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Scottish Friends of Palestine
Briefing Paper
January 2012
As well as enjoying absolute impunity, regarding ongoing and historic crimes, Israel has recently enacted further legislation to shield itself from scrutiny. In July 2011, it passed the anti-democratic Boycott Law which prohibits its citizens from boycotting the State’s colonial and apartheid practices and subjects them to civil suits by its settler population, with no necessity for the settlers to prove that damage was actually done.
In the face of mounting violations in a context of tumultuous changes, the US insists upon tired remedies, namely a peace process devoid of reference to international law, which serves only to give more time to Israel to continue its expansion.
Editorial al Majdal issue 46
As the siege continues Gaza’s children find sustenance in trash picking
Shaima Mustafa Islamonline.net-Gaza 2 Sept 2011
http://www.islamonline.net/cs/ContentServer/IslamOnline/IslamOnline/en/IOLArticle_C/1278409066644/1278406708816/IOLArticle_C
As the sun rises, Ahmed, 15, escorts his three siblings to landfills. There, they spend long hours searching through the trash for anything they can sell, use, or even eat. By their side, dozens of children, teens, and women are partaking in the same “activity”. This scene is not from a television series or a movie, it is a real-life scene; a scene that has repeating itself for years, especially after the siege had been imposed on Gaza. Despite the bitterness and cruelty of this scenery, it is a rather normal event for dozens of Gazan children; in their eyes, piles of trash are piles treasure.
At the tip of the landfill was Khaled, 13, who was busy searching through the trash. After repeated requests, he agreed to speak to “Islam Online”. “I search through the trash for sustenance to feed myself and my family,” he said on October 1st. Within recent years, the phenomena of trash pickers had been widespread in Gaza. They are a group of men, women, and children who search through landfills for anything they can eat, use (such as plastic and metal items), or wear. This is their livelihood
With the sounds of sorrow evident in his tone of voice, Khaled continued: “I have been living this way for two years. My father is bedridden, and my mother, who is sick, is taking care of my younger siblings at home. We have no one to take care of us. I can’t leave them to die of hunger. I had to search for sustenance no matter the source.” “I wake up early in the morning, eat of a few bites of whatever I can find, then I had out to the trash piles, where I gather anything I can use, sell, or eat.” All the metal, aluminum, and plastic items Khaled finds, he then sells of local scrap vendors. On an average hardworking day, Khaled earns approximately 40 Shekels (approximately $15).
Raji, 17, took part in the conversation by stating: “we have no other choice but to search through this trash to live and feed our families. All we want is to live like others…to have a dignified livelihood.” “There is no difference between us and the dogs and cats that surround us; we share the same objective; food. There is no other choice.”
Trash picking is even conducted by the elderly. Abu Abdullah, 50, for example did not find any other means of sustaining himself and his seven children other than engaging in trash picking. When asked of the reason he searches through landfills, Abu Abdullah stated to “Islam Online”: “I lost my job in Israel over 10 years ago…and now I can’t feeding and educating my seven children in a means other than this.” “I want to provide my children with decent food, clothing, and everything they dream of without having to beg…searching through trash is better than begging in the streets.”
Majed Sukkar, waste management manager affirmed to “Islam Online” that “the phenomenon of trash pickers is not something new, but it increased over the last several years…these people search through landfills for anything they can sell, such as metal, aluminum, and plastic items. Also, at times, these children could find clothing items that they can clean and keep for themselves.” The number of children that take up this activity are over 40 children between the ages of 6-7. This is in addition to the women and youths over the age of 20 also partaking in this activity, especially during the summer break. “There are many health risks associated with such an activity. The most prominent of which is hepatitis, respiratory diseases, and eye and skin diseases,” Sukkar affirmed.
No tears for warmonger Liam Fox
Dangerous beliefs and connections to the political underworld made him unemployable as a British minister Stuart Littlewood, Redress 17 October 2011
http://www.redress.cc/global/slittlewood20111017
"In the battle for the values that we stand for ... Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together...” Liam Fox
Britain’s defence secretary, Liam Fox, decided to jump rather than be thrown from the battlements.
While we wait – not holding our breath of course – for the Cabinet secretary's final report on the peculiar relationship between Fox and his special friend, Adam Werrity, it's worth checking what the Ministerial Code – the “Bible” Fox failed to lived by – actually expected of him. In his foreword to the Code, issued in May 2010, David Cameron wrote: "Though the British people have been disappointed in their politicians, they still expect the highest standards of conduct. We must not let them down."
The Code's first words – its General Principles – make it crystal clear that "Ministers of the Crown are expected to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety... Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or appears to arise, between their public duties and their private interests".On overseas visits the Code says ministers should satisfy themselves that they could defend their arrangements in public. Furthermore, the relevant permanent secretary’s approval must be obtained before a special adviser accompanies a minister overseas. As Werrity was not officially employed as an adviser and had no security clearance, one is left wondering why senior civil servants didn't query his frequent presence.
