"They killed him because he was Palestinian"

Jody McIntyre writing from Yabad, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 14 October 2009

Fuad's family in their home, his mother and father holding a picture of their dead son. (Hamde Abu Rahme)

On 30 September 2009 at 11am, 17-year-old Fuad Mahmoud Nayif Turkman was standing outside his school in the village of Yabad, when he was run over by an Israeli military jeep. Yabad is located in the occupied West Bank, near the city of Jenin. An Israeli military spokesperson later claimed that "hundreds" of Palestinians were "rioting" in the area, and that the jeep had experienced "mechanical difficulties." However, eyewitnesses from the scene say that the students were doing nothing of the sort. Jody McIntyre spoke with Fuad's father, Mahmoud Turkman, and his 12-year-old brother Fadi for The Electronic Intifada:

Jody McIntyre: What was Fuad like?

Mahmoud Turkman: He was like any boy, really. Worked hard in school, popular with his friends. He was in his last year at school and was planning to go on to university. Fuad always told me wanted to finish his studies as soon as possible in order to support the family [which includes 11 brothers and sisters]. During the school holidays, Fuad would come to help me with my work building houses. Once he asked me, "Father, you work so hard all the time to give us money and put food on the table -- why do we take it so for granted?"

At home he was always on his computer -- he bought it independently, refusing to allow me to contribute anything to the cost.

Fuad was always keen on looking the part, dressing nicely and playing with his hair. I don't know if there was a girl he liked. If there was he was too shy to tell us.

Fuad was a very quiet boy; he never made problems with anyone.

JM: When was the last time you saw Fuad?

MT: The last time I spoke to Fuad, he said that he was keen to finish school so that he could get married. I told him that after your brother is released from jail [Fuad's older brother has 12 months of a six-year sentence remaining] I want to make a big party for both of you.

I once told Fuad that I was worried that my house wasn't big enough for both him and his brother, and he told me, "Don't worry, we can swap, sleeping one night each here."

A woman who lives near us recently traveled to Mecca, and when she got back she gave Fuad a necklace. She told him to wear it because she was afraid that something bad was going to happen to him -- that was two days before he was killed.

JM: Where were you when you heard the news?

MT: On the day Fuad was killed, I was trying to get permission to visit his brother in prison. Fuad's uncle called and told me that something had happened at to my son at the school, and that they were at the hospital and I should try to come as quickly as possible, but he told me that Fuad was fine. He didn't want me to face the pain alone.

When I got to the hospital, I could see that my son was in bad shape -- many tubes were stuck into his body and nose, but he was still alive.

But when I went to stroke Fuad's arms, I could feel him dying inside. I quickly recited a passage from the Quran, to ask God to take my son to heaven. The rest of the family arrived to see Fuad, but the doctors took him away to another room to perform surgery. Unfortunately, it was too late.

JM: Was anyone at the scene when he was injured?

MT: Fuad was standing on the road [of his school] with a group of friends, when the Israeli military jeep suddenly swerved left off the main road toward them. All of his friends jumped out of the way in shock, but Fuad stayed where he was -- he stuck his hands in the air and waved his arms for the jeep to stop.

It ran straight into him, reversed over his body, and then drove forward again crushing Fuad underneath for a third time. All the teachers and boys shouted for the soldiers to stop so they could help their injured friend, but the soldiers instead closed the school gate so that nobody could get to Fuad. The teachers asked the soldiers if they realized what they had just done, but they replied, "We haven't done anything wrong. This is normal."

JM: Why do you think Fuad was killed?

MT: Why? Because he is Palestinian. As the soldiers said, this is normal. The Israeli army doesn't care about the life of any Palestinian, so this can happen any time -- they can kill anyone they like. When they ran Fuad over, they didn't even look under the jeep to see what had happened, but were more interested in closing the school gate so that nobody could help him.

They then called three more jeeps for back-up, and when they drove away, the jeep rode over Fuad's body, still trapped underneath, for a fourth time! This shows their blatant disregard for the lives of Palestinian boys.

One of Fuad's brothers, also a student at the school, saw this and jumped over the school gate to help Fuad, so the soldiers started kicking him and beating him with their guns until he was bleeding from his wounds. They didn't care -- they had murdered one boy, and then they wanted to kill his brother as well.

