Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 24 November 2009
Despite mounting pressure to withdraw from the light rail project in Jerusalem designed to serve the needs of Israel's illegal settlements, the French transportation giant Veolia is set to be highly involved in the project for the next five years. The company needs to support its new Israeli partner, the Dan Bus Company, which lacks the experience to operate the light rail.
As the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on 23 October, Dan has bought a 49 percent share in Veolia's contract with the City Pass Consortium to operate the light rail in Jerusalem, which connects the city to illegal Israeli settlements built on seized Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. After it runs the light rail for five years, Dan will buy out Veolia's 51 percent share in the 30-year contract, as well as Veolia's five percent share in the City Pass Consortium.
The City Pass Consortium consists of four Israeli companies and the French companies Connex, a subsidiary of Veolia Transport, and Alstom. Dan will need the full support of Veolia to successfully run the light rail for the next five years because of Dan's lack of experience in this area. As a major shareholder, Veolia will provide the crucial expertise to Dan and continue to be a key player in the light rail project.
Veolia has been pressured to end its involvement in the Jerusalem light rail project by several financial institutions concerned with socially responsible investing, because the rail will normalize the illegal annexation of Palestinian East Jerusalem, considered part of the West Bank under international law. Some European politicians have also criticized the company because the project infringes on Palestinian human rights. After four years of silence, Veolia recently attempted to pacify concerns and protests by expressing the company's commitment to operate the Jerusalem light rail on "a clear, non-discriminatory policy based on free access for all parts of the population." The company promised to reconsider its involvement in the light rail if application of the non-discrimination policy turns out to be impossible.
However, statements made by a City Pass spokesperson reveal that Veolia is aware that the light rail service will be discriminatory. In a 23 April 2009 interview with Belgian masters student Karolien van Dyck, City Pass spokesperson Ammon Elian explained how Palestinians and Jews are segregated in Jerusalem, and that the first planned rail line is designed to serve the needs of the secular Jewish population (with one stop in the Palestinian neighborhood of Shufat), and a second line is planned to serve the Orthodox Jewish population. "If Palestinians would want to make use of the light rail, both groups will not meet on the train, because of their different life patterns," Elian explained. The interview appeared in a Dutch-language report entitled "Public Transport and Political Control: an empirical study into the City Pass project on the West Bank" ("Openbaar vervoer en politieke controle: een empirische studie van het City Pass project op de Westelijke Jordaanoever"). Elian further justified the discriminatory service by claiming that since Palestinians are served by a network of buses, integration in the light rail would be redundant.
Considering its own past, it is hard to imagine that the Dan Bus Company management will take Veolia's non-discrimination policy seriously. On its English-language website, Dan states that "the Jewish battle of Jewish settlements for survival, from the pre-statehood 'Incidents' to the present day, has been an inseparable part of the Israeli experience. It is only natural that the Dan Cooperative has always been a central element in the struggle for the security of Israel, at all periods and in all circumstances." Not only serving Israel's civilian population, Israeli military forces use Dan's bus fleet "in times of peace as well as of war."
Meanwhile, legal action in France by the Association France Palestine Solidarity (AFPS) and the Palestine Liberation Organization against Alstom and Alstom Transport continues. The French companies have appealed a court decision to go ahead with the legal case. On 15 April 2009, the Nanterre tribunal ruled that the AFPS complaint aimed at ending Veolia, Alstom and Alstom Transport's participation in the light rail fell within its jurisdiction. Alstom and Alstom Transport appealed the judgment in a hearing at the Versailles Court of Appeals on 9 November. While Veolia did not appeal the ruling, a lawyer representing the company attended the hearing as an observer. The judgment is expected on 17 December 2009.
Full article
November 25, 2009
New Zealand's NIWA accused of CRU-style temperature faking
TBR - November 25, 2009
The New Zealand Government's chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn't there.
The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain's CRU climate research centre.
In New Zealand's case, the figures published on NIWA's [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:
The caption to the photo on the NiWA site reads:
From NIWA's web site — Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2008 inclusive, based on
between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908) long-term station records. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the
1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted [straight] line is the linear trend over 1909
to 2008 (0.92°C/100 years).
But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:
Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.
The revelations are published today in a news alert from The Climate Science Coalition of NZ:
Straight away you can see there's no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.
Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?
Why does NIWA's graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!
Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?
It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each station (from NIWA's web site) with the adjusted official data, which we obtained from one of Dr Salinger's colleagues.
Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.
Proof of man-made warming
What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.
About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.
The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.
One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there's no apparent reason for it.
We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It's a disgrace.
NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.
NIWA's David Wratt has told Investigate magazine this afternoon his organization denies faking temperature data and he claims NIWA has a good explanation for adjusting the temperature data upward. Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data.
"Do you agree it might look bad in the wake of the CRU scandal?"
"No, no," replied Wratt before hitting out at the Climate Science Coalition and accusing them of "misleading" people about the temperature adjustments.
Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU's Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were "destroyed" or "lost", meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data.
A Message to the Environmental Movement
Your movement has been hijacked
By James Corbett
The Corbett Report
25 November, 2009
By James Corbett
The Corbett Report
25 November, 2009
The Corbett Report has released a new video message to the environmental movement. Watch the video by clicking here or in the embedded player.
Transcript: This is James Corbett of corbettreport.com and I come here today with a message for you.
You the environmentalists, you the activists, you the campaigners.
You who have watched with growing concern the ways in which the world around us has been ravaged in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.
You who are concerned with the state of the planet that we are leaving for our children and our grandchildren and those generations yet unborn.
This is not a message of divisiveness, but cooperation.
This is a message of hope and empowerment, but it requires us to look at a hard and uncomfortable truth:
Your movement has been usurped by the very same financial interests you thought you were fighting against.
You have suspected as much for years.
You watched at first with hope and excitement as your movement, your cause, your message began to spread, as it was taken up by the media and given attention, as conferences were organized and as the ideas you had struggled so long and hard to be heard were talked about nationally. Then internationally.
You watched with growing unease as the message was simplified. First it became a slogan. Then it became a brand. Soon it was nothing more than a label and it became attached to products. The ideas you had once fought for were now being sold back to you. For profit.
You watched with growing unease as the message became parroted, not argued, worn like a fashion rather than something that came from the conviction of understanding.
You disagreed when the slogans--and then the science--were dumbed down. When carbon dioxide became the focus and CO2 was taken up as a political cause. Soon it was the only cause.
You knew that Al Gore was not a scientist, that his evidence was factually incorrect, that the movement was being taken over by a cause that was not your own, one that relied on beliefs you did not share to propose a solution you did not want. It began to reach a breaking point when you saw that the solutions being proposed were not solutions at all, when they began to propose new taxes and new markets that would only serve to line their own pockets.
You knew something was wrong when you saw them argue for a cap-and-trade scheme proposed by Ken Lay, when you saw Goldman Sachs position itself to ride the carbon trading bubble, when the whole thrust of the movement became ways to make money or spend money or raise money from this panic.
Your movement had been hijacked.
The realization came the first time you read The Club of Rome's 1991 book, The First Global Revolution, which says:
| "In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself." |
And when you looked at the Club of Rome's elite member roster. And when you learnt about eugenics and the Rockefeller ties to the Kaiser Willhelm Institute and the practice of crypto-eugenics and the rise of overpopulation fearmongering and the call by elitist after elitist after elitist to cull the world population.