If there's a breach of the Code and if the prime minister, in consultation with the Cabinet secretary, feels it needs investigation, he is supposed to refer the matter to the independent adviser on ministers’ interests (Sir Philip Mawer). Enforcement, says the Code, is not the job of the Cabinet secretary. Yet the Cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, is conducting the Fox-Werrity inquiry. Why?
An article in the Guardian reveals that the government has refused to set out the terms of reference of the inquiry into Fox and to explain why the issue wasn’t referred to Mawer. It seems Mawer's website has been shut down, he hasn’t produced an annual report for two years and has conducted only one inquiry since he was appointed in 2008.
The Ministerial Code also spells out the Seven Principles of Public Life, including this one about Integrity: "Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organizations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties." On the strength of that, ordinary citizens like me expect a person accepting appointment as a Minister of the Crown to be squeaky-clean, a man of honour and an impeccable patriot. How patriotic is Liam Fox though? I ask because he’s the man who said: "In the battle for the values that we stand for ... Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together...” “The real issue here is a British defence secretary who had a parallel advice structure designed expressly to serve the interests of another state and linked to that state’s security services. That is not just a sacking offence, it is treasonable.”
He’s the man the Jewish Chronicle hailed as “a champion of Israel within the government”. He’s a man who continually rattles the sabre against Iran which, of course, is no threat to Britain but is seen by Israel as a bitter enemy – and by Fox apparently. Let us not forget that Iraq was Israel's enemy too, not ours, and look what happened. Liam Fox, according to the website They Work for You, "voted very strongly for the Iraq war". He’s also an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Afghanistan, and he’s been spoiling for a fight with Iran.
Reports says that Whitehall sources have been concerned about Fox’s “maverick” foreign policy based on the neocon agenda. Former British diplomat Craig Murray, discussing the possibility that Werrity’s strings, and therefore Fox’s, were being pulled by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, says on his blog: “The real issue here is a British defence secretary who had a parallel advice structure designed expressly to serve the interests of another state and linked to that state’s security services. That is not just a sacking offence, it is treasonable.”
For years Fox has been an Israel flag-waver at the heart of British government, a man with dangerous beliefs and demonstrably weak judgment. It is inconceivable that those who appointed him could not see that he was unemployable as a Minister of the British Crown. Unless they were similarly tainted, that is.
His parliamentary colleagues talk of Fox “finding his way back” after a decent interval. Can they be serious? The fox won’t have changed his spots or purged the stench of Zionism. Common sense says he should have his security clearance revoked and never be allowed near the levers of power again.
PS (http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/)
An interesting and insufficiently explored aspect of the Werritty scandal is the role of Matthew Gould, UK Ambassador to Israel. Gould met with Werritty and Fox at least twice, at a pre-posting briefing meeting in the MOD and at an anti-Iranian conference in Israel. It is quite probable he had many more contacts with Werritty than that. As Werritty’s financiers specifically sought to promote the interests of Israel though Werritty, and it is thought by some within the MOD and Cabinet Office that they may have been acting on behalf of Mossad, these links with Matthew Gould are crucial.
From the blog of former UK diplomat, Craig Murray
Pro-Israeli Lobby Group Made BBC, Sky News ‘Change Narrative’ On Stories
http://www.prisonplanet.com/pro-israeli-lobby-group-made-bbc-sky-news-change-narrative-on-stories.html
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com 7 Nov 2011
Ahead of a widely-expected Israeli-led attack on Iran, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, an elitist pro-Israeli lobbying firm, has been caught “briefing” the British mainstream media on how to present news items relating to Israel, bragging in a leaked email of how BBC and Sky News editors “changed their narrative” on stories after meeting with BICOM representatives.
The revelations came to light as a result of the fallout from the Liam Fox scandal. British Defence Secretary Fox was forced to resign last month after details emerged of Fox’s relationship with Adam Werritty, a front man for the now defunct Atlantic Bridge Research and Education Scheme, a lobbying group that posed as a charitable “think tank” which was designed to promote neo-conservative thinking amongst foreign policy hawks in the US and UK.
Werritty attended numerous defence meetings with Fox despite the fact that he was not employed in any official capacity by the British government. It later emerged that Werritty had plotted with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to carry out regime change in Iran and had traveled to Iran to meet with various Iranian opposition groups. Werritty’s Atlantic Bridge group received funding from BICOM via the patronage of Michael Lewis. “Bicom has been linked to Werritty, and paid for the 33-year-old’s flight and hotel bills when he attended a conference in Israel in 2009 to speak about Iran,” reported the London Guardian.
BICOM is bankrolled by billionaire Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz , ranked 18th on a list of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom. The organization has financially contributed to all three main political parties in the UK. The current CEO of the group is former Labour Member of Parliament Lorna Fitzsimons, who revealed her contempt for the democratic process when she told a conference last year, “Public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue.” Fitzsimons took over from previous BICOM chief Danny Scheck, a former high-level Israeli foreign minister.