Fuad was left alone for 40 minutes. He wasn't dead yet, but nobody was allowed forward to help. Afterwards, the soldiers told the teachers that the whole thing was an accident, but still didn't even have the decency to call an ambulance, even though they had one on call just two minutes away. Only once the soldiers thought Fuad was dead did they re-open the school gate and let the people inside go to help him.

Maybe if the soldiers had shot my son I would be able to come to terms with his death, but for it to have happened in such an undignified manner is very difficult for me to comprehend. The road he was standing on is only for the school, and is around 40 meters away from the main road, so when they swerved left so sharply, they did it because they wanted to kill someone. By the time they had run over his body so many times, Fuad's liver was lying on the pavement. My brother wrapped it in plastic so that I wouldn't have to see it.

During the second intifada, there was an accident here in Yabad where an Israeli jeep lost control and flipped over. My brother, Fuad's uncle, saw this happen and went to help them, calling an ambulance and even helping to retrieve their weapons. The soldiers had been involved in an accident, not fighting, and you help anyone in an accident. But when Fuad was lying on the ground, close to his death, and the soldiers claimed it was an accident, they had no interest in calling an ambulance. Furthermore, every Israeli military vehicle has someone who is trained in first aid, in case one of the soldiers is injured, but they refused to help Fuad. All the teachers had cars to drive Fuad to the hospital, but the soldiers prevented them from doing so.

Now, none of the students want to go back to school, because they are afraid that they will be the next victim of this occupation. All the fathers want to send their children to different schools.

JM: How has his death affected family life?

MT: In many ways! Fuad was great with the family, and got along with all of his brothers and sisters. Now, when I walk through the house and see all of his things still lying where they were -- his bed, his computer, his clothes -- I feel like he is still here with us.

Fuad's youngest brother is three years old, and he used to go to Fuad when he was on his computer and ask him to play music so he could dance to it. Every time Fuad walked through the front gate to the house, he would run to hug him. Now he always asks me, "Where is Fuad? I miss Fuad -- I want Fuad here!" I told him that Fuad has gone to heaven.

All his brothers and sisters loved him immensely, and they are so, so sad that they will never see him again.

JM: What were Fuad's political views?

MT: Fuad always told me that he thought we could make peace here in Palestine. He hated to see the fighting between Palestinians and Israelis, and desperately yearned for freedom; to be able to go anywhere he wanted, without walls or checkpoints blocking his path. He wanted peace, because it would mean that he could go to school without being afraid.

JM: What would you say to world leaders?

MT: We want peace. We need to find a solution where we live in freedom. We have a very difficult life here, and every Palestinian person is suffering. People are dying as they are held and beaten at checkpoints, children have been killed, pregnant women with their babies still in their bellies have been murdered, so the world needs to help.

JM: Fadi, how do you remember your older brother?

Fadi Turkman: I keep seeing Fuad in my dreams, playing and joking with us. I was in class at school when my teacher said to me, "Go to your house, your brother has died." I ran all the way home and when I got there I started crying.

Fuad always helped me with my school work ... in fact, we helped each other. He let me play on his computer. We went to the mosque together.

The night before he died, Fuad was here at the house playing with me and my friends.

I always used to tell Fuad everything I wanted to do when I grew up, and he promised to take me everywhere in the world.

Jody McIntyre is a journalist from the United Kingdom, currently living in the occupied West Bank village of Bilin. Jody has cerebral palsy, and travels in a wheelchair. He writes a blog for Ctrl.Alt.Shift, entitled "Life on Wheels," which can be found at www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk. He can be reached at jody.mcintyre AT gmail DOT com.
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Dumb show: Matthews asks ‘who’s funding neocon front groups?’ with nary a word about Israel

by Philip Weiss on October 13, 2009

Bill Kristol

Tonight Chris Matthews, my favorite broadcaster, followed the Liz Cheney story with a segment on Cheney’s new org, Keep America Safe. Matthews said boldly that Keep America Safe is a neoconservative "front" group, ala The American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century, and the Committee on the Present Danger. He said that Bill Kristol, who pushed the Iraq war for years, is involved with Cheney’s group after an unsuccessful stint at the New York Times. Now Kristol wants to bomb Iran. Has since 2006. Then very nearly spluttering, Matthews asked Who funds these groups?