Still, you wanted to believe that there was some basis of truth, something real and valuable in the single-minded obsession of this hijacked environmental movement with manmade global warming.
Now, in November 2009, the last traces of doubt have been removed.
Last week, an insider leaked internal documents and emails from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University and exposed the lies, manipulation and fraud behind the studies that supposedly show 0.6 degrees Celsius of warming over the last 130 years. And the hockey stick graph that supposedly shows unprecedented warming in our times. And the alarmist warning of impending climate disaster.
We now know that these scientists wrote programming notes in the source code of their own climate models admitting that results were being manually adjusted.
We now know that values were being adjusted to conform to scientists' wishes, not reality.
We now know that the peer review process itself was being perverted to exclude those scientists whose work criticized their findings.
We now know that these scientists privately expressed doubts about the science that they publicly claimed to be settled.
We now know, in short, that they were lying.
It is unknown as yet what the fallout will be from all of this, but it is evident that the fallout will be substantial.
With this crisis, however, comes an opportunity. An opportunity to recapture the movement that the financiers have stolen from the people.
Together, we can demand a full and independent investigation into all of the researchers whose work was implicated in the CRU affair.
We can demand a full re-evaluation of all those studies whose conclusions have been thrown into question by these revelations, and all of the public policy that has been based on those studies.
We can establish new standards of transparency for scientists whose work is taxpayer funded and/or whose work effects public policy, so that everyone has full and equal access to the data used to calculate results and all of the source code used in all of the programs used to model that data.
In other words, we can reaffirm that no cause is worth supporting that requires deception for its propagation.
Even more importantly, we can take back the environmental movement.
We can begin to concentrate on the serious questions that need to be asked about the genetic engineering technology whereby hybrid organisms and new, never-before-seen proteins that are being released into the biosphere in a giant, uncontrolled experiment that threatens the very genome of life on this planet.
We can look into the environmental causes of the explosion in cancer and the staggering drops in fertility over the last 50 years, including the BPA in our plastics and the anti-androgens in the water.
We can examine regulatory agencies that are controlled by the very corporations they are supposedly watching over.
We can begin focusing on depleted uranium and the dumping of toxic waste into the rivers and all of the issues that we once knew were part of the mandate of the real environmental movement.
Or we can, as some have, descend into petty partisan politics. We can decide that lies are OK if they support 'our' side. We can defend the reprehensible actions of the CRU researchers and rally around the green flag that has long since been captured by the enemy.
It is a simple decision to make, but one that we must make quickly, before the argument can be spun away and environmentalism can go back to business as usual.
We are at a crossroads of history. And make no mistake, history will be the final judge of our actions. So I leave you today with a simple question: Which side of history do you want to be on?
For The Corbett Report, this is James Corbett in western Japan.
Dispossession in Jaffa
The Shaya family in their Jaffa home
Coteret - November 23, 2009
[T]his post is on something you can read about in Haaretz. I do add some analysis and access to additional materials, but the primary reason for the divergence is emotional. Not only is this a story of extraordinary injustice, it is also about the family of a friend and colleague, Mary Koussa.
You can read the entire saga of the Shaya family in this Haaretz article, but the gist is fairly simple. In the 1920’s, Salim Khoury Shaya, head of Jaffa’s once prosperous Greek Orthodox Palestinian community, built a house for his family. He had seven children. In 1948, a census was taken of the remnants of Jaffa’s Palestinian community. Empty houses were taken over by the State of Israel, according to the Absentee Property Law (more about that at the bottom of this post). The Shaya house was a unique case. Three of the siblings were absent (in Lebanon), but four were present. So the State proclaimed itself “partner” and legally took over 40% of the house.
Decades passed and, except for a number of failed attempts in the 50’s and 60’s, to sue for full property rights, the Shaya family didn’t hear much from the government. Their area of Jaffa (near Ajami) was a slum no one was really interested in. That all changed about four years ago. The Jaffa coast went through accelerated gentrification and property prices skyrocketed. Amidar, the government owned housing company that administrates most Absentee Properties, saw an opportunity for a windfall. Contrary to popular perception, most of the Palestinians living in the area are not descendants of the pre-1948 residents, but descendants of refugees displaced during the war from other parts of the country, and are now tenants of Amidar. Therefore, their eviction, on a variety of pretexts, was relatively simple. In 2007-2008 alone, Amidar issued at least 400 eviction notices in the Ajami neighborhood.
The few Palestinian owners were more of a problem. But in 2007, some bureaucrat looking through old case files discovered the Shaya family’s vulnerability and hatched a plan — slap them with an exorbitant demand for years of back rent for the 40% of the house “owned” by the government and then demand that the “partnership” be dissolved through sale of the house to a third party. The Shayas don’t want to leave their ancestral home, but their attempts to buy out the State were rebuffed, and now Amidar and the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) have taken them to court. They want them out.
Even from the perspective of Lieberman’s Jewish-Nationalist school of thought there is much that is wrong with this story. As a devil’s advocate, I would ask his disciples in the government, why persecute “good Arabs?” The Shaya’s are fully integrated in Israeli society. One of the second generation siblings worked at the Tel-Aviv municipality for his entire life. An uncle was the first Palestinian policeman recruited in Jaffa by the Israeli government in 1949. A visitor at the Sunday family gatherings hears a mix of Arabic and Hebrew. Why is Israel taking them back to the Nakba that it wants to force them to forget through legislation?
For Israelis who still believe in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and for genuinely “pro-Israel” Jews abroad, this kind of reopening of 1948, which is also happening in Jerusalem and Haifa, is no less than suicidal. It severely undermines the premise of 1967 as the starting point for a diplomatic solution, with its implications regarding the 1948 refugees.
For all Jews, or at least those that see Judaism as a culture and a moral code, rather than an ethnic filter, the story of the persecution of the Shaya family presents a grave injustice for which we, as a collective, are responsible. It often seems to me that the apparatus of our government has lost any sense of justice and morality.Full article
Palestinian trade unions unanimously support boycott movement
Press release, BDS National Committee, 25 November 2009
In reaction to reports alleging that a Palestinian trade union official has stated his reservations about the Palestinian civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), the full spectrum of the Palestinian trade union movement has expressed solid support for the BDS National Committee (BNC) and for the global BDS campaign against Israel as an effective form of resisting its military occupation, war crimes and apartheid policies.
On 12 November, The Jewish Chronicle, a staunchly Zionist paper published in the United Kingdom, reported that the Secretary General of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Shaher Sa'ad, had told a small delegation of British trade unionists that PGFTU "had so little interest in the subject [of boycotting Israel] it had never discussed boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS)." The head of the delegation, Steve Scott, who is the director of Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI), a well-oiled lobbying front for Israel in the trade union movement, is quoted in the same article as saying, "the only area where the PGFTU did have a boycott policy was with regard to produce from West Bank settlements. Even then, there was concern about whether that boycott could do more harm than good for the 30,000 Palestinians employed there."
On 14 November, Shaher Sa'ad categorically denied the above report in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV, reiterating his support for the boycott against Israel. The following day, in an official speech before thousands of Palestinian workers at a political rally in Nablus, he called again for "boycotting [all] Israeli goods" and "supporting local [Palestinian] products" as an effective "form of resistance against the Israeli occupation."
Whether Mr. Sa'ad made the statement attributed to him by the Zionist media outlets in the UK or not, the fact remains that PGFTU has officially endorsed the Palestinian civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, since it was launched on 9 July 2005, and has been a member in the BDS National Committee (BNC), the coalition of Palestinian unions, political parties, NGOs and networks that leads the global BDS campaign, ever since its inception.