Fitzsimons unwittingly spilled the beans on the astounding influence wielded by BICOM when she mistakenly sent an internal email to members of the press that was subsequently leaked on the Internet.
However, the shocking contents of that email have barely even been mentioned by any mainstream media source since its release. This is an eye-opening illustration of how the establishment media is fed talking points and controlled not by objective integrity, but by well-financed and agenda-driven lobby groups.
In the email, Fitzsimons reveals how BICOM officials regularly meet with editors and journalists from the BBC, Sky News and the Financial Times to ‘brief’ them on how to frame issues relating to Israel in order to ensure that, “the most objectively favourable line was taken.”
“Throughout the weekend, BICOM staff were in contact with a whole host of BBC and SKY news desks and journalists, ensuring that the most objectively favourable line was taken, and offering talking heads, relevant to the stories unfolding,” wrote Fitzsimons. “BICOM’s Senior Analyst Dr. Noam Leshem, briefed the BBC World News Editorial Board on Saturday afternoon regarding the fall-out from the Israel Egyptian Embassy siege. After contact with the BICOM Media Team, SKY News changed their narrative in explaining the prior events in the region which lead up to this weekend.” (emphasis mine)
Later in the email, Fitzsimons reveals how BICOM “had regular contact with the Editor at Large of Prospect Magazine, David Goodhart, helping to inform him about the forthcoming UN vote on Palestinian statehood.” She also notes how BICOM was able to get its talking points out via an article she wrote for the Huffington Post. Fitzsimons then boasts about how a BBC reporter was chaperoned by BICOM during a visit to Israel. “BICOM has one of BBC News’ key anchors on a bespoke delegation. When planning her very first trip to the region, Sophie Long got in touch with BICOM to see if we could help her out with meeting in the region. Sophie is now spending three days of her trip with BICOM Israel, taking a tour around the Old City, meeting Mark Regev and Dr. Alex Yacobsen, as well as visiting Ramallah and Sderot.”
Do you think it’s likely that Long’s impartiality regarding Israel was affected by the fact that she enjoyed three days of hospitality on behalf of a vehemently pro-Israeli lobby group? Does this correlate with the BBC’s taxpayer-funded mandate to provide unbiased news coverage?
Fitzsimons also reveals how she personally, “briefed Jonathan Ford, the Financial Times leader writer for his upcoming leading article in tomorrow’s paper.” Note the term that Fitzsimons uses to describe her meeting with Ford. She didn’t provide him with an ‘interview,’ nor did she give him a ‘quote’ – she “briefed” him on what to write. The wording in all these examples clearly suggests that the likes of Sky News, the BBC and the FInancial Times are subordinate to BICOM and freely dispense with any balanced objectivity to prostitute themselves as mouthpieces for this lobbying firm.
This is an outrageous admission of how powerful lobby groups, and we’d be naive to think there aren’t an army of them doing the same thing as BICOM in different fields of influence, are insidiously controlling the media agenda in the United Kingdom – particularly as it relates to Israel and Iran.
It's not that Israel is finding new ways to expel Palestinians, it's that no one cares
Israel routinely produces new ploys to counter Palestinian pleas for justice. But is anybody interested? Amira Hass Ha’aretz 14 Nov 2011
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/it-s-not-that-israel-is-finding-new-ways-to-expel-palestinians-it-s-that-no-one-cares-1.395437
The affair of the rapist president Moshe Katsav is always associated in my mind with my limitations as a journalist. And the mention of the week in which the affair became public (after July 8, 2006 ) brings to mind the Israeli expulsion bureaucracy.
How so? It was in that week that I planned to begin publishing a series of articles about a new step taken by the interior, justice and defense ministries. In league, and unbeknownst to the public, they decided to cease respecting a gentlemanly agreement with with Palestinians and their spouses holding passports of mostly western countries, and who were living in the West Bank on only a tourist visa. Some were born in the territory occupied in 1967 - Israel canceled their resident status based on various ruses, but allowed them to come and go as tourists. Others, particularly after 1994 (the year of the Oslo Accords ), were allowed to work in the Occupied Territory (in universities, various NGOs, PA bureaucracy and in businesses ), also based on a tourist visa only.
Suddenly, beginning in the spring of 2006, hundreds of people discovered that this arrangement no longer existed: At the border terminals at Ben-Gurion International Airport and the Allenby Bridge and Sheikh Hussein terminal officials began to mark their passports with the stamp "Denied Entry." A similar stamp was put on the passports of those who had indeed come here for the summer, to visit family, to stay in the house in which they were born. Thousands of "convicted" Palestinians were suspected of an organized conspiracy to undermine the demographic balance of "Greater Israel."
Due to the printed space and the media noise generated by the Katsav affair, the articles' publication was postponed for a day or two. No big deal. But as expected, they did not generate much noise when they were published. Bureaucracy is boring, especially bureaucracy whose victims are Palestinians. It is the place where people exercise their right not to know. They take no interest, don't read and don't agonize over what they haven't read. To myself I said: I guess I didn't present the information in an attractive wrapping.
