Hillary and the End of Occupation and of the New Imperialism

Friday, May 04, 2007

Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a surprise move, will introduce legislation with Sen. Robert Byrd to revoke the war powers granted to Bush in October of 2002. She says she had originally supported a Byrd amendment at that time to limit those powers to a single year. In the US Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war, even though once it is declared the president is commander in chief. The Founding Fathers would have been appalled at the tendency of Congress to cede war-making to the executive during the past century.

As George Lakoff reminds us, actually what is needed is a bill to cut off Bush's authorization to occupy another country. The US was born in a revolt against colonialism and empire; it is shameful for it to seek to retain other countries as colonies now, in the mold of King George III. You may as well bring back slavery as to seek to go on occupying Iraq, as the Republican presidential hopefuls want to do.

And this is what I would add to Lakoff's suggestion. The war was over in 2003. What we've had since then is an occupation, at least in the Sunni Arab areas and some of the Shiite south, where US military presence is unwelcome. Although the Bushies trumpet the two elections, in fact the prime minister elected as a result of them, Ibrahim Jaafari, was unseated through heavy-handed US intervention in Iraqi domestic affairs. When Bush is telling Iraq who it can and cannot have as prime minister, then Iraq is not an independent country.

Such an occupation is just warmed over 19th century colonialism of the "white man's burden" variety. And, such colonialism is just as objectionable as slavery. When the revolutionary French National Assembly abolished slavery in 1794, its abolitionists voiced the hope that ending slavery would also end colonialism.

Occupation 101

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Occupation 101

Supporters of Occupation 101

The long awaited U.S. release of 'Occupation 101' is finally here. The official DVD release date is set for May 15th 2007. You will be able to purchase the DVD online at www.occupation101.com (U.S only). In our last email we mentioned a tentative April 07 release -- that was our initial plan but we encountered some unforeseen delays and thus decided on May 15, 2007 as the release date (which is also the 59th Anniversary of the creation of Israel -- and the Palestinian 'Nakba')

This has been a long journey for us. We started working on the film in March of 2001 and we know that some of you must be frustrated that it has taken this long to release a DVD. What many of you don't know is that we are only two individuals who have produced this film and producing a film is a very (very)expensive process. Not only did financial constraints
delay our production -- but we also had to do everything from producing, interviewing, directing, videography, editing, website design and development, etc... basically every aspect of the filmmaking process (except for music composition and visual animation).

We have had many amazing experiences screening 'Occupation 101' in film festivals and colleges
throughout the United States -- it has been widely accepted by audiences -- the general public not only becomes informed about the facts, but always asks us about how they can personally take action and help end the occupation!

'Occupation 101' has also won several awards at film
festivals. Our most recent recognition came from the
2007 International Beverly Hills Film Festival -- We
won the 'Golden Palm Award' given to the best film in
all categories (the festival's most prestigious
honor), and we also picked up the award for 'Best
Editing."

We are very proud of this film and we feel that --
with the grace of God -- it will benefit everyone who
sees it. Your patience and support over the years has
been great. We appreciate all of you for hanging in
there with us. For those of you who live outside the
United States -- we are figuring out ways to make this
film available to you as soon as possible -- so please
be patient with us. We will continue to update you
with any information.

Again thank you all for your amazing support and kind
words of inspiration.

Take care and God bless you all.

PEACE,

Occupation 101 Team

‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ Holds First National Conference

Commentary

By Cecilie Surasky

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it’s important to reflect on where we as a Jewish community stand on this issue, especially here in the Bay Area.

This occupation, through a system of checkpoints, home and orchard demolitions, detentions, land and water confiscations, assassinations and more, makes normal life impossible for millions of Palestinians. It violates international law, which was created in no small part as a response to World War II, and is universally condemned by human rights groups and governments, including the United States.

Far from bringing Israelis safety, it endangers people in Israel as well as the 400,000 settlers who live on occupied land, at least 40 percent of which, according to Israeli records, is actually owned by Palestinian families.

Given the Bay Area’s extraordinary history in the forefront of major social justice movements, it should come as no surprise that the leadership of the country’s largest and fastest-growing Jewish peace groups hail from here.

There is Brit Tzedek, which does critical work within the affiliated Jewish world as a pro-Israel/pro-peace group; Tikkun, which as part of the Network of Spiritual Progressives reaches across religious lines to raise a voice of justice; and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the only national Jewish peace group that views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of international human rights law.

All of us have experienced some form of censure from the institutional Jewish world for publicly challenging unquestioning support for Israeli policies.

On April 28-29 in Oakland, JVP will hold our first national conference, “Pursuing Justice in Israel/Palestine, Changing Minds, Challenging U.S. Policy.” (Go to www.JewishVoice forpeace.org for information.) The conference will offer attendees a way to learn more about the Middle East, get involved, or sharpen their strategy and skills.

Just 5 years ago, JVP was an all volunteer group based here in the Bay Area. Today, we have four program staff positions; a 24,000-person mailing list; chapters in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Seattle with more coming; and advisory board members including Howard Zinn, Deborah Chasnoff, Tony Kushner and Adrienne Rich.

We encourage all people, but Jews in particular, to attend the conference as a way learn about Arab-Jewish organizing, Christian fundamentalist anti-Semitism, life under occupation and more.

A Jewish movement for

peace and justice

It is challenging to be an “out” Jew on this issue. Many movements simplistically divide the world into us and them. But as Jews, many with close ties to Israel, we are both us AND them. We must constantly fight the temptation of others, and at times ourselves, to dehumanize the “bad guys.”

Many of us needed to break through the one-sided ideas about Israel we were taught from birth. We knew too well the Jewish stories of suffering and exile – we ourselves carry the wounds. And we understood the need to create a place where Jews could be safe.

But we realized we knew little about Palestinians, why they called the Israeli war of independence Al Nakba, the disaster. Or why many still carried keys to their old homes, or why children threw rocks at tanks, or why some became suicide bombers and sought to kill Israeli civilians on buses or in pizza shops.

Many of us decided to learn the whole history, and to go to the West Bank and Gaza ourselves to see exactly what occupation looks like.

It is a searing experience none shall ever forget.

There are no words to describe the anger the first time one sees a scared Israeli teenage soldier pointing a huge gun and callously barking orders at an elderly Palestinian at a checkpoint.

And there are no containers to hold the tears one sheds when one sees a Caterpillar bulldozer destroy a Palestinian family’s home because they lacked an impossible to obtain permit, while the mother watches restrained, screaming, her children’s clothes and toys strewn on the side of the road. As one rabbi who witnessed such destruction just a few miles outside of Jerusalem said, “This is the worst day of my life.”

We come back to the Bay Area, having experienced some of the worst days of our lives, and instead of being greeted with open arms by one of the most progressive Jewish communities in the world, ready to work with Israeli and Palestinian peace groups for justice, we find an increasingly polarized community.

On the one side we find Jewish leaders who, feeling under attack, circle the wagons and go into defense mode. Many repeat superficial and racist platitudes about Palestinians just hating Jews or not caring about their families, platitudes that insult the intelligence of most who know full well the complexity of the situation.

We find progressive Jewish groups who we look to for inspiration on every tough social issue, but who decide simply to not talk about Israel-Palestine, as though it weren’t there.

Finally, we find Jewish leaders wielding the powerful charge of anti-Semitism, at times, to silence legitimate albeit sometimes hyperbolic criticism of Israel. At the same time, we see them take no accountability for the widespread Islamophobia and toxic disregard for Arab lives that has become widespread in many Jewish communities.

We then do our part to add to the polarization.

Out of our collective frustration at being shut out, and our anger at the moral hypocrisy of our leaders, we speak in a way that makes other Jews feel we don’t care about Israeli life, no matter how untrue that may be.

We focus on the failings of the Israeli government, the powerful player, and gloss over the failings of Palestinian leadership, and fail to communicate our acknowledgment of the very real fear Diaspora Jews and Israelis feel about annihilation.

There must be a way to break out of this cycle.

It is a devastating lie that one must be either pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian.

It is possible, in fact, necessary, to be integrated as a Jew who loves the Jewish people and traditions, and who fights for justice for all people—especially those who suffer at the hands of a Jewish state.

The future of Palestinians depends on it. The future of Israel depends on it. The very future of Judaism depends on it.

Go to www.JewishVoiceforPeace.org to find out more and to register for the conference.

Cecilie Surasky is director of communications for Jewish Voice for Peace.

