Narrative war IRAN PROTESTS | Karoline Leavitt lashes out about ICE question | Misleading headlines by Jan Fran and Antoinette Lattouf

With an internet block out, state media tightly controlled, foreign actors bragging about online interference, and exiled figures presenting themselves as the solution, protestors and their plight largely disappear from the story - by design. Thousands of Iranian protestors have been brutally killed - yet in the war over the narrative, their plight is not often being centred. Meanwhile, Trump’s press secretary snaps at another reporter - this time to dodge a basic question about the shooting of an unarmed mother by an ICE agent. There’s also a shout out to some responsible reporting on neo-Nazi material and a peak at the growing influence of InDaily SA, the newspaper muscling in on Murdoch's territory. 0:00 Lattouf health update 2:20 New year news chaos 4:30 What’s ahead 8:00 Iran protests primer 9:45 Internet blackout and reporting gaps 12:15 Diaspora anger over coverage 16:29 Mossad admits meddling 21:03 Protest hashtags boosted from Israel 22:25 Why death tolls stay murky 26:02 The Reza Pahlavi saviour script 29:55 Putting Iranian civilians back at the center 31:15 Trump’s Karoline Leavitt vs a journalist 37:50 When satire barely exaggerates reality 39:38 Randa Abdel-Fattah and a very cheeky headline 45:32 News Corp Adelaide narrative challenged by InDaily 52:40 Neo-Nazi flyer: reporting that it’s dangerous

‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’ by Mehdi Hasan and Prem Thakker

Mehdi and Prem unpack the Australia Terror Attack.The perpetrators behind the horrific, antisemitic shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach turned out to be Muslim – but, in a twist, so was the heroic man who tackled one of the shooters from behind. Mehdi Hasan and Prem Thakker break down the violence, the political fallout, and more of the week’s biggest stories during Zeteo’s livestreamed, audience-led Q&A. “We shouldn't have to be heroes. Those of us who are Muslims living in the West shouldn't have to disarm a gunman in order for people to say, ‘Well, actually, Muslims, they're good people,’” says Mehdi. “Our citizenship, our presence should not be conditional. We should belong because we belong.” Watch the full video above to hear Prem and Mehdi also discuss: The shooting at Brown University, and the US’s failure to curb gun violence Benjamin Netanyahu’s blaming the beach massacre on Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state Erika Kirk’s Bari Weiss-moderated CBS town hall: “This is MAGA's new media channel.” Donald Trump’s deranged reaction to Rob Reiner’s death War with Venezuela?

I subscribe to Zeteo founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo is a powerful movement for accountability. It delivers serious journalism but with a decided bias towards democracy and human rights. Rigorous, fact-checked journalism in the service of the public good. If you can’t subscribe please share.

John/Togs Tognolini

Roger Waters Vows To Perform In Germany Despite Cancelation

A great interview by Katie Halper with Roger Waters after he was banned from giving a concert in Frankfurt Germany for defending the Palestinians and calling Israel an Apartheid State. 

John Tognolini

Roger Waters

Legendary musician and activist Roger Waters talks about Frankfurt's cancellation of his concert and why he's demanded an injunction from the court. sign the petition urging Frankfurt to reverse their decision. Roger Waters is a singer, songwriter, and musician, best known for being a member of the legendary rockbound, Pink Floyd. 

If you haven't already done so, please sign this petition calling on Germany to uncancel Roger Waters' concert

Let Pink Floyd's Roger Waters Perform In Frankfurt, Germany

Katie Halper started this petition

We artists, musicians, writers, and other public figures and organizations are deeply disturbed by the recent efforts by German officials to discredit and silence musician Roger Waters. On February 24, 2023, Frankfurt’s City Council and the Hessian State government announced the cancellation of a concert Waters scheduled to be performed on May 28 at the Festhalle. The Frankfurt City Council says that they canceled Waters’ concert “set a clear signal against anti-Semitism,” describing the musician as “one of the most widely spread anti-Semites in the world.”  As evidence, the Council says that Waters “repeatedly called for a cultural boycott of Israel and drew comparisons to the apartheid regime in South Africa and put pressure on artists to cancel events in Israel.”

There is no other evidence other than these two claims: that Waters has supported the Palestinian-led cultural boycott of Israel campaign and that he has compared contemporary Israel’s government to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Neither of these claims is unique to Waters or outside the boundaries of mainstream public opinion. Human Rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israel’s B'Tselem, United Nations agencies, and South African officials have defined Israel as an apartheid state, and therefore, many of these organizations and individuals have made the comparison between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa.

The extremists are the Israeli Government, not its critics. Recently, Israeli citizens have been pouring into the streets to protest their government’s violent treatment of Palestinians and sweeping anti-democratic judicial changes.

Waters’ criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is part of his long-term advocacy on behalf of human rights across the globe. Waters believes “that all our brothers and sisters, all over the world irrespective of the color of their skin or the depth of their pockets deserve equal human rights under the law.” With regard to Israel and Palestine, he says, “My platform is simple: it is implementation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights for all our brothers and sisters between the Jordan River and the sea. Antisemitism is odious and racist and I condemn it, along with all forms of racism, unreservedly.”

The officials vilifying Waters are engaging in a dangerous campaign that purposely conflates criticism of Israel’s illegal and unjust policies with antisemitism. This conflation perpetuates the antisemitic trope which presents Jews as a monolith who blindly support Israel. Some of Israel’s loudest critics are Jews. But those who weaponize antisemitism are fine contributing to it.

Officials in Germany, concert organizers, and music platforms must not succumb to the pressure of those individuals and groups who would rather see Waters’ music removed than engage with the issues his music highlights. We call on those who have canceled Waters’ concerts to reverse their decisions and consider their own history of antisemitism, racism and genocide and how instances of these can be stopped today in other parts of the world, including in Occupied Palestine.