To my rescue came then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Palestinians who were citizens of Western countries, particularly the United States, and were hurt by the discrimination (compared with Jews or evangelist Christians carrying the same passports ) organized, protested, complained and met with their elected officials. The foreign press did take an interest. Rice reprimanded Israel, and the information's stock rose high in the media market.
The chastised bureaucracy began to provide partial answers. Many of the "tourists" finally received Palestinian resident status. For others, new rules were created, as usual lacking any transparency, according to which they could acquire the desired visa. Sometimes it is a visa for two weeks, sometimes for three months. Sometimes for a year. And sometimes, the visa is flat out denied after all.
Routine denial
In the past two years a new ploy has been in regular use, the protests against discrimination notwithstanding. Yet despite a number of articles, its media stock value has remained low. Those suspected of being Palestinians or related to Palestinians receive visas to "Palestinian Authority only," though, like tens of thousands of Jewish and evangelist Christian tourists, they are bona fide citizens of Western states friendly to Israel, first and foremost the United States.
True, they are not prevented from moving through areas designated as "C" (areas that make up 60 percent of the West Bank and are under double and triple Israeli control ) in order to be in what is officially defined as PA territory. But they are, by underreported routine, denied entry anywhere else (East Jerusalem, the Galilee, the "Triangle" region of Israeli Arab towns, places that lie west of the Separation Fence, etc. ), although (or perhaps because ) they have family, friends and property there, not to mention churches and mosques. And their foreign ministries are doing nothing on their behalf.
Routine is considered the enemy of the press. In the past, harassment of women by men (beginning with lower wages for women, not only rape ) constituted an unreported routine. Today, the (happily ) non-objective press races to report such routine harassment, taking pains to emphasize that although the case in question is a singular one, it represents a phenomenon. Readers of both sexes hungrily exercise their right to know, and the news item usually acquires high media value (expressed, among other things, in the length of its appearance on newspaper websites ).
A different kind of routine is implemented almost daily throughout Area C of the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem ). There, Israeli bureaucracy encourages Jews to do what it prohibits Palestinians from doing: building. Even when our soldiers are not destroying tents and huts without proper permits, the ban on building itself is a kind of passive destruction and expulsion of potential dwellers. In this way, the bureaucracy has ensured that the greater part of the West Bank will be inhabited by as few Palestinians as possible (today the number is around 150,000 ). This makes it easier to perpetuate the concept of empty land suitable for Jewish settlements and Israeli annexation.
One of the obstacles in the way of the "empty land" myth is some 27,000 Bedouin living in Area C. About 80 percent of them are already refugees, deported from the Negev desert around 1950. In a gradual, calculated process that has been going on since the 1970s, the Israeli bureaucracy has been closing in on them, limiting their nomadic way of life and destroying their livelihood as shepherds, while preventing them from improving their living standard on the sites they do inhabit.
An obstacle to the immediate plans for expanding Ma'aleh Adumim and its sister settlements, until they close ranks with Jerusalem, are some 2,400 Bedouin living east of the capital. In a few weeks or months, the Israeli authorities will implement a plan for their expulsion and forced concentration near a hazardous garbage dump, in a village also born out of the sin of expulsion for the sake of Ma'aleh Adumim and its expansion.
Please, someone, throw me an attractive lead paragraph and a sexy headline - something to give the item about the expulsion two more minutes of screen time and six more readers.
Hebron: Zionist paraders harass Palestinians, 7 internationals detained
Alistair George and Ben Lorber International Solidarity Movement 20 Nov 2011
http://palsolidarity.org/2011/11/hebron-zionist-paraders-harass-palestinians-7-internationals-detained/
Over 1000 American and International Zionists joined 700 extremist settlers in Hebron this weekend to celebrate the reading of the Torah portion detailing Abraham’s biblical purchase of Hebron land, and to assert sovereignty over the Palestinian residents of Hebron.
On Friday, many Zionist visitors camped in tents on Israeli-controlled Shuhada Street. Inebriated from the Shabbat festivities, the visitors harassed local Palestinians throughout the night.
On Saturday, soldiers stationed themselves through the streets of Hebron’s Old City, forcing the shutdown of Palestinian shops, while swarms of visitors were treated to an extensive settler-guided tour championing the Jewish roots of Old Hebron. In what was advertised by the Hebron Committee as “the most unforgettable Jewish experience of a lifetime”, throngs of young, mostly American males clapped and chanted ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ (‘life to the people of Israel’) and other nationalistic chants, while Palestinian residents were forced to the sidelines of their own streets and kept there by soldiers. Throughout the day, 7 international activists and 2 Palestinians were arrested.
While a few visitors were respectful to Palestinian shop owners and residents, many were outright hostile. Mohammed Awawdeah owns a small shop in the old city, selling glass bottles filled with intricate colored sand patterns. Some of his bottles were smashed by a passing settler.
“He came and broke my stuff,” Awawdeah says. “I told the police but they are not here for us, they are here for the settlers…I am not even angry for my stuff, I’m angry at the soldiers who let them do this”.
