/abstract.php?aid=4227&iid=&jid=&vid=">2001 article</a> in the Journal of Palestine Studies on the Katz affair, but I haven't found a full-text version online.)<br /><br />I'm spending some time on this, because it is Pappe's account of the siege of Haifa I'd like to quote at length. First though, via kossack <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/uid:75216">Pumpkinlove</a>, we have a pre-New Historians account of the siege. As noted in her comment, Pumpkinlove took her cite off <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FB0810F93C5C1B7B93C1AB178FD85F4C8485F9">Times Select</a> and because I do not a Times Select account I'll just cite her <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/2/24/105932/990/268#c268">cite of it</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>I've looked for proof.. primary source proof and I think I have found evidence that Israel's intentions were NOT to ethnically cleanse Israel of Arabs in 1948.<br /><br />This source requires that you be a member of Times Select. <br /><br />The NY Times reports on April 22nd that the Haganah had defeated the Arab forces in Haifa and offered the following terms of surrender. Please note that of the 140,000 residents in Haifa in 1948, 80,000 were Jews.<br /><br /><blockquote>(1) The laying down of all arms and the surrender of them to the Jews.<br /><br />(2) The deportation of all foreign Arab fighters from Haifa.<br /><br />(3) A 24-hour curfew during, which the Jews would carry out the disarming.<br /><br />(4) All Germans and Nazis in the Arab ranks to be handed over.<br /><br />(5) Freedom of movement for all and the end to sniping and of roadblocks.<br /><br />(6) Safety of all individuals to be guaranteed by the Haganah.</blockquote><br /><br />Most relevant to this discussion...<br /><br /><blockquote>Tens of thousands of Arab men, women and children fled toward the eastern outskirts of the city in cars, trucks, carts and afoot in a desperate attempt to reach Arab territory until the Jews captured Rushmiya Bridge... the complete evacuation of Arabs from Haifa began tonight with the assistance of British Army transports.</blockquote><br /><br />Notice that neither the Haganah nor any Jewish group demanded the evacuation of non-combatants from Haifa. Nor was this a massacre with hundreds or thousands of Arab deaths to terrify the rest into fleeing.<br /><br /><blockquote> Although the Arabs referred to the fight as a massacre, the British estimated that between 50 and 100 Arabs had been killed in house to house battling</blockquote><br /><br /></blockquote><br /><br />So, the key points from the New York Times story (which I assume was published at the time of the events) are that:<br /><br />* the Haganah offered generous surrender terms to the Palestinians<br />* Palestinians chose to flee, which they accomplished with assistance from the British Army<br />* Very few Arabs died in the events, and those who did were killed in combat<br /><br />Let's move now to Pappe's very different account of the same events:<br /><br /><blockquote>The removal of the British barrier meant Operation Scissors could be replaced by Operation 'Cleansing the Leaven' (<em>bi'ur hametz</em>). The Hebrew term stands for total cleansing and refers to the Jewish religious practice of eliminating all traces of bread or flour from people's homes on the eve of the Passover, since as these are forbidden during the days of the feast. Brutally appropriate, the cleansing of Haifa, in which the Palestinians were the bread and the flour, began on Passover's eve, 21 April.... The Carmeli Brigade made sure they would leave in the midst of carnage and havoc. [Note 18: Walid Khalidi, "Selected Documents on the 1948 War," <em>Journal of Palestine Studies</em>, 107, Vol. 27/3 (Spring, 1998), pp. 60-105, uses the British as well as the Arab committee's correspondence.]<br /><br />In ... parts of the town, loudspeakers delivered a ... message from the town's Jewish mayor, Shabtai Levi, a decent person by all accounts, who beseeched the people to stay and promised no harm would befall them. But it was Mordechai Maklef, the operation officer of the Carmeli Brigade, not Levi, who called the shots. Maklef orchestrated the cleansing campaign, and the orders he issued to his troops were plain and simple: 'Kill any Arab you encounter; torch all inflammable objects and force doors open with explosives.' (He later became the Israeli army Chief of Staff.) [Note 19: Hagana Archives, 69/72, 22 April 1948.]<br /><br />When these orders were executed promptly within the 1.5 square kilometres where thousands of Haifa's defenceless Palestinians were still residing, the shock and terror were such that, without packing any of their belongings or even knowing what they were doing, people began leaving en masse. In panic, they headed towards the port where they hoped to find a ship or a boat to take them away from the city. As soon as they had fled, Jewish troops broke into and looted their homes.<br /><br />When Golda Meir, one of the senior Zionist leaders, visited Haifa a few days later, she at first found it hard to suppress a feeling of horror when she entered homes where cooked food still stood on the tables, children had left toys and books on the floor, and life appeared to have frozen in an instant. Meir had come to Palestine from the US, where her family had fled in the wake of pogroms in Russia, and the sights she witnessed that day reminded her of the worst stories her family had told her about the Russian brutality against Jews decades earlier. [Note 20: Central Zionist Archives, 45/2 Protocol.] But this apparently left no lasting mark on her or her associates' determination to continue with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.<br /><br />In the early hours of dawn on 22 April, the people began streaming to the harbour. As the streets in that part of the city were already overcrowded with people seeking escape, the Arab community's self-appointed leadership tried to instil some order into the chaotic scene. Loudspeakers could be heard, urging people to gather in the old marketplace next to the port, and seek shelter there until an orderly evacuation by sea could be organised. 'The Jews have occupied Stanton road and are on their way,' the loudspeakers blared.<br /><br />The Carmeli Brigade's war book, chronicling its actions in the war, shows little compunction about what followed thereafter. The brigade's officers, aware that people had been advised to gather near the port's gate, ordered their men to station three-inch mortars on the mountain slopes overlooking the market and the port -- where Rothschild Hospital stands today -- and to bombard the gathering crowds below. The plan was to make sure people would have no second thoughts, and to guarantee that the flight would be in one direction only. Once the Palestinians were gathered in the marketplace -- an architectural gem that dated back to the Ottoman period, covered with white arched canopies, but destroyed beyond recognition after the creation of the State of Israel -- they were an easy target for the Jewish marksmen. [Note 21: Zadok Eshel (ed.), <i>The Carmeli Brigade in the War of Independence</i>, p. 147.]<br /><br />Haifa's market was less than one hundred yards from what was then the main gate to the port. When the shelling began, this was the natural destination for the panic-stricken Palestinians. The crowd now broke into the port, pushing aside the policemen who guarded the gate. Scores of people stormed the boats that were moored there, and began to flee the city. We can learn what happened next from the horrifying recollections of some of the survivors, published recently. Here is one of them:<br /><br /><blockquote>Men stepped on their friends and women on their own children. The boats in the port were soon filled with living cargo. Many turned over and sank with all their passengers. [Note 22: Walid Khalidi, "Selected Documents on the 1948 War."]</blockquote><br /><br />The scenes were so horrendous that when reports reached London, they spurred the British government into action as some officials, probably for the first time, began to realise the enormity of the disaster their inaction was creating in Palestine (Ilan Pappe, <em>The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine</em> (London: One World Publications, 2006), pp. 94-6).<br /></blockquote><br /><br />It's worth pointing out that the New York Times account and Pappe's are not mutually exclusive -- that is, both can be true at the same time. In fact, one could read Pappe simply as adding detail not included in the Times. Horrifying, damning, condemnatory detail, yet detail just the same.<br /><br />But is Pappe telling the truth?<br /><br />That question is in fact easy enough to answer. Pappe makes a set of specific, verifiable claims:<br /><br />* the Zionist push into Haifa was codenamed "<i>bi'ur hametz</i>," or "cleansing the leaven"<br />* Zionist troops were ordered to kill Arabs indiscriminately<br />* Arab families left their homes in a panic, as evidenced by the prepared, uneaten food and children's toys left behind<br />* the Carmeli Brigade, following orders, shelled massed Palestinians at the gates to the Port of Haifa<br /><br />Each one of these claims is sourced to specific documents. Some of those documents are located in specific places in named archives (the Hagana Archives, the Central Zionist Archives), where they can be consulted by any researcher with access to those archives. Other documents have been published (the history of the Carmeli Brigade, Khalidi's publication of Palestinian oral histories), and can be consulted by any researcher with inter-library loan.<br /><br />If the documents cited by Pappe actually support the claims he makes of them, then we would have to say that his claim of ethnic cleansing in the specific case of Haifa on April 22, 1948 is a strong one. If they do not support the claims, then he is guilty of academic fraud.<br /><br />Going back for a moment to the alleged massacre at Tantura, Katz's thesis was withdrawn and his degree revoked because his review committee was able to confirm that Katz claimed his interviewees made statements they did not in fact make. What is not clear from the reading I've done on the case -- and I've done a bit -- is whether his misquotations materially affected the evidence for a massacre. Pappe obviously believes they didn't, and two of the three members of the special committee appointed to review the thesis also agreed he deserved the degree. The final two members, however, gave him such a low grade on the thesis that his overall average dropped into the "fail" range, so he lost the degree.