The Iraqi resistance only exists to end the occupation

The escalating attacks are not usually aimed at civilians, but are a direct response to the brutal actions of US-led troops

Haifa Zangana
Thursday April 12, 2007
The Guardian

In Muqdadiyah, 50 miles from Baghdad, a woman wearing a traditional Iraqi abaya blew herself up this week in the midst of Iraqi police recruits. This was the seventh suicide attack by a women since the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, and an act unheard of before that. Iraqi women are driven to despair and self-destruction by grief. Their expectations are reduced to pleas for help to clear the bodies of the dead from the streets, according to a report by the international committee of the Red Cross, released yesterday. It's the same frustration that drew hundreds of thousands to demonstrate against foreign forces in Najaf on Monday.

In the fifth year of occupation, the sectarian and ethnic divide between politicians, parties and their warring militias has become monstrous, turning on its creators in the Green Zone and beyond, and not sparing ordinary people. One of the consequences is a major change in the public role of women.

During the first three years of occupation women were mostly confined to their homes, protected by male relatives. But now that the savagery of their circumstances has propelled many of them to the head of their households, they are risking their lives outdoors. Since men are the main target of US-led troops, militias and death squads, black-cloaked women are seen queuing at prisons, government offices or morgues, in search of disappeared, or detained, male relatives. It is women who bury the dead. Baghdad has become a city of bereaved women. But contrary to what we are told by the occupation and its puppet regime, this is not the only city that is subject to the brutality that forces thousands of Iraqis to flee their country every month.

Bodies are found across the country from Mosul to Kirkuk to Basra. They are handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-ridden, bearing signs of torture. They are dumped at roadsides or found floating in the Tigris or Euphrates. A friend of mine who found her brother's body in a hospital's fridge told me how she checked his body and was relieved. "He was not tortured", she said. "He was just shot in the head."

Occupation has left no room for any initiative independent of the officially sanctioned political process; for a peaceful opposition or civil society that could create networks to bridge the politically manufactured divide. Only the mosque can fulfil this role. In the absence of the state, some mosques provide basic services, running clinics or schools. In addition to the call to prayer, their loudspeakers warn people of impending attacks or to appeal for blood donors.

But these attempts to sustain a sense of community are regularly crushed. On Tuesday, troops from the Iraqi army, supported by US helicopters, raided a mosque in the heart of old Baghdad. The well-respected muazzin Abu Saif and another civilian were executed in public. Local people were outraged and attacked the troops. At the end of the day, 34 people had been killed, including a number of women and children. As usual, the summary execution and the massacre that followed were blamed on insurgents. The military statement said US and Iraqi forces were continuing to "locate, identify, and engage and kill insurgents targeting coalition and Iraqi security forces in the area".

It is important to recognise that the resistance was born not only of ideological, religious and patriotic convictions, but also as a response to the reality of the brutal actions of the occupation and its administration. It is a response to arbitrary break-ins, humiliating searches, arrests, detention and torture. According to the Red Cross, "the number of people arrested or interned by the multinational forces has increased by 40% since early 2006. The number of people held by the Iraqi authorities has also increased significantly."

Many of the security detainees are women who have been subjected to abuse and rape and who are often arrested as a means to force male relatives to confess to crimes they have not committed. According to the Iraqi MP Mohamed al-Dainey, there are 65 documented cases of women's rape in occupation detention centres in 2006. Four women currently face execution - the death penalty for women was outlawed in Iraq from 1965 until 2004 - for allegedly killing security force members. These are accusations they deny and Amnesty International has challenged.

There is only one solution to this disaster, and that is for the US and Britain to accept that the Iraqi resistance is fighting to end the occupation. And to acknowlege that it consists of ordinary Iraqis, not only al-Qaida, not just Sunnis or Shias, not those terrorists - as Tony Blair called them - inspired by neighbouring countries such as Iran. To recognise that Iraqis are proud, peace-loving people, and that they hate occuption, not each other. And to understand that the main targets of the resistance are not Iraqi civilians. According to Brookings, the independent US research institute, 75% of recorded attacks are directed at occupation forces, and a further 17% at Iraqi government forces. The average number of attacks has more than doubled in the past year to about 185 a day. That is 1,300 a week, and more than 5,500 a month.

Another way of understanding this is that in any one hour, day or night, there are seven or eight new attacks. Without the Iraqi people's support, directly and indirectly, this level of resistance would not have happened.

· Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi exile who was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, is the author of Women on a Journey: Between Baghdad and London
haifa_zangana@yahoo.co.uk

Haifa Zangana is a novelist and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime. She is a weekly columnist for al-Quds newspaper and an occasional commentator for the Guardian, Red Pepper and al-Ahram Weekly. She lectures regularly on Iraqi culture, literature, and women issues.

Born in Baghdad in 1950, she worked with the PLO in Damascus, Syria, in 1975, and has lived in London since 1976. As a painter and writer, she participated in various European and American surrealist publications and group exhibitions in the 80s, and performed one-woman shows in London and Iceland.

She has worked as an adviser for the United Nations Development Programme, writing a report on empowerment of women in the Arab world, and as a member of the advisory board of a Brussels tribunal on Iraq. She co-founded Act Together: Women Action for Iraq and is the chair of Iraqi Patriots in Media and Culture (IPMC). She was a founding member of the International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies (IACIS), and edited and published Halabja, a homage to the eponymous Kurdish town by Iraqi and Arab writers and artists.

Through the Vast Halls of Memory, her biographical novel, was published in English by Hourglass in 1990, reprinted in 1991, and published in Arabic in 1995. Three collections of short stories followed: The Ant’s Nest (1996), Beyond What the Eye Sees (1997) and The Presence of Others (1999). She has since published two more novels: Keys to a City in 2000 and Women on a Journey in 2001.

Publications include:

A piece in Not One More Death, a collection of writings against the Iraq war/occupation. STW and Verso, March 2006

A translation of her novel Women on a Journey. Texas University Press, December 2006

The Three Cyclops of Empire: Targeting the Fabric of Iraqi Society, a chapter in Empire’s Law, Pluto, February 2006

Colonial Feminist: from Washington to Baghdad, a chapter in Barriers to Reconciliation, Washington DC University Press, 2006

Packaged Lives, a collection of short stories in Arabic, Dar Al Sawad.

Forthcoming publications include:

Interrupted struggle: A short history of women in Iraq, Seven Stories NY, autumn 2007

A translation of Women on a Journey. Texas University Press, spring 2007

Iraqi Gov Insider Blasts US Occupation As "Corroded, Inefficient, Incompetent And Corrupt"

[April 8, 2007, 10:00 pm]
"(AP) Iraqi Insider Details U.S. Mismanagement"

By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
NEW YORK

In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country _ a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."

"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.

First came the "monumental ignorance" of those inWashington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.

What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:

_ The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds ofthousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.

_ Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party _ from government, school faculties and elsewhere _ left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.

_ An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.

_ The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.

_ Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capitalequipment to be spirited away across borders.

_ The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.

In his 2006 memoir of the occupation, Bremer wrote that senior U.S. generals wanted to recall elements of the old Iraqi army in 2003, but were rebuffed by the Bush administration. Bremer complained generally that his authority was undermined by Washington's "micromanagement."

Although Allawi, a cousin of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister in 2004, is a member of a secularist Shiite Muslim political grouping, his well-researched bookbetrays little partisanship.

On U.S. reconstruction failures _ in electricity, health care and other areas documented by Washington's own auditors _ Allawi writes that the Americans' "insipid retelling of `success' stories" merely hid "the huge black hole that lay underneath."

For their part, U.S. officials have often largely blamed Iraq's explosive violence for the failures of reconstruction and poor governance.

The author has been instrumental since 2005 in publicizing extensive corruption within Iraq's "new order," including an $800-million Defense Ministry scandal. Under Saddam,he writes, the secret police kept would-be plunderers in check better than the U.S. occupiers have done.

As 2007 began, Allawi concludes, "America's only allies in Iraq were those who sought to manipulate the great power to their narrow advantage. It might have been otherwise."

Copyright 2007 by the Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

SPURIOUS EQUIVALENCE: THE ABSENCE OF ISRAEL'S OCCUPATION IN THE PRESS

SPURIOUS EQUIVALENCE: THE ABSENCE OF ISRAEL'S OCCUPATION IN THE PRESS
Recently, the Glasgow University Media Group released a study suggesting that press coverage obscures, rather than facilitates; popular understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This is perhaps best evidenced by the general failure of the press to describe the conflict within the accurate context of an occupation. Rather than presenting the conflict as one between an "occupier" and an "occupied," the conflict is presented as one between two equal parties with equal rights to "disputed" land that Israel "captured" in 1967.