Hamday Dwaik decided to close his bakery in the old city, since his shop was targeted by settlers during the event last year. “The settlers don’t want me to open. If I open they will throw my products on the ground, no one will buy it”.The Israeli police have taken the details of the incident and said that they intend to carry out an investigation.
Laila Slemiah, who works in Women In Hebron, a woman’s collective in the old city selling kiffiyehs and embroidery, was determined not to close her shop. “I know I won’t have any business today,” she said, “but I have to stay open. I’m not scared of them.” Clashes were also reported between visiting Americans and international activists. One activist relates that “as we were walking, a group of young American Jewish boys got into an argument with us. They became threatening towards us, and one of them had an M16 around his waist. They told us they would break our camera, they told the nearby Palestinian shop owner they would burn down his shop, they told me I would be dead on the floor.”
As this event is touted by the Zionist community as a Biblically-ordained ‘return to the homeland’, an organization called Project Hayei Sarah has been founded in the U.S. and Israel, offering alternative interpretations of Abraham’s Biblical relationship to Hebron that challenge the attempted Zionist appropriation of this legend to legitimize territorial conquest.
Seven international observers were detained by the Israeli police over the course of the day. At around 8 am, five international activists were detained after they were observing the checkpoint in Israeli controlled H2 area. They were held at Kiryat Arba police station for 8 hours and were threatened with charges of ‘interfering with police work’ unless they signed a statement agreeing not to be in the H2 area for a week. Two other international activists were detained at around 2:35pm today after attempting to film settlers passing through the old city; they were taken to Kiryat Arba and held there for around 2 hours. They were released without any further action being taken.
As darkness fell and the rain became harder, the tour ended. Large groups of settlers gathered in Palestinian areas of Tel Rumeida. A rowdy group of around 15 settlers chanted and attempted to intimidate Palestinians outside a shop in Tel Rumeida at around 5pm. The Israeli police were called and the group dispersed shortly afterwards.
Stone cold justice John Lyons The Australian 26 November 2011 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/stone-cold-justice/story-e6frg8h6-1226202202928
Some cases contain horrifying allegations, such as this one from Ahmad, 15, documented by DCI, who was taken from his home at 2am, blindfolded and accused of throwing stones. "I managed to see the dog from under my blindfold," he says. "They brought the dog's food and put it on my head. I think it was a piece of bread, and the dog had to eat it off my head. His saliva started drooling all over my head and that freaked me out. I was so scared my body started shaking ... they saw me shaking and started laughing ... Then they put another piece of bread on my trousers near my genitals, so I tried to move away but he started barking. I was terrified."
You hear them before you see them. The first clue that a new group of children is approaching is a shuffle of shoes and a clinking of handcuffs and shackles. The door to the courtroom bursts open - four boys, all shackled, stare into the room. Four boys looking bewildered. They wear brown prison overalls and they trail into the room where their fate is to be decided by a female Israeli army officer/judge, who is sitting at the bench, waiting. The look on the face of one of the boys changes to elation when he sees his mother at the back of the court. He blows her a kiss. But his mother begins crying and this upsets the boy. He begins crying too.
We're sitting in an Israeli military court which is attached to the Ofer prison in the West Bank, 25 minutes from Jerusalem. Mondays and Tuesdays are "children's days". Hundreds of Palestinian children from the age of 12 are brought here each year to be tried under Israeli military law for a range of offences. The majority are accused of throwing stones and, as the court has close to a 100 per cent conviction rate, almost all will be imprisoned for anything from two weeks to 10 months. Some will end up in adult jails.
Today, groups of children in threes and fours shuffle in; some cases last only 60 seconds, just long enough for the child to plead guilty and hear their sentence. Sitting in a room 50m away, more children wait. Despite their confessions, many insist that they did not throw stones or molotov cocktails, and the human rights group Defence for Children International estimates that about a third who pass through the system have either been shown or signed documentation in Hebrew - a language they cannot understand.
Inside the courtroom, the army's public relations unit wants the IDF guide to sit next to me to explain each case. I'm told I can quote him as "my guide" but not name him and we are allowed to photograph some of the older children but not the younger ones. Nor will they allow us to photograph children handcuffed and shackled trying to walk - "absolutely not," my guide says. The army obviously realises that such a photo would be enormously damaging. After September 11 I'd seen images of alleged terrorists walking like this but I'd never seen children treated this way. It's not surprising that Israel doesn't want this image out there - it would look uncomfortably like a Guantanamo Bay for kids.
Several countries, led by Britain, are turning up the heat on Israel over the treatment of Palestinian children - not only the manner of their arrest and interrogation but also the conditions in which they're kept in custody. MP Sandra Osborne, part of a British delegation that recently visited the military court, said of the visit: "For the children we saw that morning, the only thing that mattered was to see their families, perhaps for the first time in months ... A whole generation is criminalised through this process."