Signed:

Brian Eno, Musician

Peter Gabriel, Musician

Anwar Hadid, Musician

Tom Morello, Musician

Noam Chomsky, Laureate Professor of Linguistics, University of Arizona 

Cornel West, Professor, Philosopher, Author, Activist 

Susan Sarandon, Actor

Ken Loach, Film Director

Nick Mason, Drummer

Eric Clapton, Musician

Gabor Maté, Physician and Author 

Immortal Technique, Artist and Producer

Low Key, Rapper and Activist 

Andrew Feinstein, Author and Former ANC Member of Parliament

Julian Schnabel, Artist and film maker

Robert Wyatt, Musician 

Dread Scott, Artist

Emily Jacir, Artist 

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Professor of Modern Culture & Media and Comparative Literature, Brown University

Ilan Pappé, Historian

Julie Christie, actor

Michael Malarkey, Musician

Terry Gilliam, Film Director and Actor

Norman Finkelstein, Writer, Professor

John Pilger, Journalist

Sophie Calle, Artist 

Artists for Palestine, UK 

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers

Beth Miller, Jewish Voice for Peace Political Director

Medea Benjamin, Code Pink 

Yanis Varoufakis, Author

Noura Erakat, Human rights attorney and author 

Susan Abulhawa, Author Mornings In Jenin 

Miko Peled, Author and Activist

David Cross, Comedian, Actor, Writer, Director

Ramin Bahrani, Film director

Alia Shawkat, Actor

Sara Driver, Film director 

Caryl Churchill, Playwright

Lady Bunny, Performer

Alexei Sayle, Actor, Author, Comedian 

Adam Broomberg, Artist, Educator and Activist

John Smith, Artist Filmmaker, Emeritus Professor of Fine Art, University of East London

Rosalind Nashashibi, Artist 

Glenn Greenwald, Journalist

Chris Hedges, Journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner 

Katie Halper, Journalist 

Vijay Prashad, Journalist 

Abby Martin, journalist and Filmmaker 

Mike Prysner. Journalist and Filmmaker 

Mohamed Hadid, Developer

Robert Scheer, Journalist

Krystal Ball, Journalist

Eugene Puryear, Journalist

Rania Khlek, Journalist

Ros Petchesky, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hunter College & the Graduate Center-CUNY, Jewish Voice For Peace 

Gerald Horne, Historian, John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston

Steven Donziger, Human Rights Attorney 

Adolph Reed, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania 

Greg Grandin, Professor of History, Yale University 

Daniel Bessner, Historian

Frank Barat, Film Producer

Tami Gold, Filmmaker, Professor of Film & Media Studies at Hunter College

Omar Al-Qattan, Film producer and Cultural Activist 

Josh Olson, Screenwriter

Zeina Durra, Film Director

Vin Arfuso, Producer, Filmmaker

Karen Zelermyer, I Was Never There podcast 

Christian Parenti, Professor of political economy John Jay, CUNY 

Marcie Smith Parenti Writer and Attorney

Noah Kulwin, Writer

Nora Eisenberg, Novelist, Journalist

Dave Anthony, Writer

Freddie DeBoer, Writer 

Robin D.G. Kelly, Writer, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.

Greg Goldberg, Chair, Sociology Department, Wesleyan University

Felix Hoffmann, Arthistorian and Artistic Director Foto Arsenal Wien

Barbara Smith, Writer and Activist

Doug Henwood Journalist/Radio Host 

Liza Featherstone, Journalist 

Margaret Kimberley, Editor, Black Agenda Report

Nora Barrows-Friedman, journalist 

Yasha Levine, Journalist

Mark Ames, Journalist 

Adam Horowitz, Journalist Mondoweiss

Phil Weiss, Writer

Michael Mack, Publisher

Max Blumenthal, Journalist, The Grayzone

Stefania Maurizi, Investigative Journalist

Norman Solomon, Journalist

Branko Marcetic, Journalist, Jacobin

Alfreda Benge, Artist

Bill Morrison, Artist and Film Director

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Photographer

Robin Rhode, Artist

Jim Goldberg, Artist/ Professor Emeritus California College of the Arts

Alec Soth, Photographer

Jewish Voice For Peace

Nina Felshin, Art Curator, Writer

Tai Shani, Artist 

And THOUSANDS MORE!

Noam Chomsky on Israel's Judicial Crisis, Palestinian Suffering, and The Changing World Order

Noam Chomsky goes into depth about Israel's domestic turmoil, life for Palestinians under the Greater Israel project, the history of propaganda and information suppression in the US concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how the rise of China may radically alter Israel’s future, along with the rest of the world. From Wikipedia: Noam Chomsky is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. 

‘I was fired for calling Israel an apartheid state’: US podcast host Katie Halper

                                                                          Katie Halper

‘I was fired for calling Israel an apartheid state’ US podcast host Katie Halper said she was fired from her role at The Hill TV after she recorded a video monologue calling Israel an apartheid state and pushing back against attacks levelled against US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.  

Breaking the Israel-Palestine Deadlock By Noam Chomsky

 Noam Chomsky

While intensively engaged in illegal settlement expansion, the government of Israel is also seeking to deal with two problems: a global campaign of what it perceives as “delegitimation”—that is, objections to its crimes and withdrawal of participation in them—and a parallel campaign of legitimation of Palestine.

The “delegitimation,” which is progressing rapidly, was carried forward in December by a Human Rights Watch call on the U.S. “to suspend financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israel’s spending in support of settlements,” and to monitor contributions to Israel from tax-exempt U.S. organizations that violate international law, “including prohibitions against discrimination”—which would cast a wide net. Amnesty International had already called for an arms embargo on Israel.

The legitimation process also took a long step forward in December, when Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil recognized the State of Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), bringing the number of supporting nations to more than 100.

International lawyer John Whitbeck estimates that 80-90 percent of the world’s population live in states that recognize Palestine, while 10-20 percent recognize the Republic of Kosovo. The U.S. recognizes Kosovo but not Palestine.

Accordingly, as Whitbeck writes in Counterpunch, media “act as though Kosovo’s independence were an accomplished fact while Palestine’s independence is only an aspiration which can never be realized without Israeli-American consent,” reflecting the normal workings of power in the international arena.

Given the scale of Israeli settlement of the West Bank, it has been argued for more a decade that the international consensus on a two-state settlement is dead, or mistaken (though evidently most of the world does not agree). Therefore those concerned with Palestinian rights should call for Israeli takeover of the entire West Bank, followed by an anti-apartheid struggle of the South African variety that would lead to full citizenship for the Arab population there.

The argument assumes that Israel would agree to the takeover. It is far more likely that Israel will instead continue the programs leading to annexation of the parts of the West Bank that it is developing, roughly half the area, and take no responsibility for the rest, thus defending itself from the “demographic problem”—too many non-Jews in a Jewish state—and meanwhile severing besieged Gaza from the rest of Palestine.
One analogy between Israel and South Africa merits attention. Once apartheid was implemented, South African nationalists recognized they were becoming international pariahs because of it. In 1958, however, the foreign minister informed the U.S. ambassador that U.N. condemnations and other protests were of little concern as long as South Africa was supported by the global hegemon—the United States.

By the 1970s, the U.N. declared an arms embargo, soon followed by boycott campaigns and divestment. South Africa reacted in ways calculated to enrage international opinion. In a gesture of contempt for the U.N. and President Jimmy Carter—who failed to react so as not to disrupt worthless negotiations—South Africa launched a murderous raid on the Cassinga refugee camp in Angola just as the Carter-led “contact group” was to present a settlement for Namibia.