<br /><br />It is not impossible that Pappe has fabricated evidence -- US historian Michael Bellesiles did exactly that in his infamous <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Arming-America-Origins-National-Culture/dp/B0000WA17K/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173233530&sr=1-1">Arming America</a> -- but Bellesiles was discovered fairly easily, and subsequently lost his tenured position at Emory University. Any enterprising Zionist historian who wants to make a name for themselves only has to go to the archives and prove Pappe -- or Kimmerling, or Shlaim, or Morris -- has been fabricating their data, and they will instantly become an international celebrity in the world of Israeli studies specifically and history generally.<br /><br />Pappe's book was released last fall, and has not had time to be exposed to serious scrutiny by historians. Morris book, however, on the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-Refugee-Problem-19471949-Cambridge/dp/0521338891/ref=sr_1_7/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173233853&sr=1-7">Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem</a> -- the text that first put Israeli ethnic cleansing out in front of the public -- was released in 1989. That's nearly twenty years ago, more than enough time for every single source to be checked and double-checked.<br /><br />Far from finding fabrications, the book has held up so well that Morris released a second, revised and expanded, edition in 2004.<br /><br />Ad hominems don't refute historians. Historical research does.<br /><br />So far, the historical research confirms the basic findings of the New Historians.lithohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14375246647610022080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-57749101266968372882007-02-23T18:34:00.000-08:002007-02-24T06:39:33.994-08:00Historians agree: Israel committed ethnic cleansing in 1948This diary started as a <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/2/21/121041/872/89#c89">comment</a> in a <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/21/121041/872">Daily Kos diary</a> I wrote the other day on a joint interview by Amy Goodman of Norman Finkelstein and Shlomo Ben-Ami. In the discussion that followed, I argued -- following Finkelstein and Ben-Ami -- that Israel had pursued an intentional policy of ethnic cleansing in order to create a Jewish state. Kossack JNEREBEL <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/2/21/121041/872/87#c87">considered</a> that an "extraordinary claim," and requested "extraordinary evidence" to back it up.<br /><br />What follows is the compilation of evidence, appropriately sourced, put together to satisfy the request for "extraordinary evidence."<br /><br />In fact, historians of the 1948 generally agree on the basic point that Zionist armies took advantage of their military superiority over Palestinians and Arab armies in order to carry out a pre-existing objective of expelling non-Jewish peoples from the Jewish state-in-creation.<br /><br />Here are some relevant cites from my <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/21/121041/872">previous diary</a> regarding Israeli responsibility for the crime of ethnic cleansing. Here's a quote from Ben-Ami's book, cited by Amy Goodman in her first question in the interview:<br /><br /><blockquote>The reality on the ground was that of an Arab community in a state of terror facing a ruthless Israeli army whose path to victory was paved not only by its exploits against the regular Arab armies, but also by the intimidation and at times atrocities and massacres it perpetrated against the civilian Arab community. A panic-stricken Arab community was uprooted under the impact of massacres that would be carved into the Arabs' monument of grief and hatred.</blockquote><br /><br />This one comes from Ben-Ami himself, also cited in the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/21/121041/872">previous diary</a>, in answer to one of Goodman's questions:<br /><br /><blockquote>I am trying to be as fair as possible when I read the past, but it's a very interesting point, the one that you make here, about us trying to obliterate the memory of our war against the Palestinians, and the whole Israeli 1948 mythology is based on our war against the invading Arab armies, less so against the Palestinians, who were the weaker side in that confrontation, because it didn't serve the myth of the creation of the state and of the nation.</blockquote><br /><br />The following quote, from Finkelstein, didn't make it into that earlier diary, but you can find it at the <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml">original interview</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>There is pretty much a consensus on what happened during what you can call the foundational period, from the first Zionist settlements at the end of the 19th century 'til 1948. There, there is pretty much of a consensus. And I think Mr. Ben-Ami, in his first 50 pages, accurately renders what that consensus is.<br /><br />I would just add a couple of points he makes, but just to round out the picture. He starts out by saying that the central Zionist dilemma was they wanted to create a predominantly Jewish state in an area which was overwhelmingly not Jewish, and he cites the figure, I think 1906 there were 700,000 Arabs, 55,000 Jews, and even of those 55,000 Jews, only a handful were Zionists. So that's the dilemma. How do you create a Jewish state in area which is overwhelmingly not Jewish?<br /><br />Now, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, at one point, he said there are only two ways you can resolve this dilemma. One, you can create what he called the South African way, that is, create a Jewish state and disenfranchise the indigenous population. That's one way. The second way is what he calls the way of transfer. That is, you kick the indigenous population out, basically what we did in North America.<br /><br />Now, as Mr. Ben-Ami correctly points out, by the 1930s the Zionist movement had reached a consensus that the way to resolve the dilemma is the way of transfer. You throw the Palestinians out. You can't do that anytime, because there are moral problems and international problems. You have to wait for the right moment. And the right moment comes in 1948. Under the cover of war, you have the opportunity to expel the indigenous population.<br /><br />I was kind of surprised that Mr. Ben-Ami goes beyond what many Israeli historians acknowledge. Someone like Benny Morris will say, "Yes, Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948." That's Benny Morris's expression. But he says it was an accident of war. There are wars, people get dispossessed. Mr. Ben-Ami, no, he will go further. He said you can see pretty clearly that they intended to expel the Palestinians. The opportunity came along, and they did so. Now, those are the facts.</blockquote><br /><br />Finkelstein notes here that not all historians agree with Ben-Ami and himself on the intentionality of Israel's ethnic cleansing, but he only cites Benny Morris as dissenting. Morris, of course, is <a href="http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm">on record</a> that the ethnic cleansing was a good thing, and the only real problem with it is that Ben-Gurion did not go far enough -- that he left a substantial number of Palestinians inside the country:<br /><br /><blockquote>[Q] <span style="font-style:italic;">I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that Ben-Gurion erred in expelling too few Arabs?</span><br /><br />[Benny Morris] If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.</blockquote><br /><br />Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, whose 1970s dissertation and subsequent book was the first scholarly treatment of Israeli ethnic cleansing, has written the following in a 2004 <a href="http://hnn.us/articles/3166.html">online essay</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The conclusion was that, as in many other cases, what seemed at first glance a pure and limited military doctrine, proved itself in the case of "Plan D" to comprise far-reaching measures that lead to a complete demographic, ethnic, social and political transformation of Palestine. Implementing the spirit of this doctrine, the Jewish military forces conquered about 20,000 square kilometers of territory (compared with the 14,000 square kilometers granted them by the UN Partition Resolution) and purified them almost completely from their Arab inhabitants. About 800,000 Arab inhabitants lived on the territories before they fell under Jewish control following the 1948 war. Fewer than 100,000 Arabs remained there under Jewish control after the cease fire. An additional 50,000 were included within the Israeli state’s territory following the Israeli-Jordan’s armistice agreements that transferred several villages to Israeli rule.<br /><br />The military doctrine, the base of Plan D, clearly reflected the local Zionist ideological aspirations to acquire a maximal Jewish territorial continuum, cleansed from Arab presence, as a necessary condition for establishing an exclusive Jewish nation-state.</blockquote><br /><br />Interestingly, in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-People-History-Baruch-Kimmerling/dp/0674011295/sr=8-1/qid=1172258372/ref=sr_1_1/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books">2003 book</a> (co-written with Joel Migdal), Kimmerling took a much more skeptical view of Plan D:<br /><br /><blockquote>Was there, indeed, a Zionist master plan to expel the Palestinians? Walid Khalidi, among others, cites Zionist talk, even before the fighting, of population transfer, as well as other pieces of evidence that support the existence of such a plan....<br /><br />The evidence is far more equivocal than Khalidi suggests. Plan Dalet itself was full of inner contradictions, referring to both expulsion of Arabs and their administration in secured areas. Israeli leaders were aware that mass expulsions, population exchanges, and huge movements of people had long been recognized practices during and after international wars... But such abstract musing was not responsible for the shattering of the Palestinian community (Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal, <em>The Palestinian People: A History</em> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 163).</blockquote><br /><br />I cite that as an earlier example of Kimmerling's writing. Today, based on that online essay, he appears to accept the thesis that Plan D was in fact a master plan for the expulsion of the Palestinians.<br /><br />Finally, Ilan Pappe's 2006 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851684670/sr=8-1/qid=1172279615/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books">The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine</a> bears mention here. Pappe is perhaps the most radical of the New Historians -- the group of Israelis including Morris and Kimmerling who first began to revise the country's early history, and whose solid archival work has led to the emerging new consensus on the course of the Independence War. Pappe holds that Zionist actions during the war are directly comparable to Serbian cleansing campaigns in Bosnia-Herzogovina and Kosovo, and that the Israelis responsible for those actions should be judged on a standard similar to the one used for Milosevic and Mladic.