Into this world has walked Gerard Horton, an Australian lawyer. Horton was a Sydney barrister for about eight years and his practice included contract disputes, building insurance cases and employment matters. In 2006, while studying for a masters in international law, he volunteered for three months for an organisation that represented Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank. He has worked there ever since.
During his five years at Defence for Children International Horton says the office has increased its evidence-gathering capacity and will only pursue credible allegations based on sworn affidavits. He takes me through the arrest process: "Once bound and blindfolded, the child will be led to a waiting military vehicle and in about one-third of cases will be thrown on the metal floor for transfer to an interrogation centre.
"Sometimes the children are kept on the floor face down with the soldiers putting their boots on the back of their necks, and the children are handcuffed, sometimes with plastic handcuffs which cut into their wrists. Many children arrive at the interrogation centres bruised and battered, sleep-deprived and scared." The whole idea, he says, is to get a confession as quickly as possible.
DCI has documented three cases where children were given electric shocks by a hand-held device and Horton claims there is one interrogator working in the settlement Gush Etzion "who specialises in threatening children with rape". Some cases contain horrifying allegations, such as this one from Ahmad, 15, documented by DCI, who was taken from his home at 2am, blindfolded and accused of throwing stones. "I managed to see the dog from under my blindfold," he says. "They brought the dog's food and put it on my head. I think it was a piece of bread, and the dog had to eat it off my head. His saliva started drooling all over my head and that freaked me out. I was so scared my body started shaking ... they saw me shaking and started laughing ... Then they put another piece of bread on my trousers near my genitals, so I tried to move away but he started barking. I was terrified."
Israel is under pressure to at least allow filming of interrogations. "We want interrogations of children audiovisually recorded," says Horton. "This would not only provide some protection to the children but would also protect Israeli interrogators from any false allegations of wrongdoing."
Australian diplomats have shown no obvious interest in the military courts despite our Ambassador to Israel, Andrea Faulkner, being told about the treatment of children a year ago. She refused to comment on the situation for this story. Says Horton: "It is disappointing that of all the diplomatic missions in the region, Australia has been conspicuously silent on the issue of the military courts."
Horton says the military courts function as a system of control: "The army has to ensure that the 500,000 Jewish settlers who live in occupied territory go about their daily business without interruption from 2.5 million Palestinians... it is no coincidence that most children who are arrested live close to a settlement or a road used by settlers or the army."
He says it's an effective system; quite often the children emerge scared and broken. But there is little recourse. From 2001 to 2010, 645 complaints were made against Israeli interrogators; not one resulted in a criminal investigation. "Sometimes if there is a group of children who throw stones and the settlers or soldiers are not clear exactly who has thrown them, the army can go into a village at two or three in the morning and five or 10 kids get roughed up and it scares the hell out of the whole village," says Horton. He adds that when the army arrests children they usually don't say why or where they are taking them.
Former Israeli soldiers have formed Breaking the Silence, a group that has gathered more than 700 testimonies about abuses they committed or witnessed. Former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul says the army sets out "to make Palestinians have a feeling of being chased". "The Palestinian guy is arrested and released," Shaul says. "He has no idea why he was arrested and why he was released so quickly. The rest of the village wonders whether he was released because he is a collaborator."
Fadia Saleh, who runs 11 rehabilitation centres in the West Bank dealing with the effects of detention, says: "Usually the children isolate themselves, they become very angry for the simplest reasons, they have nightmares. They have lost trust in others. They don't have friends any more because they think their friends will betray them. There is also a stigma about them - other children and parents say, 'Be careful being seen with him, or the Israeli soldiers will target you too.'"
Confronting intimidation, working for justice in Palestine Ilan Pappe The Electronic Intifada 27/12/11
http://electronicintifada.net/content/confronting-intimidation-working-justice-palestine/10746
Every year since I moved there, Zionist organizations in the UK and the US have asked the university to investigate my work and were brushed aside. This year a similar appeal was taken, momentarily one should say, seriously. One hopes this was just a temporary lapse; but you never know with an academic institution (bravery is not one of their hallmarks).
If we had a wish list for 2012 as Palestinians and friends of Palestine, one of the top items ought to be our hope that we can translate the dramatic shift in recent years in world public opinion into political action against Israeli policies on the ground. We know why this has not yet materialized: the political, intellectual and cultural elites of the West cower whenever they even contemplate acting according to their own consciences as well as the wishes of their societies.
This last year was particularly illuminating for me in that respect. I encountered that timidity at every station in the many trips I took for the cause I believe in. And these personal experiences were accentuated by the more general examples of how governments and institutions caved in under intimidation from Israel and pro-Zionist Jewish organizations.
Of course there were US President Barack Obama’s pandering appearances in front of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, and his administration’s continued silence and inaction in face of Israel’s colonization of the West Bank, siege and killings in Gaza, ethnic cleansing of the Bedouins in the Naqab and new legislation discriminating against Palestinians in Israel.