Good question.

His guests were investigative journalists David Corn and Mike Isikoff. Everyone was very mocking of Kristol’s efforts, and the neocon orgs. Corn said that neocon groups were "genetically" the same as Communist/Trotskyite/Stalinist sectarians of the 30s, they shared that heritage.

Mike Isikoff

Isikoff answered Matthews’s question by saying that these groups got "seed money from wealthy donors," including Sheldon Adelson, casino king.

The group laughed about Adelson for a bit.

The segment was a disgraceful charade. Adelson and Kristol care about Israel. That is the core of their political engagement. That is why Kristol, a proudly parochial Jew, wants to attack Iran. The subject was never broached.

Gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson

Matthews regularly brings up Irish Catholic identity when he has a fellow Irish Catholic on. In this segment, it would have been only fair to a viewer to bring up Jewish identity and Zionism. But Isikoff and Corn are both Jewish, and neither of them opened the door on these important matters, and fearless Chris Matthews is afraid to touch the matter. Corn’s "genetic" statement was a kind of code.

How helpful is this to a viewer when we all know that neoconservatism grew out of the Jewish community and is still largely Jewish/Zionist? And its foreign-policy concerns always revolve around Israel. When will the ban on mainstream coverage of Walt and Mearsheimer end?

As to funding, as I have reported, Sheldon Adelson gave three tranches of $100,000 to the Republican party in 2000. The last one came after Bush’s victory was affirmed by the Supreme Court, in December, and at the very same time Doug Feith, the nebbish lawyer and Zionist, was named an Under Secretary of Defense. Adelson and Feith were both involved with One Jerusalem, which was opposed to the peace process. They got their wish. Bush had nothing to do with the peace process. Feith believes that Judea and Samaria, biblical words for the West Bank, are part of Israel.

What’s money got to do with American politics?

And as to that other neocon front group, AEI, it supplied more brains to the Bush administration than anyone. Even Dick Cheney was at AEI. What did he drink there? AEI is chaired by Bruce Kovner, the secretive hedge king who is closely associated with Zionist neocons. What is the role of Jewish money in our politics, and how much of that Jewish giving is wrapped around a dedication to the Jewish state? How many liberal hawks also care about Israel? Why did Chuck Schumer vote for the Iraq war? Why did Hillary?

Matthews would never cut Christians a break in a similar religious/political context.

Related:

Matthews tiptoes past the neocons’ tribal politics yet again

Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini

By Tom Kington in Rome
guardian.co.uk, 13 October 2009
Excerpt

Benito Mussolini was paid £100 a week by MI5 to keep Italy in the first world war.

Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.

Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.

Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare's papers.

As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.

"The last thing Britain wanted were pro-peace strikes bringing the factories in Milan to a halt. It was a lot of money to pay a man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash," said Martland.

"I have no evidence to prove it, but I suspect that Mussolini, who was a noted womaniser, also spent a good deal of the money on his mistresses."

After the armistice, Mussolini began his rise to power, assisted by electoral fraud and blackshirt violence, establishing a fascist dictorship by the mid-1920s.

His colonial ambitions in Africa brought him into contact with his old paymaster again in 1935. Now the British foreign secretary, Hoare signed the Hoare-Laval pact, which gave Italy control over Abyssinia.

"There is no reason to believe the two men were friends, although Hoare did have an enduring love affair with Italy," said Martland, whose research is included in Christopher Andrew's history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, which was published last week.

Tony Blair and the business of covering up war crimes

By Jim Holstun, The Electronic Intifada, 14 October 2009

On 7 October 2009, Tony Blair gave a lecture at a New York university. In responding to an unexpectedly direct student question, he publicly joined, for the first time, the US and Israeli Zionist consensus rejecting the Goldstone report.