<br /><br />In sum, there are no extraordinary claims here. This is simply the consensus out there among Israeli and other Jewish academics who have studied this stuff.lithohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14375246647610022080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-90569644249526710422007-02-23T18:18:00.000-08:002007-02-23T18:20:50.042-08:00Palestinian Refugees - Stateless Forever?This year the Palestinian Diaspora will be sixty years old. During the war that began in 1947 and concluded with the establishment of the State of Israel, a quarter of a million Palestinians were expelled from their homes at gunpoint and driven across the borders of the neighboring Arab states, where they became refugees - an event they now refer to as the Naqba: the Catastrophe. Despite UN Resolution 194, <blockquote>that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible</blockquote> the State of Israel has never allowed them to return. In 1967, hundreds of thousands more refugees fled the West Bank. Most of both groups remain, with their descendants, refugees to this day, four million persons without a state of their own.<br /><br />The Palestinians as a people have a home nowhere on Earth. Of all the Arab states where they took refuge during the Naqba, none wanted them to remain. Only Jordan has offered a substantial number of them citizenship. Some have been able to emmigrate to the United States and other western nations, where citizenship is open to them. The remainder are officially homeless, often confined for generations to refugee camps under restrictive and discriminatory rules, without the same rights as citizens. In some places, they may not own property or work in certain jobs. Without rights, their presence in other nations is always precarious. As many as 400,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait as punishment for the PLO's support of Saddam Hussein's invasion of 1991.<br /><br />Saddam Hussein's Iraq was for some time one of the more welcoming of the Arab states to Palestinian exiles. Being seen to support the Palestinians was one of Saddam's ways of expressing his antagonism to Israel. Palestinians were given incentives to immigrate to Iraq - although not citizenship or the right to own land - and special privileges not available to ordinary Iraqis.<br /><br />These privileges, however, caused resentment of the Palestinians, particularly on the part of the Shi'ites, and almost immediately after the war, the Iraqi population began to turn on the foreigners living among them. Hundreds of Palestinians have been murdered in Baghdad, and the violence has only increased since, as Shi'ite militias conduct campaigns of ethnic cleansing.<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>Many of the approximately 34,000 Palestinians in Iraq have been living in the country since 1948 and have known no other home. Stereotyped as supporters of Saddam Hussein, and prime candidates for the insurgency, many today face harassment, threats of deportation, media scapegoating, arbitrary detention, torture and murder. <br /><br />Palestinian refugees came to Iraq in several waves. The first group, some 5,000 persons from Haifa and Jaffa, came in 1948. Others arrived after the 1967 War and a third group arrived in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War when many Palestinian refugees were forced to leave Kuwait.<br /><br />...<br /><br />Palestinian refugees were provided protection by successive Iraqi governments and enjoyed a relatively high standard of treatment, mainly guided by the Casablanca Protocol ratified by the League of Arab States in 1965.1 Palestinians were issued special travel documents, had the right to work and were given full access to health, education and other government services. In addition, they were provided with government-owned housing or fixed, subsidised rent in privately-owned houses and apartments. In effect, Palestinians enjoyed many of the same rights and relative prosperity as Iraq citizens. However, in the aftermath of wars, Palestinians, like the Iraqis among whom they live, have witnessed dramatic declines in their standards of living. <br /><br />The fall of the former regime in April 2003 left Palestinians particularly vulnerable, given their uncertain legal status and the loss of benefits previously provided to them. They have been harassed by segments of the Iraqi population and armed militias who resent their perceived close affiliation with the Ba’athist regime. The ongoing insurgency, which has taken the lives of thousands of Iraqis, is blamed on foreign agents, Palestinians and other refugees of Arab origin, who are accused of acts of terrorism. <br /><br />When the former regime fell, hundreds of Palestinian families were evicted from their homes by landlords resentful that they had been forced to house subsidised Palestinian tenants. There was an intense climate of hostility to Palestinians and many received verbal or physical threats. In May 2005, Palestinians were widely blamed in the media for a bombing incident in the al-Jadida area of Baghdad after a televised ‘confession’ by four Palestinians. They bore visible signs of beating and according to their lawyer had undergone torture while in detention.</blockquote> http://www.fmreview.org/text/FMR/26/09.doc.<br /><br /><blockquote>In mid-March, a militant group calling itself the “Judgment Day Brigades” distributed leaflets in Palestinian neighborhoods, accusing the Palestinians of collaborating with the insurgents, and stating, “We warn that we will eliminate you all if you do not leave this area for good within ten days.” The killings and death threats put the Palestinian community in a “state of shock,” according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and led Palestinian National Authority President Mahmud Abbas and the High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres to each call upon Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to intervene to stop the killings of Palestinians. Fear continues to grip Palestinian communities in Baghdad, and thousands more Palestinians in Iraq are eager to leave the country. And the killings continue: UNHCR reported at least six more killings of Iraqi Palestinians in Baghdad and renewed death threats against Iraqi Palestinians in the last two weeks of May.</blockquote> http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/KHII-6UB4Z6?OpenDocument<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.imemc.org/article/47012">Last week</a> three Palestinian men were abducted in Baghdad.<br /><br /><blockquote>The three were identified as lawyer Ibrahim Saleh Abu Abdoun, Ayman Baha’ Ed Deen Al Marzouqi, and Waleed Khalid Sadeq.<br /><br />...<br /><br />Armed groups in Iraq have carried out several abductions of Palestinian refugees, and are responsible for several bombings that targeted Palestinian areas; dozens were killed and injured in these attacks.<br /><br />...<br /><br />Several Palestinian refugees were abducted in January by gunmen who attacked areas inhabited by Palestinian refugees, especially Al Ameen neighborhood, Al Sina’a and Al Nidal in Baghdad.</blockquote><br /><br />In response to this violence, thousands of Palestinians are attempting to flee the country, along with many times the number of Iraqis. There is, however, one difference. While Iraqi citizens will be able eventually, in theory, to return one day to Iraq, the Palestinian refugees are stateless. There is no country that will take them in for fear they may never leave, having nowhere else to go. Jordan and Syria, in particular, while they have allowed in large numbers of Iraqis, have closed their borders to Palestinian Iraqi refugees.<br /><br />In consequence, an increasing number of Palestinian refugees from Iraq are trapped on these border in no-man's-land, existing in tents, in limbo. They can neither return to Iraq nor leave it.<br /><br /><blockquote>"All our lives we've been refugees. My family fled, we fled. My family stayed in tents, they saw similar war, now we're sitting in tents, seeing war and not knowing what the future will bring."<br />Miriam, Iraqi refugee of Palestinian descent</blockquote> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/16/iraq/main2485467.shtml<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>Meanwhile in a related development, the number of Palestinian refugees stranded at Al Waleed on the Iraq-Syria border has now [February 2007] reached more than 750 after the arrival over the last two days of 73 refugees fleeing the violence, harassment and killings in Baghdad. More are reported to be following. The total of Palestinians at this border area has now reached 753, with 354 stuck in no-man's land and 399 remaining on the Iraqi side. An abandoned school close to the border site has been opened to accommodate the new arrivals but is already full and any new arrivals will have to live in tents.</blockquote><br />http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/iraq?page=briefing&id=45cc5a914<br /><br /><br />If it is a human right for any people to have a state, a home to which they can return in times of distress, the Palestinian people have long been deprived of such a right. For 60 years, they have been homeless. The State of Israel persists in its refusal to allow them to return to the land of their birth and ancestry, within its borders. For most of this period, Israel also worked to prevent the establishment of a state for the Palestinians, but in the last decade, this has finally changed. Israel now officially supports the idea of a Palestine state, and in doing so, insists that the human rights of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes must be fulfilled by their returning to Palestine, not Israel.<br /><br />And surely this is only right and just, when all the world refuses to accept them, that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return, of all places in the world, to Palestine. However, Israel, which controls all the borders of the Palestinian territory, refuses to allow this. Despite its declaration that Palestine is the only acceptable homeland for the Palestinian refugees, it will not let them in.<br /><br /><br />Now, with the urgency of the situation of the refugees fleeing Iraq, would be the perfect time for the world to urge Israel to reverse this policy. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has <a href="http://electroniciraq.net/news/2886.shtml">urged </a> the Israelis to allow those refugees from Iraq who were born in Gaza to return there. Israel has refused.