No ‘change’ on torture
Protests mount as Obama’s promises to end human rights violations fall flat
Anayat Durrani
| When United States President Barack Obama came into office, the world breathed a sigh of relief. He was, after all, a man who promised to close an ugly chapter in American history, shutting down Guantanamo and with it the horrific policies of the Bush administration. But not only is he facing hurdles in closing Guantanamo, but extraordinary renditions and interrogations involving torture are to be c ontinued…
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Israel the exception
The normal rules governing state conduct do not apply to Israel
Shahid Alam*
| Critics of Zionism and Israel — including a few Israelis — have charted an inverse exceptionality, which describes an Israel that is aberrant, violates international norms with near impunity, engages in systematic abuses of human rights, wages wars at will, and has expanded its territories through conquest. This is not the place to offer an exhaustive list of these negative Israeli exceptions, but we will list a few that are the most egregious. As an exclusionary settler-colony, Israel does not stand alone in the history of European expansion overseas. But it is the only one of its kind in the 20th and 21st centuries…Israel is most likely the only country in the world that insists on defining citizenship independently of geography. On the one hand, it has continued to deny the right of return — and hence rights of citizenship — to millions of Palestinians who or whose parents and grandparents were expelled from Palestine in two massive rounds of ethnic cleansing since 1948. At the same time, under its law of return, Israel automatically and instantly grants citizenship to applicants who are Jews, persons of Jewish parentage, or Jewish converts….
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More prisons, more war crimes, more ethnic cleansing
Body on the Line
| Ot is important to reflect on the meaning of the constant state of refugeedom that palestinians are subjected to because of zionist terrorism and their american, and often european and arab, allies. I think it is important because while we must still keep the focus on Gaza, so as not to let israeli terrorist war criminals off the hook, we must remember, always, the root of the problem: ethnic cleansing and expulsion and the right of return of those who were forcibly removed from their land….
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Palestinians: Israeli Attack on Jesus, Mary “Racist,” Anti-Semitic
Juan Cole
| The satirical comedy skits put on by Lior Klein concerning Jesus and Mary on Israel’s Channel 10 last week have provoked rallies and protests by Palestinian-Israeli Christians, of whom there are about 120,000. They also drew condemnation from Muslim Palestinian-Israelis, of whom there are over a million. Klein said that since Christians were denying the Holocaust, he was denying Christianity…The skits denied Jesus’s miracles, said he died young because he was too fat and so could not have walked on water, and said Mother Mary was not a virgin but rather a promiscuous woman who had had many lovers and first got pregnant in high school at age 15. Palestinian-Israelis viewed them as a secular Israeli attack on Arab beliefs and folkways. That is, the pieces were viewed as racist and not just anti-religious but as ethnic bigotry. They were even called “anti-Semitic,” since Arabs are Semites…
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EU-Israel Collusion Against Palestinians?
Kawther Salam
| …Dr. Kelani shocked and surprised me when he accidentally exposed the scandalous collusion of the EU with Israel to keep humanitarian volunteers and medical relief workers and resources donated by private organizations and individuals throughout Europe, out of Gaza. He related to me information which I believed only when he gave me several documents (reproduced below). When I first read these documents I was speechless, because the only allow the conclusion that th e EU and its member states are not only passively looking the other way, what is bad enough, but that they are in active collusion with Israel to continue and even aggravate the misery of the Palestinians in Gaza, and that these governments are actively engaged in a campaign of intimidation against their own nationals should they decide to show solidarity with the Palestinian population in Gaza. If these are papers which are being made public, then I must ask, what machinations are being done in secret?…
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Perpetual stalemate
Any near future Israeli government is likely to be stymied by ideological and political contradictions
Khaled Amayreh
| An indecisive elections outcome, coupled with rampant factionalism, is stalling and complicating the task of forming a new Israeli government. The 10 February elections gave the Israeli right, with its oft- inharmonious religious and secular camps, 65 seats in the 120- member Knesset. The so-called Zionist “left” took 44 seats, with the remaining 11 going to three Arab partie s. The Zionist political establishment normally excludes non-Jewish parties from government, mainly due to racist considerations…
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Israel ‘evicts Jerusalem families’
AlJazeera.net
| More than 1,500 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem could be made homeless after Israel told them their homes are illegal and are to be demolished. “The owners of 80 houses in the al-Bustan neighbourhood have received eviction notices saying that the structures will be destroyed because they are illegal,” Hatem Abdel Kader, an official responsible for Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian government, said…
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Israel Arms Hamas
By Ola Attallah, IOL Correspondent
| The recent Israeli war on Gaza, which killed and wounded thousands and wrecked havoc on the civilian infrastructure, was marketed on the pretext of undermining the capacities of resistance factions, particularly Hamas. But before withdrawing, the invading Israeli troops left Palestinian fighters a priceless gift: a large cache of unexploded ordnance.”A considerable number of the Israeli bombs, shells and missiles fired during the war did not explode,” Abu Moaez, a memb er of Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, told IslamOnline.net…”This is a gift from heaven,” says Abu Moaez, the Hamas fighter. “We have collected and dismantled many of the unexploded ordnance,” he added. “They will be recycled and used in defending our people against the Israeli occupation forces.”…
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French comedian urged not to entertain Israeli army veterans
Open letter, PACBI
| We know that your stand-up comedy brings laughter and joy to many French-speaking people around the world. As such we are shocked and disappointed to learn that you are going to perform in support of handicapped Israeli veterans and victims of terrorist attacks in Geneva on 2 March 2009. Your performance in this show would constitute an act of support and solidarity with the Israeli army, which is Israel’s main instrument for the systematic op pression and brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people. It would contribute towards “polishing” the international image of an aggressive military force that has a long history of involvement in massacres and the documented ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land…
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