On 27 June 2007, Blair left his job as UK prime minister under the cloud of the war on Iraq that he had concocted with former US President George W. Bush. Just hours later, he assumed his new position as the Special Envoy to the Mideast Quartet (EU, Russia, UN, US). He had long been a Zionist and a member of Labor Friends of Israel, and he received heartfelt farewells-and-hellos from Ehud Olmert ("A true friend of the State of Israel") and Tzipi Livni ("a very-well appreciated figure in Israel"). Palestinians living under Israeli occupation did not find this a very a promising development.

Though Blair spends only a week a month in the Middle East, he has managed to keep busy. He maintains a grueling, globe-trotting schedule of lectures, for which he receives up to $500,000. On top of this, he has been at work on his memoirs, for which he received a $7.3 million advance. Consulting work brought him $3.2 million (including a bonus) from J. P. Morgan Chase and $800,000 from Zurich Financial Services. By October 2008, he had amassed at least $19 million, far outdistancing even the enterprising Bill Clinton. He is thought to be the highest paid public speaker in the world.

Blair's schedule has caused some concern in the Middle East. His office insists that his "current role in the Middle East takes up the largest proportion of his time," but in late 2008, a Western diplomat in Jerusalem wondered if "his overstretchedness has produced a tactical blunder," while a UN official in Jerusalem said, "There is a general sense that he is not around" ("Lectures see Tony Blair earnings jump over #12," The Times, 29 October 2008). In September 2008, a coalition of Mideast aid groups accused the Quartet of "losing its grip," adding that its "failings could have serious ramifications for implementing international law around the globe" ("Aid groups: Tony Blair faces imminent failure in Middle East," The Times, 25 September 2008).

On 27 December 2008, Israel launched the Gaza massacre, which it dubbed "Operation Cast Lead." Eight days later, when asked about Blair's reaction, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown explained, "Tony's on holiday at the moment." While Blair found time to attend a private opening of the new Armani store in Knightsbridge, he found none to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, thus recalling his silence during the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon ("As Gaza is torn apart by war, where is Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair? He's been on holiday," Daily Mail, 5 January 2009). In early January, Blair flew to Israel, but he did not condemn the Israeli assault. In February 2009, while Palestinians in Gaza were still digging themselves out and mourning their dead, he accepted a $1 million prize from Tel Aviv University as the "Laureate for the Present Time Dimension in the field of Leadership" (Press release, 2009 Dan David Prize, 17 February 2009).

On 1 March 2009, he finally made it to Gaza. He conceded "a huge amount of damage" and the deaths of "large numbers of civilians," but rejected as "not very sensible" any discussion of disproportionality in Israel's attacks ("Blair shocked at devastation on first Gaza visit as envoy," The Scotsman, 2 March 2009). Blair did not meet with Hamas leaders, and his visit to Gaza lasted only a few hours, for he had to make a pilgrimage to Sderot, the Gilad Shalit of western Negev settlements ("Middle East envoy Tony Blair in Gaza for first time," The Independent, 1 March 2009). In June, he visited Gaza a second time and, as proof of his deep humanitarian instincts, went so far as to say that the Palestinians were in a "tough situation" ("Former British PM Blair Visits Gaza Strip," Voice of America News, 15 June 2009).

On 15 September 2009, the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, chaired by Justice Richard Goldstone of South Africa, issued its 575-page report entitled "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories." For three weeks after the Goldstone report's publication, Blair said nothing about it in public. Then, on 7 October 2009, he spoke at SUNY Buffalo (UB), where I teach, to a huge audience in the university's Distinguished Speakers Series. I didn't hear the lecture, for I was outside in a free speech corral (the first one to have appeared on my campus) with a group protesting Blair's invitation and his enormous lecture fee of $150,000, as confirmed to me by his exclusive agent, the Washington Speakers Bureau.

We also protested the censorship of questions. For several years now, by requiring that all questions to them be pre-submitted and approved, the UB administration has protected from direct questioning those of our Distinguished Speakers whose resumes include war crimes in the Balkans and West Asia. This time, they packaged the censorship as "The Blair Student Question Contest": students pre-submitted questions for review, and the administration invited the lucky winners up on the podium to deliver their approved questions in person. When questioned about the practice, Dennis R. Black, UB Vice President of Students and emcee for the evening, told The Buffalo News that "there was no attempt at censorship and that the questions were merely moderated" -- an interesting distinction.