The complicity continued with the shameful retreat of Judge Richard Goldstone from his rather tame report on the Gaza massacre — which began three years ago today. And then there was the decision of European governments, especially Greece, to disallow campaigns of human aid and solidarity from reaching Gaza by sea. On the margins of all of this were prosecutions in France against activists calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and a few u-turns by some groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Europe caving in under pressure and retracting an earlier decision to cede connections with Israel.
In recent years, I have learned firsthand how intimidation of this kind works. In November 2009 the mayor of Munich was scared to death by a Zionist lobby group and cancelled my lecture there. More recently, the Austrian foreign ministry withdrew its funding for an event in which I participated, and finally it was my own university, the University of Exeter, once a haven of security in my eyes, becoming frigid when a bunch of Zionist hooligans claimed I was a fabricator and a self-hating Jew.
Every year since I moved there, Zionist organizations in the UK and the US have asked the university to investigate my work and were brushed aside. This year a similar appeal was taken, momentarily one should say, seriously. One hopes this was just a temporary lapse; but you never know with an academic institution (bravery is not one of their hallmarks). But there were examples of courage — local and global — as well: the student union of the University of Surrey under heavy pressure to cancel my talk did not give in and allowed the event to take place.
The Episcopal Bishops Committee on Israel/Palestine in Seattle faced the wrath of many of the city’s synagogues and the Israeli Consul General in San Francisco, Akiva Tor, for arranging an event with me in September 2011 in Seattle’s Town Hall, but bravely brushed aside this campaign of intimidation. The usual charges of “anti-Semitism” did not work there — they never do where people refuse to be intimidated.
The outgoing year was also the one in which Turkey imposed military and diplomatic sanctions on Israel in response to the latter’s refusal to take responsibility for the attack on the Mavi Marmara. Turkey’s action was in marked contrast to the European and international habit of sufficing with toothless statements at best, and never imposing a real price on Israel for its actions.
I do not wish to underestimate the task ahead of us. Only recently did we learn how much money is channeled to this machinery of intimidation whose sole purpose is to silence criticism on Israel. Last year, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs — leading pro-Israel lobby groups — allocated $6 million to be spent over three years to fight BDS campaigns and smear the Palestine solidarity movement. This is not the only such initiative under way. But are these forces as powerful as they seem to be in the eyes of very respectable institutions such as universities, community centers, churches, media outlets and, of course, politicians?
What you learn is that once you cower, you become prey to continued and relentless bashing until you sing the Israeli national anthem. If once you do not cave in, you discover that as time goes by, the ability of Zionist lobbies of intimidation around the world to affect you gradually diminishes.
Reducing the influence of the United States
Undoubtedly the centers of power that fuel this culture of intimidation lie to a great extent in the United States, which brings me to the second item on my 2012 wish list: an end to the American dominance in the affairs of Israelis and Palestinians. I know this influence cannot be easily curbed.
But the issue of timidity and intimidation belong to an American sphere of activity where things can, and should be, different. There will be no peace process or even Pax Americana in Palestine if the Palestinians, under whatever leadership, would agree to allow Washington to play such a central role. It is not as if US policy-makers can threaten the Palestinians that without their involvement there will be no peace process.
In fact history has proved that there was no peace process — in the sense of a genuine movement toward the restoration of Palestinian rights — precisely because of American involvement. Outside mediation may be necessary for the cause of reconciliation in Palestine. But does it have to be American? If elite politics are needed — along with other forces and movements — to facilitate a change on the ground, such a role should come from other places in the world and not just from the United States.
One would hope that the recent rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah — and the new attempt to base the issue of Palestinian representation on a wider and more just basis — will lead to a clear Palestinian position that would expose the fallacy that peace can only be achieved with the Americans as its brokers. Dwarfing the US role will disarm American Zionist bodies and those who emulate them in Europe and Israel of their power of intimidation.
This will also enable the other America, that of the civil society, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the progressive campuses, the courageous churches, African-Americans marginalized by mainstream politics, Native Americans and millions of other decent Americans who never fell captive to elite propaganda about Israel and Palestine, to take a far more central role in “American involvement” in Palestine. That would benefit America as much as it will benefit justice and peace in Palestine. But this long road to redeeming all of us who want to see justice begins by asking academics, journalists and politicians in the West to show a modicum of steadfastness and courage in the face of those who want to intimidate us. Their bark is far fiercer than their bite.
World must interfere in Israel's internal affairs Gideon Levy Ha’aretz 25/12/11
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/world-must-interfere-in-israel-s-internal-affairs-1.403417
The new world will eventually tell Israel: Stay in the occupied territories, but give all its residents equal rights and justice. What will Israel say then? Interference in its internal affairs? Foreign intervention? You've got to be kidding.
Of all of Israel's complaints against the world, one is especially brazen: Goodness gracious, the world is meddling in the Jewish state's internal affairs.
When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she understands what's happening here, and it reminds her more of Iran than Israel, the Zionist response has been: "It would be better for the public's representatives to direct their attention to what is happening in their own countries," as Environmental Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan put it.