The similarity to Israel’s behavior today is striking—for example, the attack on Gaza in January 2009 and on the Gaza freedom flotilla in May 2010.

When President Reagan took office in 1981, he lent full support to South Africa’s domestic crimes and its murderous depredations in neighboring countries.

The policies were justified in the framework of the war on terror that Reagan had declared on coming into office. In 1988, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was designated one of the world’s “more notorious terrorist groups” (Mandela himself was only removed from Washington’s “terrorist list” in 2008). South Africa was defiant, and even triumphant, with its internal enemies crushed, and enjoying solid support from the one state that mattered in the global system.

Shortly after, U.S. policy shifted. U.S. and South African business interests very likely realized they would be better off by ending the apartheid burden. And apartheid soon collapsed.

South Africa is not the only recent case where ending U.S. support for crimes has led to significant progress.
Can such a transformative shift happen in Israel’s case, clearing the way to a diplomatic settlement? Among the barriers firmly in place are the very close military and intelligence ties between the U.S. and Israel.

The most outspoken support for Israeli crimes comes from the business world. U.S. high-tech industry is closely integrated with its Israeli counterpart. To cite just one example, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, Intel, is establishing its most advanced production unit in Israel.

A U.S. cable released by WikiLeaks reveals that Rafael military industries in Haifa is one of the sites considered vital to U.S. interests due to its production of cluster bombs; Rafael had already moved some operations to the U.S. to gain better access to U.S. aid and markets. There is also a powerful Israel lobby, though of course dwarfed by the business and military lobbies.

Critical cultural facts apply, too. Christian Zionism long precedes Jewish Zionism, and is not restricted to the one-third of the U.S. population that believes in the literal truth of the Bible. When British Gen. Edmund Allenby conquered Jerusalem in 1917, the national press declared him to be Richard the Lionhearted, finally rescuing the Holy Land from the infidels.

Next, Jews must return to the homeland promised to them by the Lord. Articulating a common elite view, Harold Ickes, Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, described Jewish colonization of Palestine as an achievement “without comparison in the history of the human race.”

There is also an instinctive sympathy for a settler-colonial society that is seen to be retracing the history of the U.S. itself, bringing civilization to the lands that the undeserving natives had misused—doctrines deeply rooted in centuries of imperialism.

To break the logjam it will be necessary to dismantle the reigning illusion that the U.S. is an “honest broker” desperately seeking to reconcile recalcitrant adversaries, and to recognize that serious negotiations would be between the U.S.-Israel and the rest of the world.

If U.S. power centers can be compelled by popular opinion to abandon decades-old rejectionism, many prospects that seem remote might become suddenly possible.

from In These Times 4-1-2011

No guns? They must be terrorists by Mark Steel

Somehow, the Chilcot Inquiry has become like Big Brother. About once a month it pops up as a small item in the news and you think: "Oh blimey, I didn't realise that was still going on." Before long, like Big Brother, they'll come up with stunts to try and revive some interest. So they'll reintroduce contestants from previous inquiries such as Martin McGuinness and Christine Keeler, or make some witnesses complete a task of finding hidden ping-pong balls in the room or they have to give evidence blindfold.

So it might seem these procedures are pointless, in which case it makes no difference that the Israelis have agreed to co-operate with a United Nations inquiry into the episode in which nine people died after the Israeli Defence Force went aboard the Mavi Marmara as it sailed towards Gaza.

But it seemed to matter to the Israelis, because until this week they insisted their own inquiry was sufficient, and that was already under way. One fact emerging from this process was that the victims, according to "Sgt S" who shot six of them, "were without a doubt terrorists". And he produced evidence to back this up, which was: "I could see the murderous rage in their eyes".

This matches the classic definition of a terrorist according to international law, as someone "with murderous rage in their eyes", and shows the key witness in any terrorist trial isn't the forensics expert or explosives analyst but an optician. If they're trained well enough they can shine a light at the iris and tell whether you're short-sighted, long-sighted, Hamas or Basque separatist.

But there was more. According to the Jersusalem Post the IDF told the inquiry that the group on the boat were "well-trained and likely ex-military" because "each squad of the mercenaries was equipped with a Motorola communication advice, so they could pass information to one another". A Motorola communication advice? So these so-called peace-activists were armed with mobile phones! It's a wonder the whole Middle East wasn't set alight. And to think Motorola and other sinister arms dealers such as Nokia and Orange go round trading in this deadly merchandise quite openly.

If the IDF were asked to police a rock festival, at the moment when everyone used their mobiles to take a photo they'd open fire on the whole crowd. Then once 3,000 were dead, Sgt S would say: "Well done, boys, if we hadn't been so careful that could have turned quite nasty."

One possible difficulty in proving the optically murderous gang's intent could be that none of them had guns. But the IDF dealt with that by saying the "mercenaries" preferred to use "bats, metal bars and knives, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear they were terrorists and not peace activists". So this was another cunning trick of the terrorists, to disguise the fact they were terrorists by not doing anything terrorist. My neighbour's much the same; disguising her terrorism by being 74 and spending all day peacefully doing the garden without ever shooting anyone, the evil witch.

Even more blatantly, the inquiry was told the group did have guns on board, but "the mercenaries threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel". Because that's classic guerrilla training, to carry guns right up until the moment when the enemy arrives, and then throw them away. This is the strategy of all great military thinkers. That's why Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar said: "Men, I see the French, and so let every Englishmen do his duty, and chuck all our weapons in the sea. That'll teach the bastards."

On and on this goes, with Prime Minister Netanyahu making it clear he agrees with it, himself calling the victims "mercenaries". Because these mercenaries were trying to get goods such as medicine to an area that's under a blockade, which is typical mercenary behaviour, except instead of gun-running, they were inhaler-running.

But bit by bit Israel is finding it has to answer for itself publicly, and the old excuses are not so easily accepted. From now on they'll have to put a bit more thought into their bollocks, which has got to be for the good.

First published in The Independent on 5th August 2010

Blacklisting Helen Thomas By JONATHAN COOK

Helen Thomas

The ostracism of Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, over her comment that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and elsewhere is revealing in several ways. In spite of an apology, the 89-year-old has been summarily retired by the Hearst newspaper group, dropped by her agent, spurned by the White House, and denounced by long-time friends and colleagues.

Ms Thomas earnt a reputation as a combative journalist, at least by American standards, with a succession of administrations over their Middle East policies, culminating in Bush officials boycotting her for her relentless criticisms of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the reaction to her latest remarks suggest that, if there is one topic in American public life on which the boundaries of what can and cannot be said are still tightly policed, it is Israel.