Talabani lashes out at US policy in Iraq under 'occupation'

29/03/2007 5:42:00 PM

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Thursday that the US-led invasion of his country four years ago had turned into an occupation with dire consequences for Iraq.

Talabani, a member of the Kurdish minority, which has been largely insulated from the violence and devastation visited on other parts of the country since Saddam Hussein fell, was addressing the Arab summit in the Saudi capital.

"The decision to turn the liberation of Iraq into an occupation ... with the dire consequences this had internally and the fears (it aroused) in Arab, regional and international arenas, all this was contrary to what Iraqi parties and national forces were planning at the time," he said.

"This applies equally to many hasty decisions and measures taken by the occupation's civil administration without understanding the Iraqis' point of view and the consequences they had on the situation in the country and the political process as a whole," he said.

"The policies pursued in the wake of the overthrow of the former regime, and the weakness of the international response to the will of the political forces who rallied to rebuild the new Iraq, stymied our early quest to broaden popular participation in order to ... establish security and stability and confront the challenges of sabotage, chaos and terrorism as quickly as possible and with the least human and material losses."

Talabani did not spell out the mistakes he was referring to, but the US-run civil administration installed after Saddam's fall has been widely criticised for taking decisions that have made the situation worse.

Particularly were the disbanding of the Saddam regime's army and the banning of the former dictator's Baath party. That left tens of thousands of military personnel and civilian officials and bureaucrats without jobs, fueling an insurgency among the minority Sunni community from which most of them came.

Israeli soldiers morally troubled by Occupation duties

March 23, 2007 at 12:52 am ·
Uriel Simon, Still Fighting for Justice After All These Years

IDF soldier intimidates at Nablus checkpoint (credit: Rina Castelnuovo/NYT)

Steven Erlanger today writes a fine portrait of a Breaking the Silence event in Israel. The group has compiled 400 oral histories of IDF soldiers morally troubled by their Occupation duties. The most telling portion of the article comes near the end when Erlanger records a note of discord from an audience member who lashes out at the Breaking the Silence speaker:

While criticism of the army is quite acceptable in Israel’s democracy, and not just on the left, Breaking the Silence left some raw feelings here.

At the recent talk and discussion session, one man stood and said Mr. Manekin and his friends were hurting Israel, especially its image abroad, in order to salve their own consciences. Many in the audience nodded in agreement. Tall and dignified, about 45, the man said that he, too, had served in the West Bank, “and I’m proud of what I did there to defend Israelis.”

It is crucial to intimidate people at checkpoints to keep them cowed, he said, his voice shaking a little, “because we are so few there, and they are so many.”

Then he said: “These people are not like us! They come up to our faces and they lie to us!”

These are certainly telling words, though not in the way the speaker meant them. They tell us how when you become the occupier you become lonely and frightened and learn how to justify to yourself the oppression you invoke on others.

The next portion of the article chronicles the response of retired Hebrew University professor Uri Simon to the speaker. The reason Simon is so important to this post concerns a little anecdote from my past.

When I was 17 in 1968, I attended a wonderful Camp Ramah summer seminar at which I enjoyed an independent study course with Rabbi Joe Lukinsky on the Israeli-Arab conflict. He helped me choose the books. I read them. I wrote a paper about the Brit Shalom movement founded by Judah Magnes, Martin Buber and Ernst Simon. I'd never studied this conflict before in such depth. It was my first introduction to an issue that would occupy the rest of my life.

After writing the paper, Joe encouraged me in that wonderful way he has, to send it to Uri Simon, Ernst Simon's son, who was then a professor of Bible at the Hebrew University (later of Bar Ilan). I did send it to him and he replied in that nice, kindly way the humane professors do when they're really thinking: "this kid has a lot to learn," but don't want to let on to their true feelings. I remember Simon felt I was being uncharitable in comparing Israel's Occupation to apartheid South Africa. But he said so in the nicest way possible. Only a 17 year old can write with such certitude on such issues.

Lukinsky and I studied again together when I spent my junior year abroad at the University in 1972-73. He encouraged me to look Prof. Simon up and I never did. How foolish of me. I regret it even more when I read the wonderful prophetic wisdom from him here:

That was enough for Uriel Simon, 77 years old, a professor emeritus of biblical studies at Bar-Ilan University and a noted religious dove.

“As for liars,” Mr. Simon said, then paused. “My father was a liar. My grandfather was a liar. How else did we cross lines to get to this country? We stayed alive by lying. We lied to the Russians, we lied to the Germans, we lied to the British! We lie for survival! Jacob the Liar was my father!” he said.

As for the Palestinians, he said: “Of course they lie! Everyone lies at a checkpoint! We lied at checkpoints, too.”

Everyone is afraid of mirrors, Mr. Simon said, readjusting the knitted skullcap on his nimbus of white hair. “We hate the mirror. We don’t want to look at ourselves. We don’t like photographs of us — we say, ‘Oh, that’s not a very good likeness.’ We want to be much nicer than we are. But here there are also prophets who are mirrors, who are not afraid of kings and generals. The prophet says, ‘You are ugly,’ and we don’t want to hear it, but we have to look at the mirror honestly, without fear.”

Later, Mr. Simon tried to describe the ambivalence and even confusion, as he saw it, in the room.

The army is central to Israel, and the problems so complicated, he said. At the beginning of the summer war, as in the beginning of any war, including the war in Iraq, “there’s a euphoria that derives from an almost irrational belief in power and force, that the sword can cut through all the slow processes.” It is more enthralling if, like Israel, “you have so much power that you can’t use, and suddenly you can.”

But the euphoria is always short-lived, he said, because no army is as efficient as advertised, and power rarely delivers the clean outcome it seems to promise.

“We bomb southern Lebanon like mad, and still they continue to send missiles at us,” he said.

The frustration is even more intense “for a people like Israel forced to live on its sword, for who will save this little state?” he asked. “The United Nations? The good will of America? We’d be overrun 10 times before America awakes, even if it wants to awake. So every 10-year-old knows the sheer importance of the Israeli Army, and the more you need it the more you expect from it.”

At the end of the evening, Mr. Simon said, he went to talk to the tall man who had been so upset. “He said to me, ‘You won’t believe me, but I agree with 90 percent of what you said.’ ” Mr. Simon laughed softly. “It just showed how confused he was.”

Prof. Simon, what a wonderful life you have lived. What a wonderful example you have set. May the Lord bless and keep you (Yevarechecha v'yishmarecha).

Filed under Mideast Peace, Jews & Judaism

breaking the silence shovrim shtika uri simon israeli professor peace activist

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Everyday life under occupation in the West Bank

By Ryan Sweeny

Posted: 3/20/07

Over winter break, I met a man whose home had been demolished twice by American-made Caterpillar brand armored bulldozers. Not because the structures were unsafe or because the man is a terrorist, but simply because those were the orders of the soldiers who are occupying his country with arms, helicopter gunships and other equipment provided by the United States.

Yet this same man, against whom people have inflicted so much groundless cruelty, showed more hospitality toward me than anyone else I've known, even people in much richer parts of the world than the West Bank. His family served us an enormous dinner of maqlubeh (a dish of chicken, rice and cauliflower), gave five foreigners beds to sleep in, served us another enormous breakfast the next morning and even rode with us in our taxi until we arrived back in downtown Hebron. Three of us were from the country that provided the bulldozers that had destroyed his home twice.

The hospitality of this man and his family was one of the highlights of the time I spent in Israel and Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams, which promote nonviolence and mutual dialogue in conflict areas around the world.

On another day, we visited Bethlehem, also located within the occupied West Bank. To enter the town where Jesus was supposedly born, we had to walk past soldiers carrying American M-16 machine guns, through an inspection facility and through a 25-foot-tall guard tower-laden "security wall" with an enormous sign proclaiming "Peace Be With You."

A few days later, in Hebron, I saw Israeli soldiers arresting a Palestinian man at gunpoint for walking on Shuhada Street, a street built with American aid money for the use of everyone in Hebron. This street may be legally open to anyone, but in practice, only soldiers, Israelis living in illegal settlements and foreigners can use Shuhada Street without risking arrest.