<br /><br />Israelis claim that their state was established so that Jewish people anywhere in the world would have a homeland, a place to which they could turn for refuge and escape from danger. They have claimed that this is a human right which justified the establishment of this state, even when it created as a consequence another stateless people. Surely the Israelis, of all the people in the world, ought to recognize that what is a human right for one people must be a right for all.<br /><br />For 60 years, the Palestinian exiles have remained stateless in a world where people lacking a state have nowhere to turn for safety and refuge from danger. Now, the crisis in Iraq dictates that it is time to put an end to this failure of the international community to fulfill their human rights. Let the Palestinians fleeing Iraq take refuge - in Palestine.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-23805708181482253032007-02-20T18:38:00.000-08:002007-02-20T18:42:18.990-08:00Israeli Expulsion of PalestiniansCross-posted from <a href="http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=14795">My Left Wing</a><br /><br />A little over a year ago, on Feb. 14, 2006, Amy Goodman of Democracy, Now! conducted a <a href=http://www.democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml>joint interview</a> with antiZionist gadfly <a href=http://www.normanfinkelstein.com>Norman Finkelstein</a> and the Israeli historian and diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami, author most recently of <a href=http://www.amazon.com/Scars-War-Wounds-Peace-Israeli-Arab/dp/0195181581/sr=8-1/qid=1171940372/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books>Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Arab-Israeli Tragedy</a>. In the conversation, Finkelstein said the kind of things you'd expect from him.<p><br />The surprising part were the things said by Ben-Ami. Here is Goodman's first question and Ben-Ami's response:<p><br /><blockquote>Well, I want to start going back to the establishment of the state of Israel, and I'd like to begin with Israel's former Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami. Can you talk about how it began? I think you have a very interesting discussion in this book that is rarely seen in this country of how the state of Israel was established. Can you describe the circumstances?<p><br />SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, for all practical purposes, a state existed before it was officially created in 1948. The uniqueness of the Zionist experience, as it were, was in that the Zionists were able, under the protection of the mandate, of the British mandate, to set up the essentials of a state - the institutions of a state, political parties, a health system, running democracy for Jews, obviously - before the state was created, so the transition to statehood was a declaration, basically, and it came about in the middle of two stages of war, a civil war between the Israelis and the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine and then an invasion by the Arab armies. <b>The point that I made with regard to the war is that the country, to the mythology that existed and exists, continues to exist mainly among Israelis and Jews, is that Israel was not in a military disadvantage when the war took place. The Arab armies were disoriented and confused, and they did not put in the battlefield the necessary forces.</b><p><br />So, in 1948, what was born was a state, but also original superpower in many ways. <b>We have prevailed over the invading Arab armies and the local population, which was practically evicted from Palestine, from the state of Israel, from what became the state of Israel, and this is how the refugee problem was born.</b> Interestingly, the Arabs in 1948 lost a war that was, as far as they were concerned, lost already in 1936-1939, because they have fought against the British mandate and the Israeli or the Jewish Yishuv, the Jewish pre-state, and they were defeated then, so they came to the hour of trial in 1948 already as a defeated nation. <b>That is, the War of 1948 was won already in 1936, and they had no chance to win the war in 1948. They were already a defeated nation when they faced the Israeli superpower that was emerging in that year.</b> </blockquote><p><br /><br />In these lines, Ben-Ami basically agrees with the New Historian critique of the Zionist founding myth. But he doesn't stop there. In her next question, Goodman quotes from Ben-Ami's book on the expulsion of the Palestinians:<p><br /><blockquote>AMY GOODMAN: You have some very strong quotes in your book, of your own and quoting others, like Berl Katznelson, who is the main ideologue of the Labor movement, acknowledging that in the wake of the 1929 Arab riots, the Zionist enterprise as an enterprise of conquest. You also say, "<b>The reality on the ground was that of an Arab community in a state of terror facing a <i>ruthless Israeli army</i> whose path to victory was paved not only by its exploits against the regular Arab armies, but also by <i>the intimidation and at times atrocities and massacres it perpetrated against the civilian Arab community.</i> A panic-stricken Arab community was uprooted under the impact of massacres that would be carved into the Arabs' monument of grief and hatred.</b>" Explain that further.<p><br />SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, you see, there is a whole range of new historians that have gone into the sources of - the origins of the state of Israel, among them you mentioned Avi Shlaim, but there are many, many others that have exposed this evidence of what really went on on the ground. And I must from the very beginning say that the main difference between what they say and my vision of things is not the facts. The facts, they are absolutely correct in mentioning the facts and putting the record straight.<p><br />My view is that, but for Jesus Christ, everybody was born in sin, including nations. And the moral perspective of it is there, but at the same time it does not undermine, in my view, in my very modest view, the justification for the creation of a Jewish state, however tough the conditions and however immoral the consequences were for the Palestinians. You see, it is there that I tend to differ from the interpretation of the new historians. They have made an incredible contribution, a very, very important contribution to our understanding of the origins of the state of Israel, but at the same time, my view is that this is how - unfortunately, tragically, sadly - nations were born throughout history.<p><br />And our role, the role of this generation - this is why I came into politics and why I try to make my very modest contribution to the peace process - is that we need to bring an end to this injustice that has been done to the Palestinians. We need to draw a line between an Israeli state, a sovereign Palestinian state, and solve the best way we can the problem, by giving the necessary compensation to the refugees, by bringing back the refugees to the Palestinian state, no way to the state of Israel, not because it is immoral, but because it is not feasible, it is not possible. We need to act in a realistic way and see what are the conditions for a final peace deal. I believe that we came very, very close to that final peace deal. Unfortunately, we didn't make it. But we came very close in the year 2001. </blockquote><p><br />Ben-Ami's argument here is pragmatic -- acknowledging a Right of Return for Palestinians would destroy the Jewish state. Morally, however, he seems to agree that the Palestinians actually deserve the right to return to their homes.<p><br />In the next exchange with Goodman, he addresses Nakba-denial:<p><br /><blockquote>AMY GOODMAN: Before we get to that peace deal, another thing that you have said. "Israel, as a society, also suppressed the memory of its war against the local Palestinians, because it couldn't really come to terms with the fact that it expelled Arabs, committed atrocities against them, dispossessed them. This was like admitting that the noble Jewish dream of statehood was stained forever by a major injustice committed against the Palestinians and that the Jewish state was born in sin." I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear that the author of these words is the former Foreign Minister of Israel.<p><br />SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Yes, while, at the same time, a historian. I am trying to be as fair as possible when I read the past, but it's a very interesting point, the one that you make here, about us trying to obliterate the memory of our war against the Palestinians, and the whole Israeli 1948 mythology is based on our war against the invading Arab armies, less so against the Palestinians, who were the weaker side in that confrontation, because it didn't serve the myth of the creation of the state and of the nation. So we need to correct that. There is no way - there is no way we can fully compensate the refugees and the Palestinians, but we need to do our very, very best to find a way to minimize the harm that was done to this nation. </blockquote><p><br />Goodman then turns to Finkelstein, who praises Ben-Ami's portrayal of the foundation of Israel:<p><br /><blockquote>NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, I agree with the statement that there is very little dispute nowadays amongst serious historians and rational people about the facts. <b>There is pretty much a consensus on what happened during what you can call the foundational period, from the first Zionist settlements at the end of the 19th century 'til 1948. There, there is pretty much of a consensus. And I think Mr. Ben-Ami, in his first 50 pages, accurately renders what that consensus is.</b></blockquote><p><br />Finkelstein does differ with Ben-Ami on some points of interpretation after that, and then the entire conversation moves to the Camp David process.<p><br />The point of this diary is that the Nakba happened, and that, as Finkelstein says, serious historians rational people have very little dispute left about the facts.<p>lithohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14375246647610022080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-51252606309053107312007-02-20T13:45:00.000-08:002007-02-20T13:46:09.669-08:00Normal Life, Destroyed Homes, and Israeli ApartheidThe other day, I got a tattoo. Actually, I should say that I got another tattoo, as it is not my first, or for that matter, my last. The day I got my tattoo, was more or less like any other; I got to work by my usual bike route (uphill, unfortunately), had my morning latte, and fortunately got off of work early. Of course, there were the occasional annoyances, stupid co-workers, anxiety about the tattoo (yes, this one hurt!), but for the most part, there was nothing terribly abnormal about my days events; so what the hell, let's call it a 'normal day.'