If The Jewish Chronicle's report is accurate, something that cannot be taken for granted, given the paper's notorious record, Mr. Sa'ad will have isolated himself completely from the absolute majority of the Palestinian trade union movement, including a solid majority within PGFTU itself. Since the above report, the BNC has officially asked PGFTU for clarifications and for a public, written position confirming its support for the boycott and calling on international trade unions to support BDS. Within hours of our letter, PGFTU-Gaza (which forms a sizable part of the whole Federation) issued an official statement confirming its support for BDS and condemning any alleged violation of it by Sa'ad. Six trade union factions within PGFTU immediately followed suit, endorsing the BNC position and confirming their unambiguous support for BDS. Union leaders affiliated to all political parties represented in the PGFTU have insisted on the need to combat any attempts to undermine the BDS movement.
Furthermore, the largest, most representative Palestinian trade union federation, the General Union of Palestinian Workers (one of the constituent mass organizations of the Palestine Liberation Organization), reiterated its steady support of BDS and denounced Sa'ad's reported statements as falling completely outside the Palestinian trade union consensus behind the boycott of Israel. The Palestinian Federation of Independent Trade Unions also issued a similar position. It is worth noting that all three federations are part of the BNC.
The Israel lobby groups in the UK and elsewhere have felt quite desperate lately in their abortive attempts to stop the spectacular growth of the BDS movement, particularly among major international trade unions. In South Africa, Great Britain, Ireland, Brazil, Canada and France trade union federations representing tens of millions of workers have endorsed -- partially or fully -- the BDS campaign against Israel. Many trade unions in Europe, Latin America and Canada have also announced their support for the Israel boycott, underlining the dramatic shift in international public opinion against Israel, especially in the aftermath of its war crimes against the Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip, which were squarely condemned by the UN Fact Finding Mission led by South African Judge, Richard Goldstone.
The BNC, including all three federations representing the Palestinian trade union movement, warmly salute all international trade unions who have endorsed BDS, confirming that this is the most effective and needed form of solidarity with the Palestinian people and the strongest challenge to Israel's criminal impunity and exceptionalism. As in the struggle against South African apartheid, Israel's occupation, colonialism and apartheid will only come to an end when international civil society shoulders the moral responsibility by holding Israel to account before international law and universal principles of human rights, and by treating it as a pariah state, as apartheid South Africa was, deserving comprehensive and sustained BDS campaigns.
Any isolated and dissonant statements attributed to any Palestinian trade union official can never be regarded as remotely representing the Palestinian trade union movement, as it would be in direct conflict with the consensus in this movement behind BDS. We urge all international trade unions to heed the call of Palestinian civil society, including the trade union movement, by endorsing BDS. We further urge all trade unions and trade union federations to sever their links with the Histadrut, a Zionist organization that has always played a key role in perpetuating Israel's occupation, colonization and system of racial discrimination, and that has justified and applauded Israel's war crimes in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
The Histadrut and Israel apologists within the international trade union movement have continuously tried to use partial comments and innuendo by this or that Palestinian trade union official to create a deceptive impression of an imagined "split" in the Palestinian trade union movement on BDS. Today, we reconfirm to the TU movement worldwide that the Palestinian trade union movement stands united in support of BDS and calls on every TU to endorse BDS. This is our best hope to end Israel's grave violations of international law and to attain our inalienable, UN-sanctioned rights, especially our right to self determination.
Source
In reaction to reports alleging that a Palestinian trade union official has stated his reservations about the Palestinian civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), the full spectrum of the Palestinian trade union movement has expressed solid support for the BDS National Committee (BNC) and for the global BDS campaign against Israel as an effective form of resisting its military occupation, war crimes and apartheid policies.
On 12 November, The Jewish Chronicle, a staunchly Zionist paper published in the United Kingdom, reported that the Secretary General of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Shaher Sa'ad, had told a small delegation of British trade unionists that PGFTU "had so little interest in the subject [of boycotting Israel] it had never discussed boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS)." The head of the delegation, Steve Scott, who is the director of Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI), a well-oiled lobbying front for Israel in the trade union movement, is quoted in the same article as saying, "the only area where the PGFTU did have a boycott policy was with regard to produce from West Bank settlements. Even then, there was concern about whether that boycott could do more harm than good for the 30,000 Palestinians employed there."
On 14 November, Shaher Sa'ad categorically denied the above report in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV, reiterating his support for the boycott against Israel. The following day, in an official speech before thousands of Palestinian workers at a political rally in Nablus, he called again for "boycotting [all] Israeli goods" and "supporting local [Palestinian] products" as an effective "form of resistance against the Israeli occupation."
Whether Mr. Sa'ad made the statement attributed to him by the Zionist media outlets in the UK or not, the fact remains that PGFTU has officially endorsed the Palestinian civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, since it was launched on 9 July 2005, and has been a member in the BDS National Committee (BNC), the coalition of Palestinian unions, political parties, NGOs and networks that leads the global BDS campaign, ever since its inception.
If The Jewish Chronicle's report is accurate, something that cannot be taken for granted, given the paper's notorious record, Mr. Sa'ad will have isolated himself completely from the absolute majority of the Palestinian trade union movement, including a solid majority within PGFTU itself. Since the above report, the BNC has officially asked PGFTU for clarifications and for a public, written position confirming its support for the boycott and calling on international trade unions to support BDS. Within hours of our letter, PGFTU-Gaza (which forms a sizable part of the whole Federation) issued an official statement confirming its support for BDS and condemning any alleged violation of it by Sa'ad. Six trade union factions within PGFTU immediately followed suit, endorsing the BNC position and confirming their unambiguous support for BDS. Union leaders affiliated to all political parties represented in the PGFTU have insisted on the need to combat any attempts to undermine the BDS movement.
Furthermore, the largest, most representative Palestinian trade union federation, the General Union of Palestinian Workers (one of the constituent mass organizations of the Palestine Liberation Organization), reiterated its steady support of BDS and denounced Sa'ad's reported statements as falling completely outside the Palestinian trade union consensus behind the boycott of Israel. The Palestinian Federation of Independent Trade Unions also issued a similar position. It is worth noting that all three federations are part of the BNC.
The Israel lobby groups in the UK and elsewhere have felt quite desperate lately in their abortive attempts to stop the spectacular growth of the BDS movement, particularly among major international trade unions. In South Africa, Great Britain, Ireland, Brazil, Canada and France trade union federations representing tens of millions of workers have endorsed -- partially or fully -- the BDS campaign against Israel. Many trade unions in Europe, Latin America and Canada have also announced their support for the Israel boycott, underlining the dramatic shift in international public opinion against Israel, especially in the aftermath of its war crimes against the Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip, which were squarely condemned by the UN Fact Finding Mission led by South African Judge, Richard Goldstone.
The BNC, including all three federations representing the Palestinian trade union movement, warmly salute all international trade unions who have endorsed BDS, confirming that this is the most effective and needed form of solidarity with the Palestinian people and the strongest challenge to Israel's criminal impunity and exceptionalism. As in the struggle against South African apartheid, Israel's occupation, colonialism and apartheid will only come to an end when international civil society shoulders the moral responsibility by holding Israel to account before international law and universal principles of human rights, and by treating it as a pariah state, as apartheid South Africa was, deserving comprehensive and sustained BDS campaigns.