One morning, I watched children pass through military checkpoints and metal detectors on their way to school. Are these children going to grow up believing that it's entirely normal to see soldiers and machine guns every day on the way to and from school, or to arrive at school only to learn that the soldiers haven't allowed the teachers to pass through the checkpoint?

Israel has as much of a right to existence and security as any other nation, but its policies in the West Bank are both illegal under international law and immoral. The U.S. government gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid, allowing these policies to continue. There's nothing wrong with giving aid to Israel, but our country must stop aiding this illegal occupation.

If you agree, call our senators and let them know. Every time a Congressperson hears from a constituent, he or she assumes that 10 more constituents feel the same way but simply haven't spoken up. Small steps like those are part of the path to peace.

Ryan Sweeney is a German studies graduate student.

---

© Copyright 2007 Daily 49er

Israeli army veterans show dark side of occupation: a must read

FEATURE
20 Mar 2007 07:04:00 GMT
Israeli army veterans show dark side of occupation
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

HEBRON, West Bank, March 20 (Reuters) -- Disenchanted Israeli army veterans have turned into guides to one of the bleakest places on the West Bank, the Israeli-held part of Hebron, to highlight what they say is the ugly face of occupation most Israelis never see.

Over the past 20 months, former soldiers have led some 2,500 people, in small groups of around a dozen, mostly Israelis, on grim show-and-tell excursions meant to explain the brutalising effect of daily routine in an occupied city.

Stops on the tours include the positions from where former squad commander Yehuda Shaul says he fired his grenade machinegun, night after night, into a densely populated neighbourhood from where Palestinians, night after night, fired on Jewish settlements.

"A grenade machine gun is an awesome weapon, but it is inaccurate," he says. "The grenades kill everything within a radius of eight metres, injure anyone within a radius of 16. So, at first you worry about hitting innocent civilians. After a while, you shrug off the worries and get used to it. In the end, you look forward to blasting away."

Burly, bearded and from an ultra-orthodox background, the 24-year-old Shaul was one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, a group of former soldiers who shocked Israel in 2004 with an exhibition of photographs and video testimony on harassment and abuse of Palestinians.

The exhibition, which ran for weeks in Tel Aviv and was briefly on display at the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) spawned the tours of Hebron, where many of the soldiers in the group served during the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising.

More than 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis have died in the intifada, which saw a sharp increase in Palestinian suicide bombings and hardened the mental wall between Israelis and Palestinians.

ERODING MORAL VALUES

"The tours have two goals," said Shaul. "Show the effect the occupation has on the occupied AND on the occupiers, the way it disrupts Palestinian life and the way it erodes the moral values of Israeli soldiers.

"The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) blames excesses, when they come to light, on 'rotten apples'. But few soldiers end their West Bank tours with entirely clean hands. Israeli society prefers to keep silent about this."

Shaul spoke as he walked through the eerily quiet, deserted old city of Hebron, past shuttered shops and graffiti painted by some of the 650 Jews who live in four settlements in H2, the official name of the sector under Israeli control under a 1997 accord that effectively divided the city.

H2 takes up about a fifth of the area of Hebron and embraces what used to the bustling market of the Old City, the wholesale market, and Shuhada street, the main commercial artery in the days when 30,000 Palestinians and 500 Jews shared the area. Shuhada is now a "sterile street," where Palestinians are not allowed to walk.

H1, the rest of Hebron, is home to 150,000 Palestinians, few of whom ever cross the checkpoints that control movement between the two parts of the city.

"Kill the Arabs," says one slogan on a wall in the old market. "Arabs In", says another, over an arrow pointing to a garbage dump.

Shaul served 14 months of his three-year service in Hebron and says he began having doubts over the justness of what he was doing shortly before returning to civilian life. He began talking to other soldiers and found they had similar misgivings.

"This is how Breaking the Silence was formed. Since then, more than 400 soldiers have come forward and given video testimony of their experiences, evidence that the occupation is not the black-and-white story most Israelis think it is."

"REVENGE FOR 1929"

But in the black-and-white world of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides cite dates in Hebron's long history to bolster their views. For the settlers, a day of Palestinian infamy is August 23, 1929, when mobs killed 67 Jewish men, women and children and drove the rest of the community out of the city.

Shaul recalls an incident which added to his growing doubts -- young settler girls throwing stones at an elderly Palestinian woman, bent low by the weight of baskets she was carrying. He asked the girls what they were doing. "Revenge," said one. "For 1929."

For Hebron Palestinians, the date that best illustrates the mindset of the settlers is February 25, 1994, the day Brooklyn-born Baruch Goldstein used his army-issue Galil assault rifle to kill 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Jews, Moslems and Christians.

The attack drew harsh condemnation from the Israeli government but, Hebron Palestinians point out, it backfired on the victims: to keep the two communities apart, the army closed Shuhada Street and the wholesale market next to the Avaraham Avinu settlement.

It is a compound of low, grey buildings and few Palestinians remained in their vicinity. The house of one who did, Hashem al-Azzeh, often serves as the last stop of Breaking the Silence's city tours. Al-Azzeh is not a loquacious man and prefers to convey his points through home-made videos.

One shows a throng of settlers invading his home (while he was absent), the other is of settlers stoning Palestinian school girls as Israeli soldiers watch.

"Israelis usually are really shocked when they see this," he says. "We are not."

(Editing by Sara Ledwith; email:bernd.debusmann@reuters.com)

Israeli army veterans show dark side of occupation: a must read

FEATURE
20 Mar 2007 07:04:00 GMT
Israeli army veterans show dark side of occupation
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

HEBRON, West Bank, March 20 (Reuters) -- Disenchanted Israeli army veterans have turned into guides to one of the bleakest places on the West Bank, the Israeli-held part of Hebron, to highlight what they say is the ugly face of occupation most Israelis never see.

Over the past 20 months, former soldiers have led some 2,500 people, in small groups of around a dozen, mostly Israelis, on grim show-and-tell excursions meant to explain the brutalising effect of daily routine in an occupied city.

Stops on the tours include the positions from where former squad commander Yehuda Shaul says he fired his grenade machinegun, night after night, into a densely populated neighbourhood from where Palestinians, night after night, fired on Jewish settlements.

"A grenade machine gun is an awesome weapon, but it is inaccurate," he says. "The grenades kill everything within a radius of eight metres, injure anyone within a radius of 16. So, at first you worry about hitting innocent civilians. After a while, you shrug off the worries and get used to it. In the end, you look forward to blasting away."

Burly, bearded and from an ultra-orthodox background, the 24-year-old Shaul was one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, a group of former soldiers who shocked Israel in 2004 with an exhibition of photographs and video testimony on harassment and abuse of Palestinians.

The exhibition, which ran for weeks in Tel Aviv and was briefly on display at the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) spawned the tours of Hebron, where many of the soldiers in the group served during the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising.

More than 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis have died in the intifada, which saw a sharp increase in Palestinian suicide bombings and hardened the mental wall between Israelis and Palestinians.

ERODING MORAL VALUES

"The tours have two goals," said Shaul. "Show the effect the occupation has on the occupied AND on the occupiers, the way it disrupts Palestinian life and the way it erodes the moral values of Israeli soldiers.

"The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) blames excesses, when they come to light, on 'rotten apples'. But few soldiers end their West Bank tours with entirely clean hands. Israeli society prefers to keep silent about this."

Shaul spoke as he walked through the eerily quiet, deserted old city of Hebron, past shuttered shops and graffiti painted by some of the 650 Jews who live in four settlements in H2, the official name of the sector under Israeli control under a 1997 accord that effectively divided the city.

H2 takes up about a fifth of the area of Hebron and embraces what used to the bustling market of the Old City, the wholesale market, and Shuhada street, the main commercial artery in the days when 30,000 Palestinians and 500 Jews shared the area. Shuhada is now a "sterile street," where Palestinians are not allowed to walk.

H1, the rest of Hebron, is home to 150,000 Palestinians, few of whom ever cross the checkpoints that control movement between the two parts of the city.

"Kill the Arabs," says one slogan on a wall in the old market. "Arabs In", says another, over an arrow pointing to a garbage dump.

Shaul served 14 months of his three-year service in Hebron and says he began having doubts over the justness of what he was doing shortly before returning to civilian life. He began talking to other soldiers and found they had similar misgivings.

"This is how Breaking the Silence was formed. Since then, more than 400 soldiers have come forward and given video testimony of their experiences, evidence that the occupation is not the black-and-white story most Israelis think it is."