<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/hajjI.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />On February 14th, I received confirmation through a CPT report, that the homes of friends of mine in Palestine were destroyed. In one sense, this is also normal, as they were not the first, and won't be the last <a href="http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=81&CategoryId=4">homes</a> <a href="http://www.icahd.org/eng/">destroyed </a>in Palestine by Israeli soldiers (or Palestinian homes destroyed <a href="http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=329">in Israel</a> for that matter). But truly, how can the demolition of your home by an illegal military occupation ever be considered normal? How can such brutality be carried out by human beings who are just following orders, without some semblance of reflection and disgust? And how do my friends, and countless other Palestinians, find the strength to survive such violence, and not only carry on, but rebuild and hope for the future?<br /><br />In a moment, I'll be going through the pictures, both from my trip and the current destruction, but first a few more words. I wrote about the community that has suffered this outrage before, in a diary called <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/31/173244/415">Close Encounter of an Israeli Settler Kind </a>. It is the village of Qawawis, and the residents have endured numerous acts of violence over the years, the main aim of which is to remove them (and other small villages in the area) from the land.<br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/Southern_Hebron_Hills.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />If one looks at the many maps available, they will show you the logic of the occupation in this area; the less populated (by Palestinians) South Hebron Hills have been targeted for annexation by the <a href="http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/02/19/icahd-didnt-know/">Israeli settlers</a> for decades, as opposed to the more densely populated Palestinian areas of Yatta, Samu, and Hebron nearby (that said, Hebron is another story). The villages of Qawawis and many others like them are a problem, not due to 'terrorism' or 'security'as such, but due to their repeated refusal to leave, and their rootedness in the land.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/ophir01162004.html">Adi Ophir</a> wrote in an article in the Book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Against-Wall-Israels-Barrier-Peace/dp/1565849647/sr=1-1/qid=1171998133/ref=sr_1_1/102-8594996-9973752?ie=UTF8&s=books">Against the Wall </a>that the occupation is defined not as much by overt acts of violence (although they do occur from time to time), which he calls kinetic violence, but by violence in small bursts, or even more, violence suspended, always there and threatened, always possible, but held back for the present. This is one of the reasons that conveying the terror and violence of the occupation can be deceptive to those that do not understand the way occupation dominates the daily life of Palestinians. But in the time I spent in Qawawis, I witnessed so many small and large examples of violence, it is hard to list them all. Just getting to the village requires a circuitous route replete with checkpoints, backroads and some on-foot traversing; then there was the morning we found 6 olive trees cut down by settlers, the surprise visits by the army, the countless visits to the village by armed and violent settlers. And then there is just the physical setting; Qawawis is ringed to the north, south and east by 3 settlements, and one major highway cuts it off from the village of Karmel. Two more roads branch off the main highway, completing the pincer which surrounds and attempts to choke off any ability to survive for the villages of the region. On top of that, in addition to the Apartheid Wall which passes close to the Green line, they are building an <a href="http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/06/04/qawawis-gap-victory/">inner wall </a>along the Highway, which will completely seal off the villages from Karmil and Yatta.<br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/20060430_South_Hebron.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br /><br />Now I don't just know this because I read <a href="http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=3">Jeff Halper's</a> Matrix of Control article, which describes this basic policy and strategy of control and suffocation that the IOF employs, and is certainly applicable to Qawawis and other parts of Palestine. I know it because I lived it when I stayed in Qawawis. When we would take the goats and sheep out to graze, we could go only so far as the lack of roads and settlements would allow us (to give you some idea, I traverse well more than twice that distance during my 20 minute bike ride to work). And when we would be near the roads, we would be in constant threat of soldiers and settlers, due to military orders which say that they need to stay 200 meters from the roads. Some days, the army jeeps would drive by and ignore us, and some days they would try and force us to leave. Some days, the settlers would ignore us (you can always tell who they are by the orange ribbons, a holdover from the disengagement), or some days they would honk their horns at us, or shout from their cars. And, some days, they would do more, as my <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/31/173244/415">previous post </a> explains.<br /><br />But on February 14th, the suspended violence gave way to a full-scale explosion, in the form of home demolitions, in 3 villages in the South Hebron Hills. First, here is a portion of the Haaretz article that discusses it;<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/826050.html">Security forces demolish seven houses in Mt. Hebron villages</a><br />By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service<br /><br />Security forces destroyed seven illegally constructed Palestinian houses and 13 other structures Wednesday on the southern slope of Mount Hebron in the West Bank.<br /><br />The demolitions took place in the villages of Manzal, Umm al-Khir and Gawawis.<br /><br />The Civil Administration said, "Twenty illegal structures were destroyed after demolition orders were issued, and offers were made to the owners to pursue the available options before the planning organizations. The supervisory unit of the civil administration will continue to operate against illegal building activity in the area, and to implement the steps mandated by law against this illegal activity."<br /></blockquote><br /><br />And if you would like to see some of the reuters pictures of that day, go <a href="http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/02/14/south-hebron-demolition/">here</a><br /><br />And here is the CPT report, which was emailed to me by Joe Carr & posted on the ISM site, and is fully approved for reposting;<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/02/15/cpt-hebron-demolitions/">CPT: Israeli military demolishes seven Palestinian homes in south Hebron district</a><br /><br />Israeli soldiers demolished homes in three Palestinian villages near bypass road 317 on February 14, 2007. Starting in Imneizil at around 9am about forty Israeli soldiers with two bulldozers demolished one home, an animal pen and a stone bake-oven. At noon the soldiers moved to Qawawis where they demolished the homes of five families and one bake-oven, then on to Um Al-Kher where they demolished one home and damaged a wall of another home.<br /><br />At Imneizil several young children were in their home eating when the Israeli military arrived; the soldiers gave the family time to get out, but did not give them time to remove their personal belongings. The animal pen was demolished with a few animals inside; two lambs were injured. The Palestinian family began immediately to build a makeshift pen for the animals as the majority of the sheep were just returning from grazing in the fields.<br /><br />In the village of Qawawis one of the demolished homes was over sixty-five years old, and sheltered two families. Photos of the families amid the rubble are on the CPT photo gallery: www.cpt.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album93<br /><br />The Israeli military, in concert with Israeli settlers, has been trying to force the Palestinian residents of the south Hebron hills to leave their homes for years. Due to harassment from the nearby Israeli outposts several of the young families of Qawawis moved to a nearby town; when the Israeli army then forcibly evacuated the remaining families, a court ordered that the families could return to their homes. According to a lawyer representing the families, the Israeli army now claims that this court ruling allows only the last inhabitants of Qawawis to return, not their children who earlier fled the assaults of the Israeli settlers.<br /><br />“Our children need homes,” said one villager. “What do they want us to do?”<br /><br />The Israeli army said, “Twenty illegal structures were destroyed after demolition orders were issued, and offers were made to the owners to pursue the available options before the planning organizations. The supervisory unit of the civil administration will continue to operate against illegal building activity in the area, and to implement the steps mandated by law against this illegal activity.” The Israeli military made no provisions for shelter for the families whose homes they demolished. The families asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide them with tents.<br /><br />The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said, “A building permit is unavailable there [in the south Hebron hills].” The preceding day three Israeli peace activists and two internationals, including CPTer Sally Hunsberger, joined approximately fifty Palestinians in working on their land near Imneizil. The Palestinian men, women and children planted 600 olive trees in fields that they had afraid to walk on for the past four years due to threats of settler violence. During the action, soldiers and settlers watched from a distance, but did not interfere with the tree planting.</blockquote><br /><br /><br />Now, I would like to walk through some of the pictures, which consist of the day's destruction, and my own pictures that precede it. It was especially painful to see these pictures, as these are people that fed and took care of me, in whose homes I slept and ate, and whose children I played with.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/Qawawis.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />First, here is a picture of Qawawis from sometime bin 2004-2005, with the house of Hajj Khalil in the center. The land is farmed for olives, almonds and figs on the hills, and elsewhere for wheat and grazing for livestock.