Any isolated and dissonant statements attributed to any Palestinian trade union official can never be regarded as remotely representing the Palestinian trade union movement, as it would be in direct conflict with the consensus in this movement behind BDS. We urge all international trade unions to heed the call of Palestinian civil society, including the trade union movement, by endorsing BDS. We further urge all trade unions and trade union federations to sever their links with the Histadrut, a Zionist organization that has always played a key role in perpetuating Israel's occupation, colonization and system of racial discrimination, and that has justified and applauded Israel's war crimes in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
The Histadrut and Israel apologists within the international trade union movement have continuously tried to use partial comments and innuendo by this or that Palestinian trade union official to create a deceptive impression of an imagined "split" in the Palestinian trade union movement on BDS. Today, we reconfirm to the TU movement worldwide that the Palestinian trade union movement stands united in support of BDS and calls on every TU to endorse BDS. This is our best hope to end Israel's grave violations of international law and to attain our inalienable, UN-sanctioned rights, especially our right to self determination.
Source
Climate cash is 'unaccounted for'
BBC
November 25, 2009
Large sums promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, a BBC investigation has found.
Rich countries pledged $410m (£247m) a year in a 2001 declaration - but it is now unclear whether the money was paid.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promise.
The EU says the money was paid out in bilateral deals, but admits it cannot provide data to prove it.
The money was pledged in the 2001 Bonn Declaration, signed by 20 industrialised nations - the 15 countries that then made up the European Union, plus Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
They said they would pay $410m per year until 2008. The date the payments were meant to start is unclear, but the total should be between $1.6bn and $2.87bn.
The declaration said: "We are prepared to contribute $410m, which is 450 million euro, per year by 2005 with this level to be reviewed in 2008."
But only $260m has ever been paid into two UN funds earmarked for the purpose, the BBC World Service investigation has found.
"There have been promises which have not been fully materialised. There is an issue of trust," says Ban Ki-moon.
The question of finance for developing countries to tackle climate change is one of the keys to a deal at the Copenhagen summit next month.
Poor countries may not sign up to a new agreement unless they trust rich countries to keep their promises, and are satisfied with the mechanisms put in place to handle the flow of funds.
Unequal sums
The industrialised governments which drew up the Bonn Declaration say they never intended to put the money just into the UN funds.
The Declaration allowed them to spend it in "bilateral and multilateral" ways, they say.
Artur Runge-Metzger, the senior climate change negotiator for the European Union, maintains the EU has lived up to its end of the bargain.
"We can say we met the promise, climate finance has really been stepped up," he argues.
However he admits the EU cannot provide data to show it did pay the money through these bilateral and multilateral means.
"It's sometimes very hard to say what is the climate bit of this financing," he says.
Richard Myungi, a climate change negotiator for the Least Developing Countries says: "We feel frustrated, we feel betrayed."
Boni Biagini, who runs the UN funds, also believes much more money should have been paid in.
"These numbers don't match the $410m per year. Otherwise, we'd be handling billions of dollars by now," he says.
Confusion
Dr Marc Pallemaerts, who drafted the Bonn Declaration in 2001 when he was the deputy chief of staff for the European Union's Belgian Presidency, admits some developing countries may have been led to believe the promised money would go solely into the UN funds.
"Some countries may have been genuinely misled - others knew it was deliberate ambiguity," he maintains.
The Bonn Declaration is surrounded by confusion and has led to mistrust between developed and developing countries.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says any new financing agreement signed at Copenhagen must be clear.
"This whole agreement and negotiation should be based on trust and confidence," he says.
He adds that any new financing deal must be "measurable, reportable and verifiable".
© BBC MMIX
November 25, 2009
Large sums promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, a BBC investigation has found.
Rich countries pledged $410m (£247m) a year in a 2001 declaration - but it is now unclear whether the money was paid.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promise.
The EU says the money was paid out in bilateral deals, but admits it cannot provide data to prove it.
The money was pledged in the 2001 Bonn Declaration, signed by 20 industrialised nations - the 15 countries that then made up the European Union, plus Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
They said they would pay $410m per year until 2008. The date the payments were meant to start is unclear, but the total should be between $1.6bn and $2.87bn.
The declaration said: "We are prepared to contribute $410m, which is 450 million euro, per year by 2005 with this level to be reviewed in 2008."
But only $260m has ever been paid into two UN funds earmarked for the purpose, the BBC World Service investigation has found.
"There have been promises which have not been fully materialised. There is an issue of trust," says Ban Ki-moon.
The question of finance for developing countries to tackle climate change is one of the keys to a deal at the Copenhagen summit next month.
Poor countries may not sign up to a new agreement unless they trust rich countries to keep their promises, and are satisfied with the mechanisms put in place to handle the flow of funds.
Unequal sums
The industrialised governments which drew up the Bonn Declaration say they never intended to put the money just into the UN funds.
The Declaration allowed them to spend it in "bilateral and multilateral" ways, they say.
Artur Runge-Metzger, the senior climate change negotiator for the European Union, maintains the EU has lived up to its end of the bargain.
"We can say we met the promise, climate finance has really been stepped up," he argues.
However he admits the EU cannot provide data to show it did pay the money through these bilateral and multilateral means.
"It's sometimes very hard to say what is the climate bit of this financing," he says.
Richard Myungi, a climate change negotiator for the Least Developing Countries says: "We feel frustrated, we feel betrayed."
Boni Biagini, who runs the UN funds, also believes much more money should have been paid in.
"These numbers don't match the $410m per year. Otherwise, we'd be handling billions of dollars by now," he says.
Confusion
Dr Marc Pallemaerts, who drafted the Bonn Declaration in 2001 when he was the deputy chief of staff for the European Union's Belgian Presidency, admits some developing countries may have been led to believe the promised money would go solely into the UN funds.
"Some countries may have been genuinely misled - others knew it was deliberate ambiguity," he maintains.
The Bonn Declaration is surrounded by confusion and has led to mistrust between developed and developing countries.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says any new financing agreement signed at Copenhagen must be clear.
"This whole agreement and negotiation should be based on trust and confidence," he says.
He adds that any new financing deal must be "measurable, reportable and verifiable".
© BBC MMIX
"We will have to kill them all": Effie Eitam, thug messiah
Jim Holstun and Irene Morrison, The Electronic Intifada, 25 November 2009
Colonel Efraim (Fein) Eitam was only following orders when he told his troops to beat Ayyad Aqel in 1988. They beat him to death.
Eitam, who since then has held several senior posts in the Israeli government, has recently toured the US as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "Special Emissary" to the "Caravan for Democracy" program of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). This is a marriage made in heaven. Since Israel was founded, the JNF has organized the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the settlement of Jews on their expropriated land; Eitam sees himself as the messianic soldier-prophet directing future expulsions of Palestinians from Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Hillel of Buffalo, New York, invited Eitam to speak at our campus, the University at Buffalo (UB), on the recommendation of UB Professor Ernest Sternberg, a board member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and a founder of its local campus chapter.
In February 1988, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin discreetly told the Israeli army to break the bones of Palestinians rising up during the first Palestinian intifada. According to the testimony of Israeli soldiers, Colonel Eitam relayed the message to his Givati Brigade, then occupying Gaza. On 7 February, he ordered four of them to break the bones of two brothers from al-Bureij refugee camp. They cuffed and blindfolded them, beat them for a while in their own home, then took them to a secluded olive grove, where they kicked and beat them for 20 minutes. Khalid Aqel survived; his 21-year-old brother Ayyad died. In 1990, an Israeli court martial convicted these soldiers of assault, reduced their ranks, gave suspended sentences to three, and sentenced the fourth to two months ("Soldier jailed for intifada killing will sue Rabin," Guardian, 2 November 1990).