"REVENGE FOR 1929"

But in the black-and-white world of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides cite dates in Hebron's long history to bolster their views. For the settlers, a day of Palestinian infamy is August 23, 1929, when mobs killed 67 Jewish men, women and children and drove the rest of the community out of the city.

Shaul recalls an incident which added to his growing doubts -- young settler girls throwing stones at an elderly Palestinian woman, bent low by the weight of baskets she was carrying. He asked the girls what they were doing. "Revenge," said one. "For 1929."

For Hebron Palestinians, the date that best illustrates the mindset of the settlers is February 25, 1994, the day Brooklyn-born Baruch Goldstein used his army-issue Galil assault rifle to kill 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Jews, Moslems and Christians.

The attack drew harsh condemnation from the Israeli government but, Hebron Palestinians point out, it backfired on the victims: to keep the two communities apart, the army closed Shuhada Street and the wholesale market next to the Avaraham Avinu settlement.

It is a compound of low, grey buildings and few Palestinians remained in their vicinity. The house of one who did, Hashem al-Azzeh, often serves as the last stop of Breaking the Silence's city tours. Al-Azzeh is not a loquacious man and prefers to convey his points through home-made videos.

One shows a throng of settlers invading his home (while he was absent), the other is of settlers stoning Palestinian school girls as Israeli soldiers watch.

"Israelis usually are really shocked when they see this," he says. "We are not."

(Editing by Sara Ledwith; email:bernd.debusmann@reuters.com)

Years of Strife and Lost Hope Scar Young Palestinians

Published Monday, March 12, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007

STEVEN ERLANGER

A Palestinian youth threw stones at Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, West Bank, last week. Parents fear that the atmosphere of despair has destroyed their children's sense of hope. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

The current generation of young Palestinians, many say, is the most radical, the most accepting of violence and the most despairing.

NABLUS, West Bank — Their worried parents call them the lost generation of Palestine: its most radical, most accepting of violence and most despairing.

They are the children of the second intifada that began in 2000, growing up in a territory riven by infighting, seared by violence, occupied by Israel, largely cut off from the world and segmented by barriers and checkpoints.

To hear these young people talk is to listen in on budding nihilism and a loss of hope.

“Ever since we were little, we see guns and tanks, and little kids wanting little guns to fight against Israel,” said Raed Debie, 24, a student at An Najah University here.

Issa Khalil, 25, broke in, agitated. “We never see anything good in our lives,” he said. He was arrested for throwing stones in the first intifada, the civil disobedience that began in the late 1980s and led to the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel. He was arrested again in the second uprising as the agreement faltered.

“And for what?” he asked. “I wasted 14 years of my life. We all did. For five years I haven’t left Nablus. Here there’s unemployment and no peace; it retreats, we go backward.”

While generations of young Palestinians have grown up stateless, seething at Israel as the visible agent of oppression, this generation is uniquely stymied.

Israeli checkpoints, barriers and closures, installed to protect Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers, have lowered these young people’s horizons, shrunk their notion of Palestine and taken away virtually any informal interaction with outsiders, let alone with ordinary Israelis. The security measures have become even tighter since the election to power a year ago of the Islamist group Hamas, which preaches eternal “resistance” to Israeli occupation and rejects Israel’s right to permanent existence on this land.

During most of the 1980s and ’90s, as many as 150,000 Palestinians came into Israel daily to work, study and shop. While they were not treated as equals, many learned Hebrew and established relationships.

Now, the only Israelis whom Palestinians see are armed — soldiers and settlers. The West Bank is cut into three parts by checkpoints; Gazan men under 30 are virtually unable to leave their tiny, poor and overcrowded territory. Few talk of peace, only of a lifetime of “resistance.”

Many Israelis agree that the current generation of young Palestinians has been thoroughly radicalized, but say that is the product of Palestinian political and religious leaders who have sanctioned and promoted violence and terrorism against Israel.

The Palestinian territories are an overwhelmingly youthful place — 56.4 percent of Palestinians are under 19, and in Gaza, 75.6 percent of the population is under 30, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Opinion polls show a generation more supportive of armed struggle and terrorism than their parents, according to Waleed Ladadweh of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. The violence is directed not only toward Israel, but also toward one another.

“We’re pushed all the time to be more political, more militant, more religious, more extreme,” said Shadi el-Haj, a 20-year-old student at An Najah. “We want to be Palestinians, like the generation of the first intifada. But people push you, ‘Are you Fatah or Hamas?’ All our problems start with, ‘I’m Fatah, I’m Hamas.’ It wasn’t like that before.”

During the first intifada the young were a symbol of the struggle for statehood, leaders of a popular uprising. But in the brutal struggle of the second intifada, which has been taken over by the militias, many of them controlled from leaders outside the territories, “now the youth are irrelevant,” said Nader Said, a political scientist at Birzeit University in Ramallah.

More importantly, this generation has lost faith in political solutions. “They haven’t lived one moment in a period of real hope for a real state,” he said. “And with this internal fighting, there is more and more a feeling that we don’t deserve a state, that we’re inadequate, which kills the morale of the young.”

Some 58 percent of those under 30, the center’s polls show, expect a more violent struggle with Israel over the next 5 to 10 years, and only 22 percent believe that there will be a peaceful negotiated solution between Israel and the Palestinians. About 48 percent believe such an agreement is impossible, and 20 percent more believe it will only come “in a few generations.”

There are no comparable polling figures from the late 1980s, when the first intifada broke out. But in 2000, according to polling done by the center, only 32 percent of Palestinians 18 to 30 believed there would be conflict and violence with Israel in the next five to 10 years. About 21 percent thought there would be more peace, while 16 percent thought there would be less. Those older than 30 expected more peace and less conflict.

In 2000 only 7 percent of all Palestinians (and only 6 percent of those 18 to 30) identified themselves as favoring Hamas. Forty-six percent (and 47 percent of those 18 to 30) favored Fatah. But today, even after a difficult year of Hamas rule, the two factions are roughly equal. Among those 18 to 30, the spread is wider, with 36 percent favoring Fatah and 27 percent Hamas.

Zakariya Zubeidi grew up imbued with what he sees as the heroism of the first intifada, built on the conviction that sacrifice was bringing a state and a better future. Now he runs Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the tough town of Jenin and is wanted for carrying out attacks against Israelis.

“It was always our choice to be fuel for the struggle,” he said. “But our problem now is that the car burns the youth as fuel but doesn’t move. There’s a problem in the engine, in the head. These kids are willing to be fuel, but many have been burned as waste.”

Mr. Zubeidi was a hero of the first intifada. “When I was younger I thought, ‘if I die, that’s natural, it’s for a cause,’ ” he said. “And today I think differently. To die? For what? For these people who can’t agree? That’s what this generation fears. It’s lost, and its sacrifices are meaningless. Is the Palestinian dream dying? In these circumstances, yes.”

The Youngest Ones

In Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, in an apartment along the rutted main road unpaved after the halt of American aid to the Palestinian Authority, Najwa and Taher el-Assar brood about their three children, Mustafa, 6, Ahmed, 5, and newborn Salma.

“The boys have become so violent in the way they think,” Mrs. Assar said. “In a way, they’re no longer children.” She described how she and her husband watched the news last summer of the shelling on a Gaza beach that left a family dead, a tragedy Israel denied causing but could not explain. “I feel that time stopped,” she said. “And then days later, Mustafa says, ‘I want to be fat, Mommy.’ And why? ‘Because I want to put on a suicide belt and not have the Israelis see it,’ he said.

“I was shocked,” Mrs. Assar said. “But it’s in the news, the environment, the sound of the Apaches and the F-16s and the cannons. It all affects them, and they get nervous. Ahmed is very violent with his brother. He has no patience, he doesn’t like to share, and I have to watch him all the time.”

For the Id al-Fitr festival, the boys asked for toy Kalashnikovs and Uzis, and they know all about the crude rockets, the Qassams, that militants fire into southern Israel. “They classify the weapons, they want a particular gun,” Mrs. Assar said. “And when you think of the violence, and what future will we have here? It will be a very violent future.”

Mr. Assar broke in. “The world is moving ahead, and we’re moving backward,” he said. “We’re back to 1948.”

Mrs. Assar said softly: “I feel there is no way I can protect them or hide them. Normally people are happy with a new baby, but when I delivered Salma I thought, ‘Oh my God, a third child in this life.’ It haunts me — I think, ‘What if? What if? What if a rocket hits the house? What if the Israelis have another “accident”? What if Mustafa is 19 and attracted to a group of militants and I don’t know, and I hear on TV that this person went to Israel and exploded himself?’ You live with this, ‘What if?’ But there’s no inner peace. You get so nervous you want to scream!”