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/IntlHouse.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />Next to Hajj Khalil's house is the smaller structure that the internationals would sleep in. It is made of stone, mud & cement, with a tarp for a roof (after the rain, the water would collect in bunches and we would have to take sticks to push it out). The winter was cold there, but we would always gather in Hajj Khalil's house for sweet tea to warm us up.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/IntlHousedest.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />And here are the remains of the home I stayed in, stones, tarp & all.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/hajjI.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />In the center of this picture is my dear friend, Hajj Ibrahim, and to his right, his wife Hajja Amne. Of the homes there, only Hajj Khalil's, seen behind them, still stands.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/familytree.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />Now, this is a picture of my lame attempt to put together a family tree of the families of Qawawis, and I show it to you as my excuse for not remembering everyone's names in the photographs; the families are big, and it has been almost a year since I was there last, so my apologies!<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/inIbrahimhouse.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />Here I am in the home of Ibrahim, son of Hajj Mohammed who lives in the nearby village of Karmil. In the center is Ibrahim's son Mohammed, who lives and works in the nearby town of Yatta and teaches English. He was very welcoming, his English was excellent, and I enjoyed spending time with him there. One of the great things about staying in Qawawis was that it really forced me to learn some Arabic, as few spoke English, but when he was there, I luckily had some help!<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/inIbrahimhouse2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />The taller boy is Salah, and the younger one is either Eyal or Lohai, I honestly forget! I remember playing soccer with them & I twisted my ankle on the rocky terrain (that said, one of the kids was playing barefoot!)<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/IbrahimAbeddest.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />Here is Ibrahim, sitting with his family in the ruins of his home, the one in which I took the previous pictures. To this day he bears an injury to his leg from a confrontation with soldiers years back (he was audacious enough to take his flock by the highway, can you believe that?).<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/IbrahimAbeddest2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />The house is shared with his brother Abed, whose wife Mariamme is here in front of the tire.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/IbrahimAbeddest4.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/IbrahimAbeddest5.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />some of their possessions that survived the destruction.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/IbrahimAbeddest3.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/HajjMahmoud.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />Here is a picture of Hajj Mahmoud from last year. He was a funny guy and fed me many times in his home. He also was a bit impatient with my steep Arabic learning curve; as soon as I would figure out a word or an expression of the most rudimentary sort, he would jump straight to full-speed Arabic! I had to learn how to say to him "slow down, I know very little Arabic;" needless to say, I forgot how to say even that.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/MahmoudZiaddest.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />Here is Hajj Mahmoud after the destruction of his home, with his wife Aisha and his son Ziad, who's wife was pregnant and has since given birth to their first child. Now they are all homeless, from the newborn to the grandfather.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/ZiadKhalil.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />Here I am in the home of Hajj Khalil with Mahmoud's son Ziad. Khalil and Ziad had just come back from Karmil after voting in the January 2006 election, fingers purple and all. Hajj Khalil was truly kind to me, and I look forward to seeing him and his family again; who knows, maybe I can help with the rebuilding of their homes, as rabbis for Human Rights and others have pledged to help them rebuild.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/dest.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/Khalil.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br />This is Hajj Khalil, just minutes before the settler came and attacked us, as described in my diary <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/31/173244/415">Close Encounter of an Israeli Settler Kind </a>. The man is over 80 years old, and despite everything, both he and his family will refuse to leave their land.<br /><br /><a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/jonazjew/terror.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.jsalloum.org/meenerhabe_qt.mov">Who is the Terrorist?</a>jon the antizionist jewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16019746662918181153noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-22105497590750394412007-02-12T17:43:00.000-08:002007-02-13T18:22:40.256-08:00The compromised moral authority of Elie WieselNote: This diary was cross-posted at <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/12/221326/865">DailyKos</a> on February 12, 2007. As a result of the at times heated discussion there, I became aware of serious flaws in argument and presentation. The <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/12/221326/865">DailyKos</a> version has been substantially revised, but this version remains unchanged so that readers may have access to an unedited version of my inexpert first effort to present this information. For my current thinking on this subject, you should check out my <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/12/221326/865">DailyKos diary</a>.<br /><br />There was a dailykos diary a few days ago about an unpleasant incident Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel suffered in a San Francisco hotel. Wiesel was <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/10/BAGEVO2ABF1.DTL">reportedly</a> accosted by a man who forced him out of an elevator and tried to usher him into a room of the hotel. Wiesel screamed for help, the man fled, and Wiesel was unharmed.<br /><br />The assailant is a Holocaust denying blogger, who by his own subsequent blog admission had been stalking Wiesel for "weeks;" his intention had been to force from Wiesel a videotaped statement that the Holocaust was a myth.<br /><br />The man is sick, unable to recognize or accept the historical reality of the world we live in. Denying the Holocaust, whatever the denier's intent, has the effect of authorizing the wanton slaughter of the Jewish people perpetrated by the Nazis during the Second World War.<br /><br />It would be easy, and quite morally satisfying, to portray this incident as an encounter between the evil Holocaust denier and the pure Holocaust victim. In fact, the first diary on the event painted it in exactly those terms. Unfortunately, the truth is a lot more complicated, and the complication here has to do with Wiesel, not with the man who attacked him.<br /><br />Wiesel, it turns out, is not so morally pure himself. For example, in 1948 -- after he had survived the Nazi concentration camps -- Wiesel had moved to Palestine and begun work as a journalist. According to Daniel McGowan, the director of <a href="http://www.deiryassin.org/index.html">Deir Yassin Remembered</a>, <a href="http://www.peuplesmonde.com/article.php3?id_article=222">Wiesel</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>knows from personal experience that on April 9, 1948 Arab civilians, including women and children, were murdered in cold blood in the village of Deir Yassin on the west side of Jerusalem by Jewish terrorists known as the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Wiesel worked for the Irgun, not as a fighter, but as a journalist and knows the details of this infamous (but not the only nor the largest) massacre of Arabs by Jews. And while he piously demands public apologies for atrocities committed against Jews (for example in 1946 at Kielce, Poland), he has never been able to apologize for the atrocities committed by his own employer.</blockquote><br /><br />Wiesel's biographer <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Elie-Wiesel-Politics-Moral-Leadership/dp/1566398576/sr=8-1/qid=1171249376/ref=sr_1_1/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books">Mark Chmiel</a> wrote in a <a href="http://www.ctsastl.org/site/publications_more.php?id=A289_0_12_0_M">2002 article in Tikkun</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>While Wiesel did express his existential empathy with Palestinian suffering he refused to examine the historical and political causes of their suffering, except to blame the Arab nations or the Palestinians themselves. In bearing witness, he instead expressed paeans to Israel (as after the 1967 war), or, when things got out of hand, confessed anguish and sadness (as after the Lebanon invasion and the intifada). As he desired that Israel be a land of poets and dreamers, he did not really reckon with Israel as a powerful state, enthusiastically backed by the United States, with the same capacity for realpolitik characteristic of other governments in the international state system. In his various defenses of Israel, Wiesel alleged that any assertion that the victim had now become the victimizer was tantamount to anti-Semitism, a useful rhetorical strategy for neutralizing criticism. The historical record and ample documentation of Israel's policies of exclusion, dispossession, and violence -- from the U.N., international human rights groups, and Israeli human rights groups -- could then be quickly dismissed as another expression of the world's contempt for the Jews. Wiesel may have been personally incapable or unwilling to penetrate the systematic distortions in the Israeli narratives and to criticize Israeli practices towards the Palestinians. But in his silence he opened himself to the criticism that his moral maxims -- for which he has been accorded respect both by powerful and powerless alike -- were suspended when it came to his own favorite state of Israel.