An audio version of the whole speech is available on the website of UB's public radio station ("UB Distinguished Speaker Series - Tony Blair," WBFO, 13 October 2009). It consists primarily of earnest platitudes and whimsical anecdotes, concluding, incredibly enough, with a story about a comical horse-betting Irishman, rendered in Blair's very best music-hall brogue. But things took a change for the better in the question-and-answer period. Nicolas Kabat, a UB political science major, co-founder of UB Students for Justice in Palestine, and member of the Western New York Peace Center Palestine-Israel Committee, was one of the lucky contest winners because of the slow-pitch, painfully bland question he pre-submitted. But at the microphone, he asked a hard-edged question about Blair's response to the Goldstone report, why he thinks the basic principles of international law are irrelevant to the Middle East peace process, and why the continuing siege on Gaza isn't also harmful to that process.

A video of the five-minute Kabat-Blair exchange is available on YouTube. I'm told by the UB student who recorded it that UB Vice President for Students Dennis Black (visible at the end of the clip) heard Kabat's unapproved question with vein-popping disbelief. Later, Director of UB Special Events William Regan wrote Kabat to chastise him for departing from the approved question, saying that he had "violated a trust that needs to exist for a contest like this to function properly." In a delightful Freudian slip, he added that "We are very disappointed with your ethical conduct." There is something exquisite about the righteous indignation of a befuddled censor.

Blair seemed at first to be thrown off balance by an actual, uncensored question. Though he eventually found his feet and began to concoct his classic blend of choirboy sanctimony and Machiavellian misdirection, he also seemed to wander unwittingly into a public rejection of the Goldstone report. Like most of its opponents, he failed to find fault with a single one of its factual claims but moved immediately into nostrums and whinging. Despite Kabat's clear statement that the report condemned both Palestinian armed groups and Israel, Blair brightly observed that "you have given one view, and the trouble is that there is another view. ... And one of the things you learn about conflicts like this ... is that you never solve these conflicts by taking one view and forgetting about the other. ... And rocket attacks came out of Gaza on Israeli towns. Now those rocket attacks have got to stop as well."

Like Benjamin Netanyahu in his recent speech to the UN, Blair failed to note the report's forthright and detailed chronicle and condemnation of Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks, and its statement that they had all but ended during the lull of June-November 2008 (31-33, 71-82, 449-74). In fact, Hamas ceased all of its attacks and cracked down on firings by other groups, reducing them by 97 percent and Israeli casualties by 100 percent. This Hamas peace offensive was just too much for Israel to bear, so on 4 November 2008, a squad of Israeli commandos infiltrated Gaza and killed six Hamas soldiers, thus shattering the lull (78).

Blair also suggests that we must reject the Goldstone report as hopelessly partisan because it ignores provocations by Hamas: "The Israeli soldier that is kidnapped at the moment, Gilad Shalit, should be released." The problem here is that the report actually exhibits the usual disproportionate and tacitly racist concern for this lone Israeli detainee (on pages 25, 28, 57, 66, 288, 289, 291, 304, 371-73, 412, 415, 418, 486, 541, 551), though unlike Blair, it also discusses the 8,100 detained Palestinian men, women and children (27-29, 401-23).

The center of Blair's rejection of the Goldstone report, however, lay in his dismissal of international law as such. He genuflected briefly toward it, but added that we'll never get anywhere through "a debate over a report that is hotly supported on one side, hotly and deeply contested on the other." In other words, international law is fine until Israel disagrees with it, at which point we should abandon it. How, then, will the conflict be resolved? Israel needs "security" and the Palestinians need an "independent state," but first, there needs to be "an end to violence," which, of course, never includes the root violence of occupation. And most of all, we must "understand the pain on either side, get them to understand that they are not alone in their pain."

In short, Blair guides us gently away from the fussy, contentious, legalistic and impractical world of international law, which makes us throw our hands up in the air, Rashomon-style, and toward that warm and empathetic place where we feel each other's pain. This empathetic pain seems to be quite distinct from and finer than the everyday pain experienced by mere Palestinians in Gaza, as they bleed and die in particular places. In the classic mode of conservative ideologists, Blair insists that, if we ever hope to change social institutions, we must first change the human heart.