Her husband said: “We can’t give them security and safety. They can’t live as normal children. When a kid realizes a parent can’t supply security and safety, what is the point of these parents?”

Mrs. Assar said: “They understand our anxieties, even when we’re silent.” She tries to explain Israeli sonic booms to the boys as the flatulence of a plane that eats too much, she said. “Yet I become more scared than they do. And they feel it. I hug them to comfort them and I’m the one taking comfort from them!”

Mustafa and Ahmed played with new umbrellas, one printed with Disney characters and one with cats and dogs. They ran in and out of the sitting room.

Then they came in, conspiratorial. Watch, they insisted, then pressed the buttons on the umbrellas, which expanded suddenly and flew into the air. “Qassams!” they shouted gleefully. “Qassams!”

The Hothouse of Gaza

In another part of the refugee camp, four black-clad fighters gathered in self-conscious secrecy, members of the Abu Rish brigades, a militant Gazan offshoot of Fatah that opposed the Oslo accords with Israel and has moved closer to Hamas.

Raed, 30, was arrested in the first intifada, when he was 16. He felt a hero at the time, but the political result, the 1993 Oslo accords, “were useless and benefited Israel,” he said. “No one can resist with stones or build a nation without violence.”

Like his comrades, he says he is fighting for the future of his own children, but he has small hopes for them, and large fears. “Hamas and Fatah are so divided, the goal of Palestine disappears,” he said. “I talk about willing my children to be martyrs for Allah, but I honestly wish for them to be safe and healthy, that’s all.”

There is bravado there, but also frustration. None of the fighters, who agreed to talk if their last names were not published, believes a Palestinian state will be established; none can imagine living next to Israel. All of them want to leave and start again, somewhere.

Gaza is a poor, chaotic place of 1.5 million people, 70 percent of them refugees or their descendants. Younger, more conservative and more religious than the West Bank, Gaza is the heartland of Hamas, and the people of Gaza are even more constrained by Israeli and Egyptian security restrictions on their travel. There are fewer jobs than in the West Bank, and even more weapons.

With the economy of Gaza shutting down, much of the work available for young people is either in the swollen and disorganized security forces or in the armed militias or gangs, many of them built on clan loyalties, and some of which engage more in racketeering than in fighting. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with considerable financial help from Iran and Syria, are known at least to pay their people, even if Hamas cannot pay full salaries to all Palestinian Authority employees.

Hassan, 21, ran out of money before finishing university, but cannot imagine what he would do in Gaza with a degree. “I look at the graduates here, and their diplomas are useless,” he said. “That’s why I’m in the resistance.”

According to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, about 19 percent of those killed since 2000 have been 18 or under, whether in fighting against the Israelis or among Palestinian factions.

Mirvat Massoud was 18, the first child in her family to go to university, when she decided last November to blow herself up. The Israeli Army had taken over Beit Hanun, in northern Gaza, and was interrogating its inhabitants, looking for weapons, militants and those who fire Qassam rockets into Israel.

Inspired by a 2004 suicide attack carried out in Israel, by her cousin Nabil on behalf of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Mirvat volunteered to become a suicide bomber. She was close to Nabil, who had lived upstairs in the Jabaliya refugee camp and was only a year older. The brigades declined her offer, however, saying that one young “martyr” in a family was enough. They told her father, Amin Massoud, a longtime Fatah member, who said he was shocked.

“I spoke to her of course,” said Mr. Massoud, agitated, moving his hands through the empty air. “I said, ‘Your education will be jihad. Going to school is jihad. If you become a doctor, that’s jihad.’ But I don’t know what drove her — too much faith inside her, I don’t know.”

But the wall above Mirvat’s desk is still covered with “martyr posters” from the dead of Jabaliya camp, and her parents knew she was becoming more religious and political. She was enraged by reports of a van of schoolchildren hit by shrapnel in Beit Hanun, and she slipped away. She volunteered again, successfully this time, for Islamic Jihad. She died, slightly wounding two Israelis.

Far to the north, in Jenin, Suhaila Badawi, 20, knows every detail of Mirvat’s story. She sees Mirvat both as familiar and as a model, a symbol of bravery for young Palestinian women and a tragedy, too.

“I wouldn’t commit such an act, but I understand her completely and I admire her,” Ms. Badawi said about the suicide attack. “She was a Palestinian like me. I don’t think she was misled.”

Khader Fayyad, 46, lives in Beit Hanun and works as an ambulance driver for the Palestinian Red Crescent, dispatched to every horror.

“I call these kids the destroyed generation,” Mr. Fayyad said. “Nobody pays attention to this generation, except to recruit them, and it’s very dangerous.”

He is proud of 16-year-old Ayman, the brightest of his sons. But he feels unable to provide him a valuable future.

Mr. Fayyad’s own father died when he was 17. But it was a different time, he said — the peace talks, the Oslo accords, the return of responsibility to Palestinians over their lives, Camp David. “We were exposed to the world, to politics, and yes, to Israelis,” he said.

“Resistance and politics must go together,” he said. “Yasir Arafat knew how to use one for the other. Now, there is no politics, no talks, so the sacrifices of the youth are wasted and empty.”

Ayman, however, like most members of his generation, cannot imagine living in peace next to an Israel that has ripped up his town, or becoming friends with an Israeli who has rolled over his schoolyard in a tank.

“Israel should leave this land,” he said angrily, then repeats what he has been taught, that all of historic Palestine belongs to Muslims.

“The Jews should go back to where they came from, to Europe, Russia and America,” he said. “They have no place here.”

Israel breaks all its agreements, Ayman says. “How can you make peace with them?” he asks. “Even the Koran says there will be war with them until the day of judgment.”

Yet Mr. Fayyad has not given up all hope. He says he believes that this generation is still malleable, immature. “You can influence them through realistic solutions,” he said. “If you delivered a real, two-state solution, believe me, they would go into the streets and dance. But if nothing changes, believe me also, they are lost — lost to all of us.”

Leaving

Where young Palestinians once dreamed of staying to build a new state, now many are giving up and scheming to get out.

Moayyed Haj Hussein is 22, educated and well spoken. But after he failed to find a job in six months, his mother pressed his brother-in-law to give him work in a coffee shop near the Hawara checkpoint, which the Israeli Army uses to control who comes in and out of Nablus.

The Assanabel cafe is a simple place, offering decent Turkish coffee, mint tea, schwarma and sweets to the Palestinians who wait for hours to get through the checkpoint. For Mr. Hussein, the cafe has become a kind of soft prison, giving him some spending money but no prospect for a future.

He graduated with a degree in computer sciences seven months ago from An Najah in Nablus, where he lives. But he sleeps here in Hawara because as a male under 30 with a Nablus ID card, it is very difficult to get permission to exit the city to the south.

Mr. Hussein says he has never spoken to an ordinary Israeli. “The only Israelis I see here are either settlers or soldiers,” he said. “They all have guns.”

He hates waiting on people and washing dishes, and says he is still looking for a decent job. But he is also looking to get out — to the United States, if possible, where his sister lives, but “almost any place,” he said, “where I can work and live a normal life.”

He is a Palestinian patriot, he insists. “But there’s no hope here,” he said. “You see the situation. It’s useless to think it will improve. You see it; it just gets worse.”

According to Nader Said’s polls for Birzeit University, 35 percent of Palestinians over the age of 18 want to emigrate. Nearly 50 percent of those between 18 and 30 would leave if they could, said Mr. Said.

“That’s a huge indicator,” he said. “In the worst of times here, when Israeli troops were everywhere, the figure in the population was less than 20 percent.”

Palestinians talk about how they seem to be welcome in Cuba or China, now that it is hard for them to gain permission to go work in the Persian Gulf or Jordan. Others say it is possible upon arrival in some European countries to ask for humanitarian asylum. But first they need a visa to get there.

Some travel agents in Gaza sell fictitious invitations from foreign hosts in Cuba, China and elsewhere, along with fake visas and hotel bookings to go along with real and expensive air tickets through Cairo.

Even the young fighters of the Abu Rish brigade have tried to leave. Muhammad and Saado, both 27, sold their weapons, took bank loans and paid $2,000 for visas and tickets from Cairo to Beijing on Austrian Airlines. They made it out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, but the Egyptians put them on a bus, locked the door and drove straight to the airport. For the four days before their departure, they said, the Egyptians then locked them into a crammed airport waiting room.