Undoubtedly, Ms Thomas’ opinions, as she expressed them in an unguarded moment, were inappropriate and required an apology. It is true, as she says, that Palestine was occupied and the land taken from the Palestinians by Jewish immigrants with no right to it barring a Biblical title deed. But 62 years on from Israel’s creation, most Jewish citizens have no home to go to in Poland and Germany -- or in Iraq and Yemen, for that matter. There is also an uncomfortable echo in her words of the chauvinism underpinning demands from some Jews -- and many Israelis -- that Palestinians should “go home to the 22 Arab states”.

But Ms Thomas did apologise and, after that, a line ought to have been drawn under the affair -- as it surely would have been had she made any other kind of faux pas. Instead, she has been denounced as an anti-Semite, even by her former friends.

The reasoning of one, Lanny Davis, counsel to the White House in the Clinton administration, was typical. Mr Davis, who said he previously considered himself “a close friend”, asked whether anyone would be “protective of Helen's privileges and honors if she had been asking Blacks to return to Africa, or Native Americans to Asia and South America, from which they came 8,000 or more years ago?”

It is that widely accepted analogy, appropriating the black and Native American experience in a wholly misguided way, that reveals in stark fashion the moral failure of American liberals. In their blindness to the current relations of power in the US, most critics of Ms Thomas contribute to the very intolerance they claim to be challenging.

Ms Thomas is an Arab-American, of Lebanese descent, whose remarks were publicised in the immediate wake of Israel’s lethal commando attack on a flotilla of aid ships trying to break the siege of Gaza. Unlike most Americans, who were half-wakened from their six-decade Middle East slumber by the killing of at least nine Turkish activists, Ms Thomas has been troubled by the Palestinians’ plight for much of her long lifetime.

She was in her late twenties when Israel ethnically cleansed three-quarters of a million Palestinians from most of Palestine, a move endorsed by the fledgling United Nations. She was in her mid-forties when Israel took over the rest of Palestine and parts of Egypt and Syria in a war that dealt a crushing blow to Arab identity and pride and made Israel a favoured ally of the US. In her later years she has witnessed Israel’s repeated destruction of Lebanon, her parents’ homeland, and the slow confinement and erasure of the neighbouring Palestinian people. Both have occurred under a duplicitious American “peace process” while Washington has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Israel’s coffers.

It is therefore entirely understandable if, despite her own personal success, she feels a simmering anger not only at what has taken place throughout her lifetime in the Middle East but also at the silencing of all debate about it in the US by the Washington elites she counted as friends and colleagues.

While she has many long-standing Jewish friends in Washington -- making the anti-Semite charge implausible -- she has also seen them and others promote injustice in the Middle East. Doubtless she, like many of us, has been exasperated at the toothless performance of the press corps she belongs to in holding the White House to account in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine.

It is with this context in mind that we can draw a more fitting analogy. We should ask instead: How harshly should Ms Thomas be judged were she a black professional who, seeing yet another injustice like the video of Rodney King being beaten to within an inch of his life by white policemen, had said white Americans ought to “go home to Europe”?

This analogy accords more closely with the reality of power relations in the US between Arabs and Jews. Ms Thomas is not a representative of the oppressor white man disrespecting the oppressed black man, as Mr Davis suggests; she is the oppressed black man hitting back at the oppressor. Her comments shocked not least because they denied an image that continues to dominate in modern America of the vulnerable Jew, a myth that persists even as Jews have become the most successful minority in the country.

Ms Thomas let her guard down and her anger and resentment show. She generalised unfairly. She sounded bitter. She needed to -- and has -- apologised. But she does not deserve to be pilloried and blacklisted.

from CounterPunch 10-6-10

Israel's Carnage At Sea: Shouts Are Not Enough By Naomi Klein

Around the world, there are protests and vigils against Israel's shocking attack on humanitarian boats headed for Gaza. Naomi Kleinattended one in Toronto and delivered this speech on 1-6-10:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8-NY6T5WTo

Tariq Ali speaking at Freedom Flotilla Massacre protest, London 31 May 2010

Tariq Ali

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkvVGFKK-LU&feature=player_embedded

Of course, they were asking for it by Mark Steel

It's time the Israeli government's PR team made the most of its talents, and became available for hire. Then whenever a nutcase marched into a shopping mall in somewhere like Wisconsin and gunned down a selection of passers-by, they could be on hand to tell the world's press "The gunman regrets the loss of life but did all he could to avoid violence." Then various governments would issue statements saying "All we know is a man went berserk with an AK 47, and next to him there's a pile of corpses, so until we know the facts we can't pass judgement on what took place."

To strengthen their case the Israelis have released a photo of the weapons they found on board, (which amount to some knives and tools and wooden sticks) that the naive might think you'd expect to find on any ship, but the more astute will recognise as exactly what you'd carry if you were planning to defeat the Israeli army. It's an armoury smaller than you'd find in the average toolshed in a garden in Cirencester, which goes to show the Israelis had better destroy Cirencester quickly as an essential act of self-defence.

It's a shame they weren't more imaginative, as they could have said "We also discovered a deadly barometer, a ship's compass, which could not only be frisbeed at someone's head but even had markings to help the assailant know which direction he was throwing it, and a set of binoculars that could easily be converted into a ray-gun."

That would be as logical as the statement from the Israeli PM's spokesman – "We made every possible effort to avoid this incident." Because the one tiny thing they forgot to do to avoid this incident was not send in armed militia from helicopters in the middle of the night and shoot people. I must be a natural at this sort of technique because I often go all day without climbing off a helicopter and shooting people, and I'm not even making every possible effort. Politicians and commentators worldwide repeat a version of this line. They're aware a nation has sent its militia to confront people carrying provisions for the desperate, in the process shooting several of them dead, and yet they angrily blame the dead ones. One typical headline yesterday read "Activists got what they wanted – confrontation." It's an attitude so deranged it deserves to be registered as a psychosis, something like "Reverse Slaughter Victim Confusion Syndrome".

Israel and its supporters claim that Viva Palestina, made up of people who collect the donated food, cement and items for providing basic amenities such as toilets, and transport them to Gaza, wanted the violence all along. Because presumably they must have been thinking "Hezbollah couldn't beat them, but that's because unlike us they didn't have a ballcock and several boxes of plum tomatoes".

One article told us the flotilla was full of "Thugs spoiling for a confrontation", and then accused them of being "Less about aid and more about PR. Indeed, on board was Swedish novelist Henning Mankell." So were they thugs or about PR? Did they have a thugs' section and a PR quarter, or did they all muck in, the novelist diverting the soldiers with his characterisation while the thugs attacked them with a lethal spirit level?