For all its faults, the Goldstone report never descends to this sort of vacuous moral idiocy. It combines an analysis of massive violations of international law with a chronicle of the human pain those violations have caused: the suffering of people in Gaza crushed in their homes beneath debris (239), wounded and denied medical care (232-33, 377), shot down while waving white flags (199-203), seared by white phosphorus (533), and left to sicken and die in a state of permanent siege (9-10, 22-25, 95-100, 335-71). And the ongoing reality of war crimes arising from an illegal military occupation pervades the report.

But of course, this is Tony Blair, so there's a cheery upside to things, too, thanks to the Palestinian Authority's neoliberal development projects and its West Bank security gang: "And just to tell you some good news out of Israel and Palestine this week. ... When I first became the Envoy ... I couldn't have gone to a city like Jenin or Nablus on the West Bank. Today, I go to Jenin or Nablus, where they opened a hotel in Nablus just the other day. I go to places like Qalqilyah, I go to Hebron, I go to Jericho, Ramallah obviously. In other words, I can go around the West Bank."

Who could ask for anything more?

Jim Holstun teaches world literature and Marxism at SUNY Buffalo. He has previously published< "Nonie Darwish and the el-Bureij massacre" and (with Joanna Tinker) "Israel's fabricated rocket crisis" for The Electronic Intifada. He can be reached at jamesholstun A T hotmail D O T com.

Palestinian human rights activist being held without charges in indefinite solitary confinement

by Adam Horowitz on October 13, 2009

Youth holding a photo of Othman at the weekly protest against the Wall in Nil’in.

Here is an update on the case of Mohammad Othman, a Palestinian human rights activist who was detained over three weeks ago by Israel as he returned home from Norway where he had been discussing the boycott, divestment and sanction movement.

On Thursday, October 8, at the second hearing in Salem military court, the prosecution had still not been able to provide any charges against Mohammad. The judge prolonged Mohammad’s detention for a further 12 days. Addameer attorneys appealed this decision and the judge rescheduled the date for the hearing for this wednesday, 14 October 2009. The hearing is due to take place at the Military Court of Appeals in Ofer.

According to Addameer attorneys who represent Mohammad, he is still held in solitary confinement and is being interrogated daily about his trips to Europe and contacts with European organizations. Mohammad has been repeatedly cursed at during long interrogation sessions, which at times lasted from 8:00 am until midnight. However, in neither of these sessions were suspicions against Mohammad made clear to him and he still ignores the reason for his arrest. During one of these sessions, an Israeli interrogator threatened to hurt Mohammad’s sister. “Stop the Wall Campaign” contends that psychological pressure is an often used Israeli technique to coerce a detainee into confessions.

During his solitary confinement Mohammad has been held in a two-square meter windowless cell. You can follow Mohammad’s case on this website.

Also, if you’re in New York you can join Adalah-NY and the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel on Saturday October 17th, 1- 3 PM for a protest in support of Mohammad at Lev Leviev’s store in Manhattan. You can find more information on the protest here.

Related Post

Jaffa-based Palestinian activist facing indefinite home detention for political activity

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Deporting foreign children preserves Israel's Jewish identity

By Yair Ettinger
Haaretz
October 14, 2009

Interior Minister and Shas Party chairman Eli Yishai plans "to muster all of Shas' political power on the issue of the foreign workers," he told Haaretz on Tuesday.

During a conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Yishai warned that if the cabinet rejects his demand that children of foreign workers not be given residency or citizenship in Israel, he will abdicate responsibility for the Immigration Authority, which is currently in his ministry's purview, to the Prime Minister's Office, and foment a coalition crisis to boot.

He also reminded Netanyahu of a similar case in 1986, when then-Shas chairman and interior minister Yitzhak Peretz resigned from the cabinet after the High Court of Justice ordered the ministry to register people who underwent Reform conversions overseas as Jews.
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Yishai does not object to Monday's decision to postpone deporting the children and their parents until the end of the school year, saying this was for "humanitarian reasons." But he stressed that he will not agree to any further postponements and will vehemently oppose granting the children citizenship or residency.