<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Wiesel often says that he will not criticize Israel "outside of Israel." Yet, as Chmiel points out, in his memoirs Wiesel cited Albert Camus to the effect that "not to take a stand is to take a stand." In other words, he is aware that his silence on Israel has a broader effect, an effect of endorsing Israel's actions towards the Palestinians.<br /><br />Christopher Hitchens, writing in <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010219/hitchens">The Nation in 2001</a>, has called Wiesel a liar and a denier of the Nakba:<br /><br /><blockquote>In a propaganda tour of recent history, he asserts that in 1948, "incited by their leaders, 600,000 Palestinians left the country convinced that, once Israel was vanquished, they would be able to return home."<br /><br />This claim is a cheap lie and is known by Wiesel to be a lie. It is furthermore an utterly discredited lie, and one that Israeli officialdom no longer cares to repeat. Israeli and Jewish historians have exposed it time and again: Every Arab broadcasting station in the region, in 1947 as well as 1948, was monitored and recorded and transcribed by the BBC, and every Arab newspaper has been scoured, and not one instance of such "incitement," in direct speech or reported speech, has ever come to light. The late historian and diplomat Erskine Childers issued an open challenge on the point as far back as the 1950s that was never taken up and never will be. And of course the lie is a Big Lie, because Expulsion-Denial lies at the root of the entire problem and helps poison the situation to this day. (When Israel's negotiators gingerly discuss the right of return, at least they don't claim to be arguing about ghosts, or Dead Souls.) </blockquote><br /><br />The historical evidence available today is overwhelmingly conclusive: Israeli historians working independently of each other have confirmed time and again that Zionist* armies in 1948 systematically expelled hundreds of thousands of noncombatant Palestinian villagers from their homes. The Israeli sociologist <a href="http://hnn.us/articles/3166.html">Baruch Kimmerling</a> and the Israeli historian <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851684670/sr=8-1/qid=1171328156/ref=sr_1_1/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books">Ilan Pappe</a> have both argued that the cleansing was coordinated at the highest levels of Zionist leadership, in accordance with a worked plan of creating an ethnically pure Israel; Pappe in fact paints a portrait of a handpicked group of advisors meeting on a weekly basis with Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion to plot strategy and direct the cleansing operations on the ground. Benny Morris, whose <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-Refugee-Problem-Revisited-Cambridge/dp/0521009677/sr=1-1/qid=1171328352/ref=sr_1_1/102-1677751-5189730?ie=UTF8&s=books">Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem</a> is probably the best-known work documenting the ethnic cleansing campaign, does not agree with Kimmerling and Pappe that the campaign was coordinated. Nevertheless, his book documents in chilling detail a brutal and horrific campaign punctuated by extrajudicial assassinations, massacres, rape, and other atrocities. <a href="http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm">In interviews granted in 2004</a>, Morris indicated that he now believes Ben-Gurion himself was implicated in the cleansing campaign -- while he still insists there was no direct coordination from above, he spoke of an "idea in the air" in which the "entire officer corps understands what is required of them."<br /><br />Morris believes 700,000 Palestinian noncombatants were expelled in this campaign, while Pappe sets the figure somewhat higher at 850,000. Everyone agrees that the approximately 4 million Palestinians living in refugee camps throughout the Middle East today are descended from these individuals initially expelled by the Zionist armies. The historical evidence is clear that Israel expropriated the real and liquid property of the refugees, which was then used to finance some of the initial expenses of organizing the Zionist state.<br /><br />The point here is not to exculpate the Palestinians from any responsibility for bringing about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Palestinians clearly were hostile to the idea of an Israeli state from the beginning, and some Palestinians carried out attacks, and conducted atrocities, against Zionist settlers from the earliest stages of the conflict.<br /><br />The intent of this diary, rather, is to insist that the MidEast conflict is a moral minefield. Neither side wears white hats, and the degree of historical culpability on the Israeli side is at least as great -- and perhaps even greater -- than that on the Palestinian side. As for those Palestinian noncombatants expelled from their homes, denied access to their livelihoods, and robbed of their property, it is hard to see them as anything other than innocent victims. Yet Israel to this day refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for the crimes committed by its armies in 1948, and still officially denies that any ethnic cleansing took place.<br /><br />Wiesel is a solid brick in that Israeli wall of official denial. From him we get a restating of the Zionist foundation myth, that the State of Israel redeems the world of the Holocaust, and that therefore no public criticism of Israel is necessary. Even in his much publicized dialogues with Palestinians, Wiesel winds up -- in the words of his biographer <a href="http://www.ctsastl.org/site/publications_more.php?id=A289_0_12_0_M">Chmiel</a> -- "blaming the Palestinians and averting his eyes from the political causes of their grievances."<br /><br />Wiesel, in other words, "feels the pain" of Palestinian victims but refuses to acknowledge either his own or Israel's responsibility in causing their suffering. In a very real sense, his silence serves as a denial that the ethnic cleansing campaign even occurred -- even though he was employed by one of the principal organizations conducting cleansing operations.<br /><br />He is a Holocaust exceptionalist -- he appears to believe that Jewish suffering trumps all other suffering. It is a very comfortable position for one, like Wiesel, in a position of power. One can hardly be surprised, however, that the powerless who suffer are enfuriated by such an attitude.<br /><br /><i>*The word Zionist is used here in place of Israeli, as the cleansing campaigns began, in some accounts, before the State of Israel came into existence. In any event, the creators of the State of Israel self-identified as the leaders of a Zionist movement, and believers in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state still call themselves Zionist (e.g. <a href="http://www.wzo.org.il/en/default.asp">here</a>) today.</i>lithohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14375246647610022080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-60870333314114066322007-01-24T14:30:00.000-08:002007-01-24T16:54:45.801-08:00The End of Zionism?Now that Carter has put the comparison with apartheid South Africa squarely on the table, it might be time to ask whether Zionism might soon go the way of South African political racism. There are some signs in the current constellation of factors that suggest this might actually happen. In particular, if we look at 1) the current geopolitical environment in the Middle East, 2) Israel's ongoing and apparently irresolvable political crisis, and 3) the increasing exhaustion of the political myths that underlie the country's civil society, we see the possibility of a coming conjuncture in which Israelis themselves, like their white South African predecessors, might simply decide that enough is enough and it is time to allow a more just society to come into being.<br /><br />The current geopolitical environment is the most unfavorable for Israel as it has been at any time in my conscious lifetime, due in large part to the spectacular failure of the Bush-Likud/Kadima alliance's attempt to remake the Middle East. The only previous time that I can recall that even comes close to the current moment are the dark days of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War">Yom Kippur War</a>, when for a brief instant it appeared that the Egyptian-Syrian offensive might actually threaten the territory of Israel proper. Today, however, after the US conveniently removed the Iraqi bulwark to Iranian expansion into the Arab world and Israel's unilateralism has failed in both Lebanon and Gaza, Israel is facing a local geopolitical environment in which its sworn enemies not only enjoy momentum but also have little reason to wish to compromise with the Zionist state.<br /><br />Israeli rhetoric has always claimed the country is surrounded by enemies who wish to drive it into the sea. Today, that rhetoric is not only approaching reality (though the Hashemite kingdom, as always, proves the exception to the general rule), but those enemies -- Hezbollah, Hamas, and their Iranian sponsors -- for the first time might actually be nearing the military capacity necessary to bring the goal within reach.<br /><br />At this very moment, Israel's political system is <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/01/23/israelis_convene_talks_amid_doubt/">nearing collapse</a>. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert enjoys almost no popularity (a recent poll has him at about fourteen percent favorable), but the virtual collapse of both Labour and Likud has put his government "into an unusually solid position." Even as high-ranking former officials openly call for the government's resignation, a Kadima policy-maker can state:<br /><br /><blockquote>There is no crisis. A crisis is when the government is about to fall.</blockquote><br />With the (ceremonial) president indicted for rape and all the political parties discredited, it is fair to say Israel's political system is in crisis.<br /><br />Finally, there is a growing recognition inside Israel itself that the country's self-image, as the innocent victim of Arab perfidy, is seriously at odds with the facts. Our blogroll attests to the increasing number of Israel civil organizations that have come to question Israeli's role in creating and sustaining violent relations with the Palestinians. That questioning extends all the way back to the nation's founding, as Israeli historians unearth ever greater evidence of Zionist war crimes and atrocities during the War for Independence.