Eitam's soldiers testified he had ordered and participated in the Givati beatings. He admitted driving around Gaza with four batons in his jeep, including a shatter-proof, non-regulation knout made of thick rope. The army judges found that Eitam's "violent behavior became the norm, and was taken as an example by those under his command" ("Soldier Sentenced for Palestinian Beatings," Associated Press, 31 October 1990; "Givati Commander Denies Telling Men to 'Break Bones'", The Jerusalem Post, 23 February 1990; "Givati 4 Are Convicted", The Jerusalem Post, 2 October 1990). Still, he received no judgment for almost two years. Then, on 13 July 1992, Rabin became prime minister, and three days later, Eitam got off with a reprimand and a recommendation against promotion. The Jerusalem Post quotes sources suggesting that his likely appeal to Israel's high court of any conviction might have implicated his higher-ups, including Rabin, in the beatings and murders ("Effi Fein Reprimanded to Prevent Him Appealing to Supreme Court", 19 July 1992).
Nevertheless, when Ehud Barak became Rabin's general staff chief, he promoted Eitam to brigadier general. In December 2000, after Rabin's death, Barak's successor Shaul Mofaz refused to promote Eitam to the general staff. Chafing at the slight, Eitam gave an incendiary anti-Oslo lecture at Bar-Ilan University. He called Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat "a miserable murderer," attacked the government for sharing control of Jerusalem, and proposed a new Nakba, or dispossession: the Israeli army "can tomorrow ... conquer Judea, Samaria [the West Bank], and the Gaza Strip and expel the population there overnight. It's not a problem to do this. We have a problem of having the will to do this. As a nation we are inhibited" ("Eitam quits IDF", The Jerusalem Post, 27 December 2000).
Shortly thereafter, Eitam resigned from the army, but his career flourished. Elected to the Knesset in February 2003, he helped form the National Religious Party and the Renewed Religious National Zionist Party. In 2002-04 he held several cabinet-level portfolios in the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, including minister of housing and construction, a post he used to accelerate settlement in the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In a long interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz, Eitam called Palestinian citizens of Israel a "ticking bomb" and a "cancer" ("Dear God, this is Effi", 20 March 2002). Nations other than Israel are a "world of robots without souls." In classic fascist fashion, he stated that in war the most "sublime things in man appear." He seems to believe that he is the Messiah, saying his mission is "to save the people of Israel and the State of Israel." Such a leader, Eitam said, "also leads the Jewish people. He stands in the place where not only Ben-Gurion stood, but where Moses, too, stood. Where King David stood. So how does one do that, yet remain modest? How does one not get lost between coalition agreements and political intrigues, and a process that involves the very order of nature and the order of the heavens and the earth?" ("Continuation of Dear God, this is Effi", Haaretz, 20 March 2002).
But this modest Messiah isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Unchastened by the killing of Aqel, Eitam has continued his racist and violent incitement. At a 2002 address in a Tel Aviv synagogue, Eitam called for the murder of then Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, along with the rest of his colleagues: "If I [could] give the order now, he would be dead in 15 minutes, together with his whole gang." Of former Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade leader Marwan Barghouti, then being investigated by Israel in preparation for trial, Eitam suggested Israel should just "Take him out to an orchard and shoot him in the head" ("NRP leader Eitam: Arafat, Barghouti should be killed", The Jerusalem Post, 5 July 2002).
In typical colonial fashion he has called Palestinians "creatures who came out of the depths of darkness" who were "collectively guilty" and who could be indiscriminately killed not only if they had "blood on their hands" but because of "the evil in their heads." "We will have to kill them all," he said ("A Reporter at Large: Among the Settlers", The New Yorker, 31 May 2004).
Eitam has repeatedly called for the wholesale expulsion of Palestinians, seeing a 2002 Israeli assault on the West Bank as an opportunity to force them into Jordan, leaving "our Jewish conscience ... clean" ("Israeli nationalist hopes to persuade the country to expel Palestinians, Associated Press, 7 April 2002). In 2006, he stated: "We will have to expel the great majority of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]" ("Leftist MKs blast Eitam's statements on Arabs", Haaretz, 11 September 2006).
Addressing Arab Knesset members in 2008, he said, "the day will come when we will banish you from this house ... and from the national home. ... You ... should be expelled to Gaza, where your people, who are fighting us, dwell; that is where you belong" ("Security around MK Eitam boosted after anti-Arab speech", Ynet, 15 April 2008). During Israel's attacks on Gaza last winter, Eitam advocated mass transfer of Gaza civilians and turning the Strip into a "free hunting zone" ("Audio Exclusive: One Jerusalem Interview with Israeli General Effie Eitam (Res)", One Jerusalem, 7 January 2009).
The Israeli press has documented other staggering statements by Eitam: on the Israeli army's "very moral" but also fatal use of Jenin teenager Nidal Abu Muhsein as a human shield; his demand that Israel "declare war" on Palestinian citizens of Israel living in the Negev; and his calls for outlawing commemoration of the Nakba; executing Israeli politicians who favor returning occupied territories to Palestinians; and "decapitating" Hamas leaders.
Eitam's visit protested
When University at Buffalo community members asked Hillel to cancel Eitam's meeting because of his previous violence and hate speech and the damage his visit would do to local interfaith efforts, it refused. Hillel and other Eitam supporters responded that the scrupulously-documented charges made against him were a "medieval blood libel"; that Eitam never said or did these things; that he was misquoted (he seems to be misquoted a lot) or quoted out of context; that the leading Israeli newspapers reporting his words and deeds were part of a vast left-wing conspiracy; and that even if Eitam did say and do these things, he represents an important sector of Israeli opinion that should be heard.
On 2 November, Hillel held a noon meeting with Eitam for University at Buffalo students. Before the talk, one Eitam supporter talked with another about killing a protestor, while third called out to a student wearing a headscarf, "Why don't you go blow yourself up?" Eitam's speech consisted of a tirade about Iran, Hamas and Hizballah, and how efforts to make peace with them all failed, and "withdrawal" from Gaza was also a failure. Eitam compared Israel's actions to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, explaining that [US President] Truman had to "incinerate 200,000 people in a second" to protect American troops. When challenged repeatedly by one of us why he has made racist statements such as calling Palestinian citizens of Israel a "cancer," Eitam simply denied ever having said them and insisted his words had been taken "far out of context" ("Hillel Student to Arab Student: "Why don't you go blow yourself up?", The Buffalo Activist, 2 November 2009).
Eitam also spoke at a packed evening lecture. Hillel President Dan Lenard began by denouncing the "fascists" who had presented critical information about Eitam. Consistent with his earlier performance, Eitam's speech was a mish-mash of Arab-hating, Israel-boosting, and bare-faced lies. He insisted that Iran constitutes an unprecedented existential threat, and indeed, he has been calling for an attack on Iran since at least 2006 ("MK Eitam: Strike Iran now", Ynet, 18 May 2006). Astonishingly, he said Iran sponsored al-Qaeda's attacks. And again he compared the course taken by the US with Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the course the US and Israel should take with Iran.