When Europe becomes outraged over hate crimes in Israel, the brazen response is the Europeans adopted the lowest of resolutions in taking Israel to task. And when the world takes an interest in Israel's policy toward refugees and migrant workers, this prompts a demand for an end to foreign interference, as Ronen Shoval, the founder of the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu, said.
Israel may be the last country on earth with the right to be outraged over foreign interference. Since its founding, Israel has not ceased working around the world to bring Jews here; it has clandestinely carried out underground subversive activity among shady regimes; it has openly preached abroad for Jews to leave their native lands and immigrate here, or at least send financial support; and Israel has moved heaven and earth against manifestations of anti-Semitism and supports parallel alternative Jewish and Zionist educational systems around the world.
It is also a country that simultaneously calls on the world to maintain the blockade of Gaza because of Hamas' rise to power there. Israel has acted in Lebanon and elsewhere in support of one communal faction against another. It has not ceased to meddle in the internal affairs of foreign countries and entities, so of all countries, it should not be heard to complain about foreign interference.
That is not the only reason, however, that Israel's stance on interference is brazen and ridiculous. In today's world, nations frequently intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries, and Israel does not object. Sometimes, we even support such steps. The world bombed Kosovo and Libya to liberate them from tyranny. Similarly, it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been threatening Iran over its development of nuclear weapons, which on the face of it is also an internal matter. The world has also imposed sanctions on Syria, which could be followed by military involvement - again prompted by internal matters. That is the world's role, that's how it should conduct itself when it identifies outrageous injustice or dangerous dictatorship.
Israel is not a dictatorship (aside from the rule it imposes in the territories it occupies, which is, in fact, a long-standing and cruel dictatorship ). The world therefore expects standards of conduct from Israel that are customary in the family of nations to which it aspires to belong. The world has actually refrained so far from really intervening in what has been carried out by the dictatorship of the occupation, where Israel does what it pleases, continually showing contempt for the world. But now the world has begun to direct its attention to what has been going on lately in Israel. That is its right and obligation.
Contrary to the slanderous and foolish comments of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose ministry said European countries were in danger of making themselves irrelevant by their criticism of Israeli settlement policy, that is the only way the world can be relevant. True, at times the world is afflicted with hypocrisy and double standards, but that doesn't give Israel the right to oppose such interference. If the world is witness to discrimination against women, injustice done to refugees and migrant workers and anti-democratic nationalist legislation, it speaks out. Israel cannot respond like Syria or Libya with the argument to leave it alone because these are internal matters.
But all this is just the coming attraction for the major intervention that will be more blatant than anything seen so far and may be coming soon. Once the world despairs of a two-state solution, which no longer has much prospect of being implemented, it will direct its concern to human and civil rights in the one state that already exists: Israel. Then, the world will say: "You wanted occupation. You wanted the settlements. We will have to accept them, because there's no turning back, but we will by no means accept a situation in which two million Palestinians in the West Bank live forever without civil rights and a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip live under conditions of partial siege. We will not accept such a situation in the new Middle East, which is rising up against dictatorship.
The new world will then tell Israel: Stay in the occupied territories, but give all its residents equal rights and justice. What will Israel say then? Interference in its internal affairs? Foreign intervention? You've got to be kidding.
Israel has 101 different types of permits governing Palestinian movement . Chaim Levinson Ha’aretz 23/12/11
Israel's “Civil Administration” issues 101 different types of permits to govern the movement of Palestinians, whether within the West Bank, between the West Bank and Israel or beyond the borders of the state, according to an agency document of which Haaretz obtained a copy. The most common permits are those allowing Palestinians to work in Israel, or in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Over the decades, however, the permit regimen has grown into a vast, triple-digit bureaucracy. There are separate permits for worshipers who attend Friday prayers on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and for clerics working at the site; for unspecified clergy and for church employees. Medical permits differentiate between physicians and ambulance drivers, and between "medical emergency staff" and "medical staff in the seam zone," meaning the border between Israel and the West Bank. There is a permit for escorting a patient in an ambulance and one for simply escorting a patient. There are separate permits for traveling to a wedding in the West Bank or traveling to a wedding in Israel, and also for going to Israel for a funeral, a work meeting, or a court hearing. The separation fence gave rise to an entirely new category of permits, for farmers cut off from their fields. Thus, for instance, there is a permit for a "farmer in the seam zone," not to be confused with the permit for a "permanent farmer in the seam zone."
Human rights organizations have challenged the permit regime on various grounds.
According to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, international agencies operating in the West Bank waste an estimated 20 percent of their working days on permits from the Civil Administration - applying for them, renewing them and sorting out problems. The checkpoint-monitoring organization Machsom Watch claims that the Shin Bet security service uses the permit regime to recruit informers. Palestinians whose permit requests are rejected "for security reasons" are often invited to meetings with Shin Bet agents, who then offer "assistance" in obtaining the desired permits in exchange for information.
Scottish Friends of Palestine
Sec
Hugh Humphries contact: 0141 637 8046 info@scottish-friends-of-palestine.org