But some defenders of Israel are so blind to what happens in front of them there's nothing at all they wouldn't jump to defend. Israel could blow up a cats home and within five minutes they'd be yelling "How do we know the cats weren't smuggling semtex in their fur for Hamas?"

If this incident had been carried about by Iran, or anyone we were trying to portray as an enemy, so much condemnation would have been spewed out it would have created a vast cloud of outrage that airlines would be unable to fly through.

But as it's Israel, most governments offer a few diplomatic words that blame no one, but accept the deaths are "regrettable". They might as well have picked any random word from the dictionary, so the news would tell us "William Hague described the deaths as 'hexagonal'", and a statement from the US senate said "It's all very confusing. In future let's hope they make every effort to avoid a similar incident."

First published in The Independent on 2nd June 2010

Open Letter to Berkeley Students on their Historic Israeli Divestment Bill by Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

On March 18, continuing a long tradition of pioneering human rights campaigns, the Senate of the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley (ASUC) passed "A Bill In Support of UC DIVESTMENT FROM WAR CRIMES." The historic bill resolves to divest ASUC's assets from two American companies, General Electric and United Technologies, that are "materially and militarily supporting the Israeli government's occupation of the Palestinian territories"-and to advocate that the UC, with about $135 million invested in companies that profit from Israel's illegal actions in the Occupied Territories, follow suit.

Although the bill passed by a vote of 16-4 after a packed and intense debate, the President of the Senate vetoed the bill six days later. The Senate is expected to reconsider the bill soon; groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace are asking supporters of the bill to send letters to the Senators, who can overturn the veto with only 14 votes.

Here is the letter I just sent:

Dear members of the ASUC Senate,

I am writing to urge you to reaffirm Senate Bill 118A, despite the recent presidential veto.

It comes as no surprise that you are under intense pressure to reverse your historic and democratic decision to divest from two companies that profit from Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. When a school with a deserved reputation for academic excellence and moral leadership takes such a bold position, it threatens to inspire others to take their own stands.

Indeed, Berkeley--the campus and the wider community--has provided this kind of leadership on many key issues in the past: not only Apartheid in South Africa but also sweatshops in Indonesia, dictatorship in Burma, political killings in Nigeria, and the list goes on. Time and again, when the call for international solidarity has come from people denied a political voice, Berkeley has been among the first to answer. And in virtually every case, what began as a small action in a progressive community quickly spread across the country and around the world.

Your recent divestment bill opposing Israeli war crimes stands to have this same kind of global impact, helping to build a grassroots, non-violent movement to end Israel's violations of international law. And this is precisely what your opponents--by spreading deliberate lies about your actions--are desperately trying to prevent. They are even going so far as to claim that, in the future, there should be no divestment campaigns that target a specific country, a move that would rob activists of one of the most effective tools in the non-violent arsenal. Please don't give into this pressure; too much is on the line.

As the world has just witnessed with the Netanyahu government's refusal to stop its illegal settlement expansion, political pressure is simply not enough to wrench Israel off its current disastrous path. And when our governments fail to apply sanctions for defiant illegality, other forms of pressure must come into play, including targeting those corporations that are profiting directly from human rights abuses.

Whenever we take a political action, we open ourselves up to accusations of hypocrisy and double standards, since the truth is that we can never do enough in the face of pervasive global injustice. Yet to argue that taking a clear stand against Israeli war crimes is somehow to "discriminate unfairly" against Israelis and Jews (as the veto seems to claim) is to grossly pervert the language of human rights. Far from "singling out Israel," with Senate Bill 118A, you are acting within Berkeley's commendable and inspiring tradition.

I understand that there is some debate about whether or not your divestment bill was adopted "in haste." Not having been there, I cannot comment on your process, though I am deeply impressed by the careful research that went into the decision. I also know that in 2005 an extraordinarily broad range of Palestinian civil society groups called on activists around the world to adopt precisely these kinds of peaceful pressure tactics. In the years since that call, we have all watched as Israeli abuses have escalated dramatically: the attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, a massive expansion of illegal settlements and walls, an ongoing siege on Gaza that violates all prohibitions on collective punishment, and, worst of all, the 2008/9 attack on Gaza that left approximately 1,400 dead.

I would humbly suggest that when it comes to acting to end Israeli war crimes, the international response has not suffered from too much haste but from far too little. This is a moment of great urgency, and the world is watching.

Be brave.

Yours sincerely,

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, now out in paperback. Her earlier books include the international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (which has just been re-published in a special 10th Anniversary Edition); and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). To read all her latest writing visit www.naomiklein.org

Published on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

For Israel, a reckoning by John Pilger

John Pilger

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the growing boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine. Based on the anti-apartheid campaign that helped bring down the racist regime in South Africa, BDS is becoming a catch-cry for freedom in countries whose governments continue to ignore the Palestinians' struggle against another form of apartheid and which Nelson Mandela has described as "the greatest moral issue of our time".

The farce of the climate change summit in Copenhagen affirmed a world war waged by the rich against most of humanity. It also illuminated a resistance growing perhaps as never before: an internationalism linking justice for the planet earth with universal human rights, and criminal justice for those who invade and dispossess with impunity. And the best news comes from Palestine.

Palestinian resistance to the theft of their country reached a critical moment in 2001 when Israel was identified as an apartheid state at a United Nations conference on racism in Durban, South Africa. To Nelson Mandela, justice for the Palestinians is “the greatest moral issue of our time”. The Palestinian Civil Society Call for Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS), was issued on 9 July 2005, effectively reconvening the great non-violent movement that swept the world and brought the scaffolding of African apartheid crashing down. “Through decades of occupation and dispossession,” wrote Mustafa Barghouti, a wise voice of Palestinian politics, “90 per cent of the Palestinian struggle has been non-violent... A new generation of Palestinian leaders [now speaks] to the world precisely as Martin Luther King did. The same world that rejects all use of Palestinian violence, even clear self-defence, surely ought not begrudge us the non-violence employed by men such as King and Gandhi."

In the United States and Europe, trade unions, academic associations and mainstream churches have brought back the strategies and tactics that were used against apartheid South African. In a resolution adopted by 431 votes to 62, the US Presbyterian Church voted for “a process of phased selective disinvestment in multinational corporations doing business with Israel”. This followed the opinion of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s wall and its “settler” colonies were illegal. A similar declaration by the court in 1971, denouncing South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, ignited the international boycott.