But Eitam couldn't completely forget his favorite enemies. He claimed that Palestinians fled Palestine in 1947-48 on the broadcast orders of Arab leaders -- a claim long discredited. He said that a steady barrage of Hamas-fired Qassam rockets prompted the Gaza massacre, though Israeli sources, including Ehud Olmert's press spokesman, demonstrate that Hamas ceased all rocket fire between 19 June and 4 November 2008, when Israelis infiltrated Gaza and killed six Hamas activists. Palestinians on the West Bank, he says, are desperate for Israel to maintain the occupation and protect them from Hamas.
It was not a memorable performance. Eitam left the hall with a posse of three armed guards (or so a supporter reports) and a few diehard supporters. Outside the event, 40 students and community members protested Eitam's presence on campus; they had been alerted by UB Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestine-Israel Committee of the Western New York Peace Center. A few Eitam supporters spat at protesters or yelled "terrorists!" but more passers-by joined in with the protest.
Eitam's policies may not ultimately be much different from those of, say, former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. But there is an air of desperation in organizing a US tour by such an unmanicured monster. On the other hand, the quickly-organized protest was one of the most spirited in recent UB memory. As the recent actions against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in New Orleans, the University of Kentucky, the University of Arkansas, the University of Chicago and in San Francisco suggests, Israeli war criminals can no longer count on respectful US campus forums for state-funded propaganda tours. There's something in the air.
Jim Holstun teaches world literature at SUNY Buffalo and has published several articles for The Electronic Intifada. He can be reached at jamesholstun A T hotmail D O T com. Irene Morrison is Assistant to the Director of the Western New York Peace Center. She can be reached at Irene A T wnypeace D O T org. Both are members of the WNYPC Palestine-Israel Committee.
 |
| Efraim Eitam |
Eitam, who since then has held several senior posts in the Israeli government, has recently toured the US as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "Special Emissary" to the "Caravan for Democracy" program of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). This is a marriage made in heaven. Since Israel was founded, the JNF has organized the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the settlement of Jews on their expropriated land; Eitam sees himself as the messianic soldier-prophet directing future expulsions of Palestinians from Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Hillel of Buffalo, New York, invited Eitam to speak at our campus, the University at Buffalo (UB), on the recommendation of UB Professor Ernest Sternberg, a board member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and a founder of its local campus chapter.
In February 1988, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin discreetly told the Israeli army to break the bones of Palestinians rising up during the first Palestinian intifada. According to the testimony of Israeli soldiers, Colonel Eitam relayed the message to his Givati Brigade, then occupying Gaza. On 7 February, he ordered four of them to break the bones of two brothers from al-Bureij refugee camp. They cuffed and blindfolded them, beat them for a while in their own home, then took them to a secluded olive grove, where they kicked and beat them for 20 minutes. Khalid Aqel survived; his 21-year-old brother Ayyad died. In 1990, an Israeli court martial convicted these soldiers of assault, reduced their ranks, gave suspended sentences to three, and sentenced the fourth to two months ("Soldier jailed for intifada killing will sue Rabin," Guardian, 2 November 1990).
Eitam's soldiers testified he had ordered and participated in the Givati beatings. He admitted driving around Gaza with four batons in his jeep, including a shatter-proof, non-regulation knout made of thick rope. The army judges found that Eitam's "violent behavior became the norm, and was taken as an example by those under his command" ("Soldier Sentenced for Palestinian Beatings," Associated Press, 31 October 1990; "Givati Commander Denies Telling Men to 'Break Bones'", The Jerusalem Post, 23 February 1990; "Givati 4 Are Convicted", The Jerusalem Post, 2 October 1990). Still, he received no judgment for almost two years. Then, on 13 July 1992, Rabin became prime minister, and three days later, Eitam got off with a reprimand and a recommendation against promotion. The Jerusalem Post quotes sources suggesting that his likely appeal to Israel's high court of any conviction might have implicated his higher-ups, including Rabin, in the beatings and murders ("Effi Fein Reprimanded to Prevent Him Appealing to Supreme Court", 19 July 1992).
Nevertheless, when Ehud Barak became Rabin's general staff chief, he promoted Eitam to brigadier general. In December 2000, after Rabin's death, Barak's successor Shaul Mofaz refused to promote Eitam to the general staff. Chafing at the slight, Eitam gave an incendiary anti-Oslo lecture at Bar-Ilan University. He called Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat "a miserable murderer," attacked the government for sharing control of Jerusalem, and proposed a new Nakba, or dispossession: the Israeli army "can tomorrow ... conquer Judea, Samaria [the West Bank], and the Gaza Strip and expel the population there overnight. It's not a problem to do this. We have a problem of having the will to do this. As a nation we are inhibited" ("Eitam quits IDF", The Jerusalem Post, 27 December 2000).
Shortly thereafter, Eitam resigned from the army, but his career flourished. Elected to the Knesset in February 2003, he helped form the National Religious Party and the Renewed Religious National Zionist Party. In 2002-04 he held several cabinet-level portfolios in the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, including minister of housing and construction, a post he used to accelerate settlement in the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In a long interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz, Eitam called Palestinian citizens of Israel a "ticking bomb" and a "cancer" ("Dear God, this is Effi", 20 March 2002). Nations other than Israel are a "world of robots without souls." In classic fascist fashion, he stated that in war the most "sublime things in man appear." He seems to believe that he is the Messiah, saying his mission is "to save the people of Israel and the State of Israel." Such a leader, Eitam said, "also leads the Jewish people. He stands in the place where not only Ben-Gurion stood, but where Moses, too, stood. Where King David stood. So how does one do that, yet remain modest? How does one not get lost between coalition agreements and political intrigues, and a process that involves the very order of nature and the order of the heavens and the earth?" ("Continuation of Dear God, this is Effi", Haaretz, 20 March 2002).
But this modest Messiah isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Unchastened by the killing of Aqel, Eitam has continued his racist and violent incitement. At a 2002 address in a Tel Aviv synagogue, Eitam called for the murder of then Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, along with the rest of his colleagues: "If I [could] give the order now, he would be dead in 15 minutes, together with his whole gang." Of former Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade leader Marwan Barghouti, then being investigated by Israel in preparation for trial, Eitam suggested Israel should just "Take him out to an orchard and shoot him in the head" ("NRP leader Eitam: Arafat, Barghouti should be killed", The Jerusalem Post, 5 July 2002).
In typical colonial fashion he has called Palestinians "creatures who came out of the depths of darkness" who were "collectively guilty" and who could be indiscriminately killed not only if they had "blood on their hands" but because of "the evil in their heads." "We will have to kill them all," he said ("A Reporter at Large: Among the Settlers", The New Yorker, 31 May 2004).
Eitam has repeatedly called for the wholesale expulsion of Palestinians, seeing a 2002 Israeli assault on the West Bank as an opportunity to force them into Jordan, leaving "our Jewish conscience ... clean" ("Israeli nationalist hopes to persuade the country to expel Palestinians, Associated Press, 7 April 2002). In 2006, he stated: "We will have to expel the great majority of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]" ("Leftist MKs blast Eitam's statements on Arabs", Haaretz, 11 September 2006).