“A dog wouldn’t use the toilet,” Muhammad said. “They charged us 150 Egyptian pounds a day ($26.30) to use a seat, even the little kids. One Egyptian said, ‘Even a dead body has to pay.’ ” They bribed guards to bring them food and water.

The day of their flight, a Friday, they were brought to the departure hall. But an airlines security guard examined their documents and turned them away. Presumably, the visas were fake. “He looked at us as if we were evil,” Saado said. “There was no respect for us. I hate the Israelis, but I hate the Egyptians more.”

They were returned to the fetid waiting room, and a day later, when there was a busload, they were shipped back, first to El Arish. There they waited for days in an even more disgusting detention area, they said, until the Rafah crossing opened.

“When we finally got back to Gaza, I kissed the soil,” Muhammad said, laughing at his humiliation. “We said, ‘Gaza is paradise!’ ”

In his own quest to leave, Mr. Hussein, the cafe worker, has contacted the American Consulate in East Jerusalem. But, he said, “I can’t get a permit to go to Jerusalem to make an application.”

What about those who would accuse you of giving up your rights in your land?

Mr. Hussein turned away. “I don’t care,” he finally said. “I want to live happily.”

Palestinian Christians fleeing Israel as pressures mount

Misery tempts Palestinian Christians to flee

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent Mon Mar 12, 7:57 AM ET

Despairing of life under Israeli occupation, many Palestinian Christians are moving abroad, threatening their ancient links to Bethlehem and the land where Jesus was born.

"There is a real fear that 50 years down the road, the Holy Land will be without Christians," said Mitri Raheb, 45-year-old pastor of the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem.

Pressures on majority Muslims are just as daunting -- and many of them also leave -- but dwindling Christian communities look more precarious as the young and dynamic pull up roots.

Christians have migrated from Bethlehem and nearby Beit Jala and Beit Sahour for over a century, mainly to Latin America, the United States and Canada, to escape successive wars and crises.

Bethlehem governor Salah al-Tamari said there was no way of tracking accurately how many Christians and Muslims had left since the eruption of Israeli-Palestinian violence in 2000.

"There is no business, no freedom of movement," he said. "We depend on tourism, which is being demolished. Sometimes we receive 1,500 tourists a day but none of them stay the night. They visit the Nativity Church and leave, so we don't benefit."

A towering concrete wall is closing in on Bethlehem as part of a barrier that Israel is erecting, which it calls a defense against suicide bombers from the occupied West Bank. Much of it has been built on Palestinian land.

"Once it's finished there will be only three gates leading in and out of Bethlehem," said Raheb. "Bethlehem will basically be a four-square-mile (10-square-km) open prison."

"This wall has separated many people from each other," said Hiyam Abu Dayyeh, a Christian social worker. "What kind of life is this if you can't feel free or move in your own country?"

PRESSURE CAULDRON

Now unemployed, she hopes to leave Beit Jala for Germany, which she visited often when she was working for the church.

"Many people are without work and without hope," she said. "People are completely exhausted. If it stays like this, Palestine will be a big psychiatric hospital."

About 50,000 Christians live in the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war -- east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Another 110,00 reside in Israel.

The aid-dependent Palestinian economy took a devastating hit when international donors decided to boycott a Hamas government formed after the Islamists won an election in January 2006.

Violent infighting between Hamas and the once-dominant Fatah faction has driven Palestinians closer to breaking point.

Two-thirds of the population now live in poverty, according to the British charity Oxfam, with more than half unable to meet their families' daily food requirements without assistance.

Palestinian Christians are generally better off than other segments of society, but they too have felt the pinch.

"We used to be six people working in the restaurant and we were always busy. Now we are two and we sit here doing nothing," said Maher Rabie, who runs a small pizzeria in Beit Jala.

He took a loss of 30,000 shekels ($7,000) last year to keep it open. He says he might return to the United States, where he lived for 12 years, if the summer does not bring better times.

"Actually we don't have an economy any more. It's finished," he said. "The last five years were hell on earth. Sometimes we say if we go to hell in future, we already know what it's like."

Rabie and his wife Rania have three boys in school aged 8, 14 and 16. "We think of what kind of future we can provide for them if this situation persists," the 47-year-old father said.

LOSS OF HOPE

Christian leaders say they face no religious persecution from the Palestinian Muslim majority or from Israel.

Bernard Sabella, a Palestinian sociologist at Bethlehem University, estimates that 50 to 75 Christian families a year are leaving Jerusalem or the West Bank for new lives abroad, down from a peak of 200 to 250 families in 2002 and 2003.

He said most cited similar motives to Muslim migrants -- political conditions, unemployment and lawlessness, although discomfort with rising Muslim militancy was a factor for some.

"As Christians we want to be part of this society," he said, pointing to the cultural richness, variety and ancient roots of the church communities living in the cradle of Christianity.

The median age of Palestinian Christians is now 37, against 19 in the general population. "If our young people leave, we are in a disaster," Sabella said.

Many Christians have languages, educational skills, money and family links abroad -- factors that make migration easier. But church leaders want to anchor them in their homeland.

"We are asking the world to help Palestinian Christians stay in their country," said Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan, pleading for assistance with education, job creation and housing and with Christian institutions that could serve Palestinians in general.

Christian entrepreneurs who returned from lives in exile in the 1990s -- when it seemed that the Oslo interim accords with Israel might bring peace, prosperity and Palestinian statehood -- are now losing hope.

"It's getting tougher and tougher every day," said Elias Samaan, a 45-year-old who set up a carpentry business after moving to Beit Jala from the United States in 1992.

"We're really thinking about leaving again, leaving everything -- our house, our work, our business, our land."

Israel plans to build a colonial settlement near the Qalanida checkpoint

Related

Israeli occupation forces invade the Al Far'a refugee camp

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Israel plans to build a settlement neighborhood near Qalanida checkpoint
Thursday March 01, 2007 02:07
by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

The 'Arabs48' news website published an article based on a report by an Israeli newspaper on Wednesday morning, stating that the Israeli Government is preparing a plan to construct a new settlement neighborhood that includes 11,000 settlement housing units, near Qalanida checkpoint north of Jerusalem.

The plan includes digging a tunnel under Kufur Aqib Arab neighborhood in order to link the new settlement neighborhood with the Eastern Settlement Bloc which remained on the other side of the Annexation Wall.

The Arabs48 said that if this plan is carried out, it will be the largest settlement construction plan in that area since Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967.

Meanwhile, Israeli sources reported that the plan was welcomed by the Jerusalem Municipality, but is not yet officially approved.

The Municipality said that it will examine the plan when it is officially submitted to it. The Israeli Housing Ministry said that it had no information regarding this project.

The Annexation Wall section in Qalandia, separating the Palestinian neighborhoods in north Jerusalem from the neighborhoods in Ramallah is expected to be finalized soon. This area is one of the most densely populated areas in the West Bank.

The new settlement neighborhood is planned to be linked with Kokhav Jacob settlement, east of Jerusalem. The planned tunnel is intended to shorten the distance between the Beit El settlement Bloc and Jerusalem.