<br /><br />Way back in 1985, at the height of Reagan's "constructive engagement" with the apartheid regime, when even the most optimistic of the regime's critics despaired of ever seeing it come to an end, the anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano published Waiting: The Whites of South Africa. The book, sadly, is now out of print and hard to find, but J.M Coetzee's New York Times review gives a good flavor for the text:<br /><br /><blockquote><p>The malaise Mr. Crapanzano detects in the soul of white South Africa is the malaise of <i> waiting</i> ; and the keenest pages of his book are given over to its description. </p><p>''Wittingly or unwittingly, the whites wait for something, anything, to happen. They are caught in the peculiar, the paralytic, time of waiting. . . . To talk about <i> dread, angst, guilt</i> or <i> being overwhelmed,</i> all of which are components of the experience of waiting, adds a metaphysical dimension, a melodramatic tension, to the very ordinary experience I am trying to describe. Such terms 'elevate' the experience. They give it importance. . . . Waiting - the South African experience - must be appreciated in all its banality. Therein lies its pity - and its humanity.'' </p><br /><br />Of the tenor of existence in the valley where Wyndal is situated he writes:<br /><br />''(Their life) impressed me as somehow truncated. . . . Their experience was not open-ended, expansive, and adventurous. . . . Their present seemed devoid of the vitality that I associate with leading a fulfilling life. . . . In waiting, the present is always secondary to the future. . . . The world in its immediacy slips away; it is derealized. It is without elan, vitality, creative force. It is numb, muted, dead.'' </blockquote><br /><br />I wonder if Israelis might not be in a similar state: waiting, waiting for something external to happen, to bring their country's multiple crises to a final resolution. In the end, of course, white South Africans were forced to take the future into their own hands, to cede power willingly and on their own to the country's black majority. Eventually, the tension of living a truncated existence became too great, and they accepted their own capacity to take control of their lives by acknowledging the great lie they all were living.<br /><br />Could something similar happen in Israel? Only time will tell.lithohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14375246647610022080noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3015209895330163076.post-40474561198510967352007-01-24T13:26:00.001-08:002007-01-28T16:29:17.846-08:00Evenhanded DemocratsGovernor Howard Dean made headlines in the run-up to the Presidential primaries a few years ago when he said that he believed that the United States should have <a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/09/23/dean_israel/index.html">an evenhanded approach</a> to the Middle East. He was quickly denounced by the other candidates and leaders of the Israel Lobby. In successive days, he clarified that he meant that the United States should be seen as a fair-broker and that he endorsed the relationship to Israel held during the Clinton administration. Some of his supporters explained away his statement as a faux pas, an example of his lack of experience in International Affairs. We haven’t heard Governor Dean use the word, “Evenhanded” since.<br /><br />Some of us in the Democratic Party have been dismayed by the unwillingness of the majority of our elected representatives to talk about an evenhanded approach to the Middle East, much less act in such a manner. And so, we are once again disappointed by the manner in which our Democratic Leaders quickly distanced themselves from Jimmy Carter, who in his book Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid also endorses an evenhanded approach to the Middle East:<br /> <br /><blockquote>"Until recently, America's leaders were known and expected to exert maximum influence in an objective, nonbiased way to achieve peace in the Middle East. In order to resume this vital role, the United States must be a trusted participant, evenhanded, consistent, unwavering, and enthusiastic -- a partner with both sides and not a judge of either. Although it is inevitable that at times there will be a tilt one way or the other, in the long run the role of honest broker must once again be played by Washington." (p.16.)</blockquote><br /><br />Weeks before Carter’s book hit the stands, possibly before they had read more than the title themselves, <a href="http://www.forward.com/articles/dems-repudiate-carter-book/">Democratic leaders weighed in</a>:<br /> <br /><blockquote>“It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously”. “With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel.”</blockquote> – Nancy Pelosi<br /> <br /><blockquote>“While I have tremendous respect for former President Carter, I fundamentally disagree and do not support his analysis of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. “On this issue President Carter speaks for himself, the opinions in his book are his own, they are not the views or position of the Democratic Party. I and other Democrats will continue to stand with Israel in its battle against terrorism and for a lasting peace with its neighbors.”</blockquote> – Howard Dean<br /> <br /><blockquote>“I cannot agree with the book’s title and its implications about apartheid”. “I recently called the former president to express my concerns about the title of the book, and to request that the title be changed.”</blockquote> – John Conyers<br /> <br />Given these leaders statements, one can’t be surprised by <a href="http://www.forward.com/articles/carter-book-slaps-israel-with-%E2%80%98apartheid%E2%80%99-tag/">assertions like these</a>:<br /><blockquote>“Democrats who support Jimmy Carter’s views on Israel? Now that’s a convention you could hold in a phone booth,” wrote Ira Forman, executive director of the National Democratic Jewish Council, in an e-mail to the Forward. “Jimmy Carter is out of the mainstream of the Democratic Party when it comes to his views on Israel.” </blockquote><br /> <br />No matter what our party leaders say, some of us rank and file Democrats are foolish enough to believe that being evenhanded is a Democratic value. We are the party of Roosevelt's four freedoms and the New Deal. We are the party of the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society. We are the party of the Peace Corps, VISTA and Americorps. If being evenhanded is “out of the mainstream of the Democratic Party” then the Democratic Party needs to be reformed. <br /> <br />One place to start that reform is in our party’s <a href="http://www.democrats.org/pdfs/2004platform.pdf">one-sided platform on the Middle East</a>:<br /> <br /><blockquote><em>The Middle East.</em> The Democratic Party is fundamentally committed to the security of our ally Israel and the creation of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace between Israel and her neighbors. Our special relationship with Israel is based on the unshakable foundation of shared values and a mutual commitment to democracy, and we will ensure that under all circumstances, Israel retains the qualitative edge for its national security and its right to self-defense. Jerusalem is the capital(sic) of Israel and should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.<br /> <br />Under a Democratic Administration, the United States will demonstrate the kind of resolve to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that President Clinton showed. We will work to transform the Palestinian Authority by promoting new and responsible leadership, committed to fighting terror and promoting democracy. We support the creation of a democratic Palestinian state dedicated to living in peace and security side by side with the Jewish State of Israel. The creation of a Palestinian state should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel. Furthermore, all understand that it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. And we understand that all final status negotiations must be mutually agreed.</blockquote><br /> <br />Apparently, we’re also in agreement with Carter on this point. He recently opined in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/17/AR2007011701712.html">The Washington Post</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>... with the Democratic Party poised to play a more important role in governing, this is a good time to clarify our party's overall policy in the broader Middle East. Numerous options are available as Congress attempts to correlate its suggestions with White House policy, and there is little doubt that the basic proposals of the Iraq Study Group provide a good foundation on which Democrats might reach something of a consensus (recognizing that individual lawmakers could still make their own proposals on details). This party policy would provide a reasonable answer to the allegation that Democrats have no alternatives of their own to address the Iraq quagmire.<br /><br />A key factor in an Iraq policy would be strong demands on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to cooperate in ending sectarian violence, prodded by a clear notice of plans for troop withdrawals. A commitment to regional cooperation, including opportunities for Iran and Syria to participate, would be beneficial in assuring doubtful Iraqis that America will no longer be the dominant outside power shaping their military, political and economic future.<br /><br />Although Israel's prime minister has criticized these facets of the Iraq Study Group's report, the most difficult recommendation for many Democrats could be the call for substantive peace talks on the Palestinian issue. The situation in the occupied territories will be a crucial factor, and it would be helpful for both the House and Senate to send a responsible delegation to the West Bank and Gaza to observe the situation personally, to meet with key leaders and to ascertain the prospects if peace talks can be launched.</blockquote><br /> <br />So a small group of rank and file Democrats, brought together by common cause of reform, are beginning to convene in a space much smaller than a phone booth – a blog. We are continuing to post at Daily Kos because we are members of that community and because we believe that our goals of reform are consistent with <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/DailyKos_FAQ#What_is_the_purpose_of_this_site.3F">the purposes of that site</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN's Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we're around here and we're proud. But it's not a liberal blog. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven't gotten any of that from the current crew, we're one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It's one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I've said a million times, the status quo is untenable</blockquote><br /> <br />We also occasionally will crosspost relevant diaries at this new site, Evenhanded Democrats. We have more room to post our favorite links here. There’s even room to fit more bloggers -- way more room than a phonebooth.Rusty Pipeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05652828707259124940noreply@blogger.com2