Addressing Arab Knesset members in 2008, he said, "the day will come when we will banish you from this house ... and from the national home. ... You ... should be expelled to Gaza, where your people, who are fighting us, dwell; that is where you belong" ("Security around MK Eitam boosted after anti-Arab speech", Ynet, 15 April 2008). During Israel's attacks on Gaza last winter, Eitam advocated mass transfer of Gaza civilians and turning the Strip into a "free hunting zone" ("Audio Exclusive: One Jerusalem Interview with Israeli General Effie Eitam (Res)", One Jerusalem, 7 January 2009).
The Israeli press has documented other staggering statements by Eitam: on the Israeli army's "very moral" but also fatal use of Jenin teenager Nidal Abu Muhsein as a human shield; his demand that Israel "declare war" on Palestinian citizens of Israel living in the Negev; and his calls for outlawing commemoration of the Nakba; executing Israeli politicians who favor returning occupied territories to Palestinians; and "decapitating" Hamas leaders.
Eitam's visit protested
When University at Buffalo community members asked Hillel to cancel Eitam's meeting because of his previous violence and hate speech and the damage his visit would do to local interfaith efforts, it refused. Hillel and other Eitam supporters responded that the scrupulously-documented charges made against him were a "medieval blood libel"; that Eitam never said or did these things; that he was misquoted (he seems to be misquoted a lot) or quoted out of context; that the leading Israeli newspapers reporting his words and deeds were part of a vast left-wing conspiracy; and that even if Eitam did say and do these things, he represents an important sector of Israeli opinion that should be heard.
On 2 November, Hillel held a noon meeting with Eitam for University at Buffalo students. Before the talk, one Eitam supporter talked with another about killing a protestor, while third called out to a student wearing a headscarf, "Why don't you go blow yourself up?" Eitam's speech consisted of a tirade about Iran, Hamas and Hizballah, and how efforts to make peace with them all failed, and "withdrawal" from Gaza was also a failure. Eitam compared Israel's actions to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, explaining that [US President] Truman had to "incinerate 200,000 people in a second" to protect American troops. When challenged repeatedly by one of us why he has made racist statements such as calling Palestinian citizens of Israel a "cancer," Eitam simply denied ever having said them and insisted his words had been taken "far out of context" ("Hillel Student to Arab Student: "Why don't you go blow yourself up?", The Buffalo Activist, 2 November 2009).
Eitam also spoke at a packed evening lecture. Hillel President Dan Lenard began by denouncing the "fascists" who had presented critical information about Eitam. Consistent with his earlier performance, Eitam's speech was a mish-mash of Arab-hating, Israel-boosting, and bare-faced lies. He insisted that Iran constitutes an unprecedented existential threat, and indeed, he has been calling for an attack on Iran since at least 2006 ("MK Eitam: Strike Iran now", Ynet, 18 May 2006). Astonishingly, he said Iran sponsored al-Qaeda's attacks. And again he compared the course taken by the US with Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the course the US and Israel should take with Iran.
But Eitam couldn't completely forget his favorite enemies. He claimed that Palestinians fled Palestine in 1947-48 on the broadcast orders of Arab leaders -- a claim long discredited. He said that a steady barrage of Hamas-fired Qassam rockets prompted the Gaza massacre, though Israeli sources, including Ehud Olmert's press spokesman, demonstrate that Hamas ceased all rocket fire between 19 June and 4 November 2008, when Israelis infiltrated Gaza and killed six Hamas activists. Palestinians on the West Bank, he says, are desperate for Israel to maintain the occupation and protect them from Hamas.
It was not a memorable performance. Eitam left the hall with a posse of three armed guards (or so a supporter reports) and a few diehard supporters. Outside the event, 40 students and community members protested Eitam's presence on campus; they had been alerted by UB Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestine-Israel Committee of the Western New York Peace Center. A few Eitam supporters spat at protesters or yelled "terrorists!" but more passers-by joined in with the protest.
Eitam's policies may not ultimately be much different from those of, say, former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. But there is an air of desperation in organizing a US tour by such an unmanicured monster. On the other hand, the quickly-organized protest was one of the most spirited in recent UB memory. As the recent actions against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in New Orleans, the University of Kentucky, the University of Arkansas, the University of Chicago and in San Francisco suggests, Israeli war criminals can no longer count on respectful US campus forums for state-funded propaganda tours. There's something in the air.
Jim Holstun teaches world literature at SUNY Buffalo and has published several articles for The Electronic Intifada. He can be reached at jamesholstun A T hotmail D O T com. Irene Morrison is Assistant to the Director of the Western New York Peace Center. She can be reached at Irene A T wnypeace D O T org. Both are members of the WNYPC Palestine-Israel Committee.
Landmine compensation sought
By David Stanford in Matrouh - Al-Jazeera - November 24, 2009
The Prince lay a wreath at the Commonwealth cemetery outside El-Alamein on October 24, before moving on to Cairo where he met with Ahmed Nazif, the Egyptian prime minister, various government ministers and a number of British investors in Egypt.
The British government has perhaps been singled out as the primary target for legal action because it is the only nation to have ruled out any further funding to the Egyptian government, either for landmine clearance or the compensation or rehabilitation of victims.
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| Bedouin farmer Abdelaziz Hamed's daughter lost her foot in a landmine blast [STANFORD] |
A group of Egyptian Bedouins is threatening to sue the British government over the rising toll of deaths and injuries caused by British landmines and unexploded ordnance left in the Egyptian desert after the Second World War.
The Organisation of Landmine Victims for Economic Development is seeking cash settlements for the victims of explosions caused by British landmines, bombs, mortars and artillery shells still buried beneath the sand on Egypt's north-west coast.
There are said to be some 17 million such explosive remnants of war remaining today, testimony to the fierce fighting between Allied and Axis forces in the battle for North Africa.
The group threatening the action represents some 660 registered survivors located along the Mediterranean coast from El-Alamein to the border with Libya, many of whom have lost limbs or been blinded.
Due to chronic under-reporting of incidents, the true number of injured persons may be in the thousands. In addition, several thousand Bedouins are likely to have been killed in explosions over the past six decades, according to the Egyptian government.
Friendly approach
The survivors' group says it is planning a "friendly" approach to the British government in the first instance, in the hope of reaching an agreement in principle and opening negotiations on compensation levels.
If this initial approach fails, the group says it will seek to prosecute the British government for damages under international law, although it has yet to formulate a detailed legal strategy or indeed confirm which court it might approach with its grievance. It seems likely that they will have to prove their case in the Egyptian courts before taking their claim further afield.
The first volley in the group's campaign takes the form of a letter sent to Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, during his visit to Egypt last month.
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| Om Da Rahouma directs the victims' group [DIFFIDENTI] |
As the Prince prepared to lay his wreath, the survivors' group sent him a letter outlining their stance and detailing the plight of those victims who have lost their livelihoods and "need assistance to perform very simple functions required for survival, such as eating, walking or even using the bathroom".
The group is banking on the Prince's influence as the UK's special representative for international trade and investment.
However, they have not yet received a reply to their letter.
Leading the campaign is Om Da Rahouma, the director of the victims' organisation, which is based in the seaside holiday town of Marsa Matrouh.
"In the letter, I introduce the problem of the victims and ask for appropriate compensation that would provide a comfortable life for them," Rahouma said.
"This is a friendly request. If there is no response, we will go to the international courts, and we will file a case to obtain the rights of our people."
Consulting lawyers
Rahouma says that his group is in the process of consulting lawyers from Cairo on legal strategy, and has yet to come up with even a ballpark figure for the proposed settlements.
"First of all, the British government should approve and admit the general principal of our claim, which is compensation. Then we will negotiate details," he said.