Like the South Africa campaign, the issue of law is central. No state is allowed to flout international law as wilfully as Israel. In 1990, a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Saddam Hussein get out of Kuwait was the same, almost word for word, as that demanding Israel get out of the West Bank. The United States and its allies attacked and drove out Iraq while Israel has been repeatedly rewarded. On 11 December, President Obama announced $2.75 billion “aid” for Israel, a down payment on the $30 billion American taxpayers will gift from their stricken economy during this decade.

The hypocrisy is now well understood in the US, where consumer boycott campaigns are becoming commonplace. A “stolen beauty” campaign pursues Ahava beauty products which are made in illegal West Bank “settlements”, forcing the company to drop its ballyhooed celebrity “ambassador”, Kristin Davis, a star of Sex and the City . In Britain, Sainsbury’s and Tesco are under pressure to identify “settlement” products, whose sale contravenes the human rights clause in the EU trade agreement with Israel.

In Australia, a consortium including the French company Veolia has lost its bid for a billion-dollar desalination plant following a campaign highlighting Veolia’s plan to build a light rail connecting Jerusalem to the “settlements”. In Norway, the government has withdrawn its support for the Israeli hi-tech company Elbit, which helped build the wall across Palestine. This is the first official boycott by a western country. “We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law,” said the Norwegian finance minister.

In 2005, the Association of University Teachers in Britain (AUT) voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions complicit in the oppression of Palestinians. The AUT campaign was forced to retreat when the Israel lobby unleashed a blizzard of character assassination and charges of anti-Semitism. The Palestinian writer and activist Omar Baghouti called this “intellectual terror”: a perversion of morality and logic that says to be against racism towards Palestinians makes one anti-Semitic. However, the Israeli assault on Gaza on 27 December, 2008 changed almost everything. The first US Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was formed, with Desmond Tutu on its board. At its 2009 conference, Britain’s Trade Union Council voted for a consumer boycott. The “Israel taboo” is no more.

Complementing this is the rapid development of international criminal law since the Pinochet case in 1999 when the former Chilean dictator was placed under house arrest in Britain. Israeli warmongers now face similar prosecution in countries which have “universal jurisdiction” laws. In Britain, the Geneva Conventions Act of 1957 is fortified by the UN report on Gaza by Judge Richard Goldstone, which in December obliged a London magistrate to issue a warrant for the arrest of Tzini Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister wanted for crimes against humanity. In September, only contrived diplomatic immunity rescued Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister during the assault on Gaza, from arrest by Scotland Yard.

Just over a year ago, 1400 defenceless people in Gaza were murdered by the Israelis. On 29 December, Mohamed Jassier became the 367th Gazan to die because people needing life-saving medical treatment are not allowed out. Keep that in mind when you next watch the BBC “balance” such suffering with the weasel protestations of the oppressors.

There is a clear momentum now. To mark the first anniversary of the Gaza atrocity, a great humanitarian procession from 42 countries – Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, old and young, trade unionists, writers, artists, musicians and those leading convoys of food and medicine – converged on Egypt, and even though the American bribed dictatorship in Cairo prevented most from proceeding to Gaza, the people in that open prison knew they were not alone, and children climbed on walls and raised the Palestinian flag. And this is just a beginning.

Will Australia remain silent while Gaza dies? by Enas Sammak

The following speech was delivered by Enas Sammak to a March 12 Melbourne protest in solidarity with Palestine, held to coincide with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s motion in parliament that celebrated the 60th anniversary of Israel’s establishment.

We are gathered here today, able to exercise our freedom and rights, to protest for those whose freedom and rights have been infringed, whose voices are either muted or ignored. I am a daughter of Gaza, a daughter of Palestine, a daughter of a displaced man, a man who is still awaiting the day he returns … he has taken Australia as his homeland, a country where our voices can make a change, where our opinions can influence policy, where we have the ability to represent those who lack the power to do it for themselves.

We complain about Work Choices, yet thousands of them have no work; we complain about electricity bills, yet they have no electricity; we complain about the price of oil, yet they have no oil; we talk about water saving, yet they have no clean water to drink; we complain about interest rates; while their houses are being demolished. So where do we stand? When their children are dying, when their women are widowed, and their men tortured, where does Australia stand?

When they have sanctions imposed because they exercised their democratic rights, because they believed in universal suffrage, where does our government stand? There is one thing that when I see pictures of on TV, it fills my heart with agony and my eyes with tears. It is the sight of mothers and fathers … carrying the bodies of their dead children wrapped in a green cloth.

Their innocent faces and tiny bodies stained with their own blood. Their bodies are skinny as food was scarce during their very short stay in life. My tears run until there are no more tears to shed. Innocent civilians are being killed every day, but Israel claims that they’re accidents, that it is targeting armed militants. For how much longer are we going to believe this?

Where is the United Nations Security Council? Where is the International Court of Justice? Where are the world leaders? Why is the international community silent? When I was seven years old, I went out to protest in the heart of Auckland in New Zealand. I protested against the murder an innocent child, Muhammad Aldurra. He was killed while he was in the arms of his father. His death was witnessed live on TV by hundreds of thousands around the world.

I protested against the Israeli attacks hoping that something would happen, that action would be taken, and that my protest would make a difference. I didn’t know why Muhammad was killed. “What has he done?”, I asked my father. Now, nine years later, I stand before you, once again protesting against the killings of innocents in Gaza, hoping that action will be taken.

Today I still cannot understand why they are being killed. At least 18 Palestinians, including five boys under the age of 16 and a six-month-old baby, were killed in the Gaza Strip on February 28. Why? Another 12-year-old boy died of wounds sustained in a Gaza raid a day earlier, and a shepherd was killed in northern Gaza. Why? On March 1, an Israeli military plane dropped three bombs on the house of Abd al Rahman Atallah, a 62-year-old man.

The aerial bombardment completely destroyed his house; four of the injured were children, one of them a two-day-old infant. Why? Why is it so hard for the United Nations Security Council to condemn the actions of Israel? Why? The fathers and mothers cry and scream to the world — “please help us, please save us … Please protect us …” But the world is silent, the world is deaf. The world has decided that it is acceptable for Palestinian children to die.

The world has decided that my brothers and sisters in Gaza are fair game for the wrath of one of the most powerful and most evil military machines on earth. The world has stood together to starve the children of Gaza and ensure the siege is watertight. Therefore, I stand here today and plead with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to intervene to protect the children of Gaza, for Rudd to take a courageous stand, a stand for justice, like when he said sorry to the Stolen Generations.

Mr Rudd, please, do not celebrate the day of declaration of the Israeli state, a state that has not only caused stolen generations, but also displaced, murdered generations.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #744 19 March 2008.

Tens of Thousands of Palestinians Seeking Basic Supplies Flood Egypt for Second Day from Democracy Now!