saed at imemc dot org

Israel is guilty of occupation, apartheid and colonialism, top UN lawyer reports

Israel is guilty of occupation, apartheid and colonialism, top UN lawyer reports

Date: 26 / 02 / 2007 Time: 21:33

Israeli soldiers fire at Palestinian youths, demonstrating at Qalandiya checkpoint, 9 Feb 2007 (MaanImages) Bethlehem - Ma'an - The UN's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, John Dugard, has issued a harshly critical report on Israel's human rights record in regards to its treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. "The international community, speaking through the United Nations, has identified three regimes as inimical to human rights - colonialism, apartheid and foreign occupation," Dugard says. In his 24-page report, which will be presented to the United Nations General Assembly for debate on 15 March 2006, the South African lawyer accuses Israel of all three. Occupation Israel is clearly guilty of occupying another nation. Dugard also refutes Israel's claim that, since its 'disengagement' in 2005, it is no longer occupying the Gaza Strip. Israel controls all the borders, air space and sea space surrounding the Strip, in addition to carrying out numerous military incursions and air strikes into the Strip, thereby continuing to be the occupying power. Apartheid Furthermore, Dugard says Israel's discriminatory practises towards Palestinians amount to apartheid. He says in his report: "Discrimination against Palestinians occurs in many fields. Moreover, the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid appears to be violated by many practices, particularly those denying freedom of movement to Palestinians." Dugard harshly criticises Israel's system of checkpoints and barriers across the occupied West Bank, which makes freedom of movement and trade impossible. In particular, he criticises the arbitrary nature of the restrictions. "There is a secret list with some 180,000 names of security risks who may not pass through a checkpoint," Dugard says, "But no notice is served on such a person on this list until he arrives at a checkpoint"; this means "it is left to Palestinians to find out by trial and error whether they will be allowed to pass through a checkpoint on a particular day". As a result, "An arbitrary and capricious regime prevails." Dugard warns Israel that, "In apartheid South Africa, a similar system designed to restrict the free movement of blacks - the notorious “pass laws” - created more anger and hostility to the apartheid regime than any other measure. Israel would do well to learn from this experience." Dugard singles out Israel's illegal separation wall as one of Israel's most apartheid-like tools. He says, "It has become abundantly clear that the Wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers." In regard to Jerusalem and the wall, Dugard says: "The 75 km Wall being built in East Jerusalem is an instrument of social engineering designed to achieve the Judaization of Jerusalem by reducing the number of Palestinians in the city. The Wall is being built through Palestinian neighbourhoods, separating Palestinians from Palestinians, in a manner that cannot conceivably be justified on security grounds." Dugard depicts in particular the absurd plight of the inhabitants of Ar-Ram neighbourhood of northeast Jerusalem: "Some 60,000 people live in the suburb of Ar-Ram just outside the municipal boundary of Jerusalem. About half of the residents are Jerusalemites who left Jerusalem because of the restrictions placed on Palestinians’ building houses in the city. They are completely dependent on Jerusalem for work, education and hospitals. Yet now they are surrounded by the Wall and cut off from Jerusalem. To get to work, school or hospital they must travel a circuitous route of several kilometres and pass through the international terminal-like checkpoint at Qalandiya, and they may only do this if they have the correct permit. A journey that previously took them minutes is now extended into hours." Colonialism He also accuses Israel of carrying out illegal, colonial practises, saying, "The Occupied Palestinian Territory is the only instance of a developing country that is denied the right of self-determination and oppressed by a Western-affiliated State." He singles out the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a new form of colonialism. Furthermore, noting that Israel has appropriated agricultural land and water resources in the West Bank for its own use, Dugard says that, "This aspect of Israel’s exploitation of the West Bank appears to be a form of colonialism of the kind declared to be a denial of fundamental human rights and contrary to the Charter of the United Nations as recalled in the General Assembly’s Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples of 1960 (Resolution 1514 XV)." He suggests the case be referred to the International Court of Justice. War crimes Dugard accuses both Israeli military personnel and Palestinian militants of war crimes, pointing out that the state of Israel has the greater responsibility: "Persons responsible for committing war crimes by the firing of shells and rockets into civilian areas without any apparent military advantage should be apprehended or prosecuted. This applies to Palestinians who fire Qassam rockets into Israel; and more so to members of the IDF who have committed such crimes on a much greater scale. While individual criminal accountability is important, the responsibility of the State of Israel for the violation of peremptory norms of international law in its actions against the Palestinian people should not be overlooked." While condemning the Palestinian launching of homemade Qassam rockets into Israel, Dugard says, "Israel’s response has been grossly disproportionate and indiscriminate and resulted in the commission of multiple war crimes." As for Israel's policy of demolishing residential buildings in the Gaza Strip suspected of housing weapons, preceded by a warning issued over the telephone shortly before the air strike, Dugard describes this act as a "policy of terrorism by telephone." In regards to the Palestinians' collective act of gathering on the roof of a targeted building in a form of 'human shield', Dugard says, "Voluntary, collective action of this kind can at most be categorized as an act of civil disobedience against the occupying Power." Dugard describes the imprisonment of the Gaza Strip's 1.4 million inhabitants behind Israeli-controlled borders as "a controlled strangulation that apparently falls within the generous limits of international toleration." The UN rapporteur also describes the racist attacks carried out by some Israeli settlers against Palestinians. "Undoubtedly the most aggravated settler behaviour occurs in Hebron," Dugard says, "where Palestinian schoolchildren are assaulted and humiliated on their way to schools, shopkeepers are beaten and residents live in fear of settler terror." Dugard adds that, despite rulings by Israel's High Court of Justice that it is the duty of the Israeli military to protect Palestinian farmers from settlers, "there is still evidence that the IDF turns a blind eye to settler violence and, on occasion, collaborates with the settlers in harassing and humiliating Palestinians." In regards to Israel's policy of extrajudicial killing, or targeted assassinations, of 'terrorists' wanted by the state of Israel, Dugard describes this practise as "the death penalty on a wide scale through the back door ". Palestine, a test for the West Dugard concludes that the case of human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory has come to resemble a 'test' for the West, by which its commitment to human rights is to be judged. He recognises that numerous other nations in the developing world suppress human rights, but Israel is the only "Western-affiliated regime" allowed to get away with it. Dugard warns, "If the West fails this test, it can hardly expect the developing world to address human rights violations seriously in its own countries, and the West appears to be failing this test."

Occupation

An Israeli recently arrives at London's Heathrow airport.

As he fills out a form, the customs officer asks him: "Occupation?"

The Israeli promptly replies: "No, just visiting."

HARRY POTTER has called on fellow Jews to stand up to Israel and fight to end the occupation of Palestine

MARGOLYES CAMPAIGNS FOR PALESTINIAN JUSTICE


HARRY POTTER star MIRIAM MARGOLYES has called on fellow Jews to stand up to Israel and fight to end the occupation of Palestine. The 65-year-old officially launched the Enough! campaign in London today (30JAN07) to campaign for Palestinian justice, and a series of major events are already planned later this year (07) to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. She says, "I am a Jew and I want Palestinians to know that not all Jews are from the cruel branch of Zionism which they've had to experience over the past 40 years. "The Jews are supposed to be bright people but my God, they are making mistakes. The policy of this government is disgraceful. Forty years is too long - let's stop it right now." Enough! already has celebrity support from British actresses EMMA THOMPSON and ZOE WANAMAKER, as well as director MIKE LEIGH.

30/01/2007 17:35

Also see:
HARRY POTTER
MIRIAM MARGOLYES

Palestinian Children Under Israeli Occupation

Israeli soldier searches a Palestinian child in the center of Hebron (Reuter 20 Nov. 2005)

Bethlehem -- Palestinian man arrested, handcuffed, and blindfolded while his two children are watching. (AFP, Al-Quds newspaper, 21 July 2005)

As Palestinians start a new school year, curfews, roadblocks,

and closures are making it difficult and, in some cases,

prevent students and teachers from reaching their schools

A Palestinian man escorting his two children to school in Ramallah

An Israeli soldier shows a victory sign to a member of the official international observer group

Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), as he detains

a Palestinian student in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Palestinian teachers held for two hours by Israeli soldiers

at the Hawara checkpoint on their way to schools in the area

45,000 teachers have problems getting to school

Schoolgirls stand in front of their closed school after the Israeli army

re-imposed curfew in the West Bank city of Nablus

Six-year-old Palestinian boy Mahmoud Abu Mayialeh holds a

Palestinian flag on the first day of the 2002-2003 school year in Hebron

Student raises the Palestinian flag marking the first day at the

Ramallah Girls High School in Ramallah

Schoolboys run to see bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers

before the funeral in the West Bank village of Shioukh near Hebron

Schoolgirls in their classroom in Ramallah

Pupils from the El Khahira Primary School crowd into a private minibus

at the end of the first day of school in Gaza City

School teacher from Nablus is helped after she collapsed in the heat

after a two-hour wait at the Hawara checkpoint on her way to schools in the area

Palestinian schoolgirls running away after Israeli soldiers threw tear gas near their school

An Israeli soldier questioning Palestinian schoolgirls during a curfew

School children run in front of an Israeli soldier in Hebron near a military

check-point during a curfew in Hebron, September 29, 2002

Schoolboys run to take cover while an Israeli armored personnel carrier opens fire

while blocking the road at Beit Lahia, Gaza, Sept 5, 2002

Wounded schoolboy is carried into Shifa hospital in Gaza City after

Israeli missile attack on a security building in Gaza, Tuesday Dec. 4, 2001

Israeli soldier questions a mother and her children

on their way from school at Qalandiya checkpoint

Little Samir's school bag being searched by Israeli soldiers

at Qalandiya checkpoint

Young school girls detained by an Israeli soldier