Typical of the landmine victims is Jacob Mohammed Jali, a Bedouin farmer from the village of Negeila. He lost a leg in 1988 while out grazing his sheep in the desert.
He says he stepped on an object beneath the sand, which exploded. The prosthetic leg provided by the authorities is uncomfortable, he says, so he would rather not wear it.
What he needs more than a leg is money to re-start his business. Now unable to take his sheep out grazing, he wants the cash to purchase 50 sheep and enough dry feed to fatten them up in his garden.
He estimates that it would cost around $8,000 to get him going. Such an investment would enable him and his five children to escape poverty for good, he says.
One potential complication for any legal claim is the fact that landmines and unexploded ordnance were also left behind in large numbers by the Axis powers, Italy and Germany.
The mine that removed Jacob Mohammed Jali's leg may well have been of Italian or German origin. The same applies to the large majority of victims, who are rarely able to identify the nature of the device that caused their injuries.
The Egyptian government has long sought compensation from all three nations, as well as New Zealand and Australia, which had troops under British command during the fighting.
Since the 1990s all five nations have responded with a range of individual donations, typically in the form of landmine detection equipment and technical training.
Huge sums
However, the total offered has been small in comparison to the cost of clearing the bombs and mines entirely, estimated by the Egyptian army to be around $250mn, not to mention the potentially huge sums that might be required to compensate the thousands of victims.
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| Jacob Mohammed Jali lost his leg to a landmine [STANFORD] |
In 2007, Britain's Department for International Development made a donation of £250,000 accompanied by a letter stating that due to Egypt's status as a middle-income nation, no further contributions would be made.
Egyptian officials are said to have found the British government's stance unreasonable and the letter itself "offending".
Egypt may well be a middle-income nation, they say, but it is one struggling with a plethora of other social and economic issues. The issue of landmine survivors ranks low in the hierarchy of concerns for the ministries responsible for health and welfare.
The British Embassy in Cairo points out that the UK spends approximately $17mn annually on clearing landmines and other explosive remnants of war worldwide, and has a policy of focusing efforts on poorer nations.
For both the Egyptian government and the victims' organisation, this is not the point. For them, it is a matter of the former combatants taking responsibility for the harm they have inflicted.
No precedent
The decision to present the case to Prince Andrew during his recent visit appears to have been made after discussions between the victims' organisation and Egyptian government officials.
Both parties will no doubt be aware of Prince Andrew's role in promoting British business interests abroad, and the issue of compensation might well form part of wider discussions on the nature of British investment in Egypt.
They will also be aware of reparations made by Italy to Libya last year for 30 years of colonial rule. The compensation took the form of a $5bn investment package, including the provision of pensions to those injured by landmines laid by the Italian army during the Second World War.
Om Da Rahouma, says he knows of no case in which landmine victims have sued a foreign nation for damages. However, he says he is not daunted by the challenge facing him.
"I am obliged to do this because it is my duty," he says.
"We received millions of promises and supposed solutions, but nothing has happened. I will go to court anyway, regardless of the consequences. At least our voices will be heard all over the world."
Israel police arrest Mossad agent planting car bomb in Tel Aviv
BBC News
November 24, 2009 23:29 CST
A trainee spy for Israel's secret service agency Mossad was arrested by Tel Aviv police while taking part in a training operation, media reports say.
The young trainee was spotted by a female passer-by as he planted a fake bomb under a vehicle in the city.
He was only able to persuade police he was a spy after being taken in by an officer for questioning on Monday.
The authorities have refused to comment on the story although Israeli media outlets have expressed their surprise.
'Just a drill'
Mossad does not tell local uniformed police about its training exercises.
The country's commercial Channel 10 said it hoped the agency's operatives were "more effective abroad", AFP news agency reported.
Niva Ben-Harush, the woman who reported the novice's suspicious behaviour to police, told Ynet News that 15 minutes after she made the call, Tel Aviv's port was closed and people evacuated.
She said police initially asked her to come with them and identify the suspect.
"But after a few minutes, they told me it was just a drill," she said..
Up to three agency employees were believed to have been suspended following the incident, Ynet reported.
It quoted the prime minister's office as saying it did "not respond to information about such activities undertaken by security agencies or attributed to them".
Source
November 24, 2009 23:29 CST
A trainee spy for Israel's secret service agency Mossad was arrested by Tel Aviv police while taking part in a training operation, media reports say.
The young trainee was spotted by a female passer-by as he planted a fake bomb under a vehicle in the city.
He was only able to persuade police he was a spy after being taken in by an officer for questioning on Monday.
The authorities have refused to comment on the story although Israeli media outlets have expressed their surprise.
'Just a drill'
Mossad does not tell local uniformed police about its training exercises.
The country's commercial Channel 10 said it hoped the agency's operatives were "more effective abroad", AFP news agency reported.
Niva Ben-Harush, the woman who reported the novice's suspicious behaviour to police, told Ynet News that 15 minutes after she made the call, Tel Aviv's port was closed and people evacuated.
She said police initially asked her to come with them and identify the suspect.
"But after a few minutes, they told me it was just a drill," she said..
Up to three agency employees were believed to have been suspended following the incident, Ynet reported.
It quoted the prime minister's office as saying it did "not respond to information about such activities undertaken by security agencies or attributed to them".
Source
Rights group: 69 cases of Palestinian olive trees destroyed, but no prosecutions
By Chaim Levinson, Haaretz
November 25, 2009
The human rights organization Yesh Din says not one of the 69 complaints filed during the past four years on damage to Palestinians' trees in the West Bank has resulted in an indictment. The organization released a report on the matter Tuesday and makes specific reference to damage caused to olive groves, central to the livelihood of Palestinian villagers.
The olive harvest season is coming to an end in most parts of the West Bank this week, with the exception of those areas at higher elevations. Attacks targeting trees harvested by Palestinians - olive trees in particular, but also almond, fig, lemon and others - has been on the rise in recent years.
During the past four years, Yesh Din filed 69 complaints which are under investigation by police in the West Bank. The toll involves many thousands of trees in numerous areas, from Susya in the southern Hebron Hills to Salem in northern Samaria.
According to the report, 27 cases (40 percent of the cases for which complaints were filed) were documented between January and October of this year. Notwithstanding Israel Defense Forces reports that the olive harvest passed "quietly" during the months of September and October, the human rights group reported dozens of incidents in which hundreds of Palestinian trees were damaged.
Full article
November 25, 2009
The human rights organization Yesh Din says not one of the 69 complaints filed during the past four years on damage to Palestinians' trees in the West Bank has resulted in an indictment. The organization released a report on the matter Tuesday and makes specific reference to damage caused to olive groves, central to the livelihood of Palestinian villagers.
The olive harvest season is coming to an end in most parts of the West Bank this week, with the exception of those areas at higher elevations. Attacks targeting trees harvested by Palestinians - olive trees in particular, but also almond, fig, lemon and others - has been on the rise in recent years.
During the past four years, Yesh Din filed 69 complaints which are under investigation by police in the West Bank. The toll involves many thousands of trees in numerous areas, from Susya in the southern Hebron Hills to Salem in northern Samaria.
According to the report, 27 cases (40 percent of the cases for which complaints were filed) were documented between January and October of this year. Notwithstanding Israel Defense Forces reports that the olive harvest passed "quietly" during the months of September and October, the human rights group reported dozens of incidents in which hundreds of Palestinian trees were damaged.
Full article
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