A Palestinian family, their belongings crammed into a taxi, wait to be allowed through the Rafah border crossing to start a new life in Egypt.

Thousands of Palestinians are pouring into Egypt from Gaza for a second consecutive day after militants destroyed most of a border wall in the town of Rafah on Wednesday. Gazans are rushing across the border to stock up on food, fuel, medicines and other basic supplies, which have become scarce or unaffordable after months of economic isolation. We go to Gaza to speak with Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer and to to Tel Aviv to speak with Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. [includes rush transcript]
Guests:
Mohammed Omer, Palestinian journalist from Rafah. He writes for several publications including the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. He maintains a blog at RafahToday.org.
Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist with Ha’aretz newspaper. He was recently awarded the 2008 Euro-Med Journalist Prize for Cultural Dialogue.

Rush TranscriptThis transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

Related Democracy Now! Stories
As Gaza Plunges into Darkness, Israeli and Palestinian Fighters-Turned-Peace-Activists Speak Out (1/22/2008)

AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of Palestinians are pouring into Egypt from Gaza for a second consecutive day after militants destroyed most of a border wall in the town of Rafah on Wednesday. Gazans are rushing across the border to stock up on food, fuel, medicines and other basic supplies, which have become scarce or unaffordable after months of economic isolation. Hundreds of Egyptian security forces have moved into the area but are so far making no attempt to stem the traffic.

According to Time magazine, over 350,000 Palestinians have crossed the border, nearly one-fifth of Gaza’s entire population. Dismissed Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh said the border crossing is a direct result of the siege.

ISMAEL HANIYEH: [translated] What happened at Rafah was an expression of a popular rage, and it is evidence that despair has reached its climax and the siege cannot continue.
AMY GOODMAN: The border crossing comes on the sixth day of an Israeli blockade that has cut off all deliveries to Gaza. Israel says it’s trying to stop Palestinian militants from launching rockets at nearby Israeli towns. Over the past ten days, more than 200 rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel, lightly wounding ten people. Meanwhile, over the same period,

Israeli army raids in Gaza have killed more than forty people.

Israel said it bears no responsibility for security at the Rafah crossing but expects Egypt would reseal the border with Gaza and stop allowing the free passage of Palestinians. This is Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aryeh Mekel.

ARYEH MEKEL: Israel has no presence in that area. It is the Egyptians that are stationed alongside the border between Gaza and Egypt, and therefore it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates in a proper way according to the signed agreements. We expect the Egyptian government to solve the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has not indicated when he plans to close the crossing. He told reporters Wednesday he allowed Palestinians to come into Egypt because they’re starving. President Mubarak’s comment came after days of protests against the Egyptian government’s support for Israel.

PRESIDENT HOSNI MUBARAK: [translated] Let them come in and buy food, then go back, as long as they are not carrying weapons. And I even spoke to the government. And if they need food or the authorities that can help feed them, we are willing to help them.

AMY GOODMAN: For the latest news from Gaza, I’m now joined on the phone from Gaza by Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer. He lives in the Rafah refugee camp and writes for several publications, including the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. He maintains a blog at rafahtoday.org. He just returned from there and joins me on the line from Gaza City.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Mohammed. Can you describe what’s happening now on the border?

MOHAMMED OMER: Thank you very much, Amy. In the border right now, still the people are flooding into the Rafah border, and the streets are crowded by large numbers of people, as more than 350,000 Palestinians are getting into the Egypt, in and out, coming to Egypt. And little spots—

And also breaking news, I have received some information from the spokesman of Minister of Health telling me that a group of doctors from Egypt have managed to come to Gaza to operate for Palestinian patients in the Palestinian hospitals, and they were bringing some medicine with them. In the Gaza Strip, most of the people are going towards the south, and they are heading to the south. They’re trying to get medicine, food and all their needs.

I’ve met with some people. Among the people is Saad al-Buleimi [phon.], thirty-four years old, and his brother Mohammed. And they couldn’t believe that Rafah border is open. They are living in the middle of the Gaza Strip, and it’s time for them—both of them have shared and carried their mother, who has been stuck in Gaza for many months, and she couldn’t get out to go for operation in Egypt. Then, today, she was able to get through and go for the hospital for her operation.

GOODMAN: Mohammed Omer, Time magazine has said 350,000 Palestinians have crossed into Egypt, a fifth of the population of Gaza. Is that possible?

MOHAMMED OMER: It is possible. And I can tell you the number is increasing today. Yesterday, people were not believing that. They were staying mostly home. But still, the number was large enough to describe more than 200,000 people who are crossing. But today it’s much more than that. Wherever you go in the streets, you ask people, “Where are you going?” they say Rafah. Everyone is heading to Rafah. They’re going to Rafah to buy things.
And what they are buying—I’ve seen people buying cows and buying veal and buying sheep and buying cheese and buying medicine, and some who buy also fish and some who buy medication and some—so there are different people. And even some people that I found buying candles, because there is no candles any longer in the Gaza Strip, due to the siege involved in Gaza. And I’ve also talked to some people, and I’ve figured out that they are buying also washing powder, which wasn’t allowed into the Gaza Strip during the last few weeks by the Israeli occupation forces.

So people are quite happy right now, getting closer to the border. But the problem that they could not go as far as—after El Arish. They can just go inside the area of Rafah, the Egyptian Rafah, and El Arish area in Egypt, but it is difficult for them to get as close as that. I can see also some numbers of people in wheelchairs, mostly the people who were injured in the last few attacks, getting out through the Rafah terminal crossing by their families who take them to the near hospital for medication.

AMY GOODMAN: Is Israel still attacking Gaza?

MOHAMMED OMER: There is a military buildup right now in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Nearly fifty tanks are patrolling in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. I’m not sure if that’s a start of a new attack or if that’s a normal regime of patrolling. But there is also hovering of F-16s and helicopters from time to time. There has been no major attacks in the last twenty-four hours since the people have managed to cross through the Egyptian border. But the last period has been quite difficult for the Palestinian population in the last week.

Since the 1st of January—or sorry, since the 1st of January, 2008, seventy-six Palestinians were killed by the Israeli occupation forces, and 293 were injured also by the Israeli occupation forces, only in the last month, this month, in January, while on the other hand, from eight to six Israelis were injured as a result of more than 150 Kassam rockets, homemade rockets, launched from Gaza. The situation is still not easy. There are still people, despite the fact, who still have the mourning tents, as they have lost their relatives. And still, the hospitals are treating the people who were injured as a result of the recent attacks on Gaza.

In general, the mood in Gaza, most of the people are desperate to go to Egypt, some who go for the medication, some who go to buy things. But the people are quite happy that now there is a chance for them to get out and get what they need.

But the thing also that there is not that much supplies in the Egyptian stock now, because many people take the empty gallons, and they try to go to fill it in with petrol in order to heat their houses or to light their houses, since Israel has taken the decision to shut off all the borders again, and they say that Egypt is going to take responsibility over the Gaza Strip, which means that no aid will come to the Gaza. And I’ve talked also to the spokesman and head of the [inaudible] Palestinian generation company, and he confirmed to me that they know that the Palestinian—the Israeli side has stopped supplying Gaza with the fuel. And he was afraid that it might mean that one of the main generators in the Gaza Strip will end, will stop by the end of the day or at least at the end of the day or ’til the evening as a result of the shortages of fuel coming to the Gaza Strip through the Karni crossing.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Mohammed Omer. He is a Palestinian journalist who lives in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. Originally, at the beginning, the Egyptian forces opened fire on the border in Rafah, the Egyptian government coming under fierce criticism for that. What happened?

MOHAMMED OMER: That was on Wednesday, when a group of people—or it was on Tuesday, when a group of people went to the border, mainly women affiliated to Hamas, went to the border and tried to open the border. I was in the area myself, and I saw that, and I saw the—there was some clashes. They were trying to push the women back. But the problem here, that they could not do that in the next day. The first day they have managed—they succeed, because the number of the women were not great. It was nearly 2,000 women with some men who were coming through, trying to break into the siege. They were having thirty injured people and sick people who need medication in Egypt, and they were calling the Israeli security forces—sorry, the Egyptian security forces to let them inside, but then they did not let them inside as a result of that.

And for that situation, since then, nearly since—the problem that—what happened, that they lived nearly—that Israel, according to Camp David agreement that allows only 750 soldiers, Egyptian soldiers, to patrol on the border. They could not allow more people to be on the border or more soldiers to be on the border. For that reason, it was difficult also to control the large numbers of people who were flooding into the borderline.

I’ve talked to a spokesman and one security officer at the Egyptian side, and he confirmed to me that it was also a humanitarian issue, that we could not watch our brothers in Gaza and our sisters in Gaza starve to death, and we just watching like that. We had to open the border for them to come for a few days to get food and to get the basic things that they need. As long as they don’t bring weapons or take weapons, then they just take the medicine and take what they need and then leave. So this is—it came from a humanitarian side, but it’s also that Israel has restricted the number; 750 Egyptian soldiers are allowed only to be in the border. But I would expect if there is a more number of soldiers, it might be that they would have stopped them. But they say it’s a humanitarian issue, and for that reason they have decided to let the people go through.

Now the Egyptian security forces are watching people at the moment, while they are crossing in, but they are mainly not preventing them. They are only preventing them from going as far into Egypt, like Alexandria or Cairo or Al-Isma’iliyah. But they are allowing them in just the area of El Arish and Rafah border area, where most of the stocks, unfortunately, have run out of fuel. The petrol stations have run out of fuel at the moment in Egypt, this part, because it’s not possible for people to get the medication they need, when they went to the pharmacy to look for medication. And they found even the pharmacies have no medicine at all left, because the people are taking as much as possible, believing that the siege has not ended and it will continue for the next few months, at least.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed Omer is a Palestinian journalist living in the Rafah refugee camp, speaking to us from Gaza City. Right now, we’re going to go to break. When we come back, we’re also going to go to Tel Aviv to talk with Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, and we’re going to look at the US presidential candidates’ stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Stay with us.
[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Tel Aviv to Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who is a regular columnist for Haaretz newspaper, recently awarded the 2008 Euro-Med Journalist Prize for Cultural Dialogue.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Gideon Levy. Your response to what’s happening in Gaza right now and the Israeli government saying this is now the Egyptian government’s responsibility?

GIDEON LEVY: I think nobody should be surprised. When you try to make an experiment in human beings, putting them into a huge cage for months and months, you can’t expect that they will not do anything possible to find a way out. And anyone who claims he’s surprised for what happened really is not understandable.

I also understand the Egyptian attitude. What could they do? They couldn’t stand and shoot in hundreds of thousands of people, of refugees, who are trying to get some food, as simple as this.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure that the situation will remain for long, and I’m afraid that very soon the siege will be completed again, and again we’ll face this humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, the figures from the United Nations right now, they are saying 79 percent of Palestinians in Gaza Strip live in poverty. The water supply to the Gaza Strip is approximately half the international standard, the UN saying Palestinians say 40 percent of Gazans lack drinking water. Are these the figures that you understand?

GIDEON LEVY: Those are the almost minimal figures, because I don’t deal with figures, I deal usually with human beings. And I have a few friends there who keep on informing me. Unfortunately, the Israeli government, the Israeli IDF, the Israeli army, does not let Israeli journalists into Gaza in the last fourteen or fifteen months. So I’m better informed over the phone.

And I can tell you that all the statistics are nothing vis-a-vis the reality. People are waking up in Gaza into a reality which I don’t think many Westerners, including Israelis, can imagine it at all: no future, no perspectives, no fuel for the car, no electricity in those very, very cold nights, and big life threat day after day, because don’t forget that the Israeli army is being active there almost every day from the air, from the sea and also from the territory itself.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Gideon Levy, speaking to us from Tel Aviv, the response overall in Israel? I mean, the rationale of the Israeli government not to allow Israeli journalists into Gaza to Rafah, their rationale, and what is the population saying?

GIDEON LEVY: Could you repeat the last part of your question?

AMY GOODMAN: What is the Israeli population response to this right now? And what’s the Israeli government rationale for keeping you out of Gaza?

GIDEON LEVY: Yeah. Unfortunately, for a long time, the Israeli public opinion is quite indifferent to the Palestinians’ agony, to the suffering, to the life under occupation in general. And same for now. People are only concerned if weapons will be smuggled into Gaza now, when the gates are open, and nobody really shares any kind of—maybe I’m naive to expect it, but nobody shares any kind of solidarity with 1.5 million people, who most of them are innocent people who wish only to find some work, some food and some way of normal living.

Now, about us, the Israeli journalists, we are prevented to go into a Gaza ever since Hamas is in power. And this is also something that should be mentioned, because I think, by this, the Israeli government prevents us from informing our readers or our viewers how does it really look there in Gaza. We could understand it if it was the last few weeks, because they were claiming that there are warnings that we may be kidnapped. But now, when it became a constant situation of over one year, it’s really a source of concern. The problem is that nobody really cares in Israel, because nobody really cares in Israel about life in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, speaking to us from Tel Aviv, he’s a columnist for Haaretz newspaper. Thanks for joining us from there.

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