Allowing these children to stay in Israel "is liable to damage the state's Jewish identity, constitute a demographic threat and increase the danger of assimilation," he said.

Israel: No peace talks unless UNHRC drops Gaza report

Press TV - October 14, 2009 17:19:32 GMT

Over 1,300 Palestinians were killed during Gaza 'war'

A day before the UN Human Rights Council convenes to debate on a UN report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, Tel Aviv threatens to scrap peace talks with Palestinians unless the damning report is dropped.

The threat came Wednesday as the report was being discussed at the UN Security Council (UNSC)'s regular monthly meeting on the Middle East.

During the UNSC meeting, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki urged the 15-member body to adopt the report, compiled by a fact-finding mission headed by South African judge and international prosecutor Richard Goldstone.

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will hold a special session to debate the issue on Thursday. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the foreign ministers of France, Britain, Spain and Norway on Wednesday and asked them not to back the Gaza report.

The Geneva-based body was initially set to vote on the report last week, but it was delayed until March 2010, after the Palestinian Authority withdrew its support for the report.

Having faced an unprecedented wave of condemnation and accusations of treason over his controversial decision, Acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas made a U-turn and called for a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to vote on the report in order to save his image.

Different Palestinian factions, including Hamas, had accused Abbas of betraying the victims of the three-week war by bowing to pressure from the US and Israel. Both Israeli and US officials dismissed the report as biased.

If adopted, the UN Human Rights Council could refer the report to the UN Security Council. The UNSC can call for the prosecution of senior Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court, if Tel Aviv fails to launch its own investigations into the Gaza war under international scrutiny.

Talking to Israelis is so useless

By Noam Sheizaf
October 13th, 2009

Being part of the lefty ultra-minority in Israel – and obsessed with politics at the same time – I get mixed up regularly in political debates (fights?) with friends, family members, coworkers, writers and readers of pro-Israeli blogs, and basically, whoever is around. But lately, I have to admit, I’m getting tired of this habit. I feel that no matter what the issue at hand is, Israelis and their supporters fall back to the same argument:

The Palestinians want to destroy us, and therefore, whatever we do to them is justified.

It doesn’t matter that A doesn’t necessarily leads to B (even in war not everything is justified), it doesn’t even matter we are talking about something else completely, say racism towards Arab Israeli citizens or the future of Jerusalem. Whatever I say, wherever we go, we end up at the same station. The Palestinians want to destroy us, and therefore, whatever we do to them is justified.

I try to speak about Gaza, and say, the illegal use of phosphorus bombs against civilians.

“How do you know the IDF did that?” the answer comes. “Don’t say you believe that self-hating Jew, Goldstone?”

- Well, there are pictures of the bombs exploding, there are people with phosphorus-like burns, and I know that every combat unit in the IDF carries standard phosphorus ammunition, because I’ve been there and I even used it in training.

- You don’t get it, do you? The Palestinians want to destroy us all. What we did in Gaza was self-defense, like everyone else would have done. We didn’t want to kill those children. We did what’s necessary. It was justified.

And that’s basically it. You can’t ask about war crimes, you can’t discuss the phosphorus. Everything becomes irrelevant.

So I forget about the Goldstone report, just like the Israeli media did, and I try to write about Obama’s effort to re-ignite the peace process, or about the fact that from an Israeli perspective, there is no real alternative to the two-state solution. I ask, for example, why Israel can’t stop building settlements, even for a limited time.

- Because settlements are not the issue. They are not the obstacle for peace. We can evacuate them whenever we want.

- If it’s no big deal, what’s preventing us from stopping, even as a favor to Obama?

- The whole demand is a trick to divert us, and the rest of the world, from the real issue: that the Palestinians want to destroy us. Therefore, building settlements is justified.

- I fail to see the connection. The Hamas is indeed a problem, but surly, Abu-Mazen… I mean, look at his efforts to keep the West Bank quiet…

- If everything is quiet, what’s the rush to hand back land?

- Because if we don’t, we will have another Intifada.

- And in this case, we will give them nothing! We don’t deal with terrorists!

- So, when do we get the point where we do give them something?

- It’s simple: When they don’t want to destroy us anymore.

- And how do we know that?

- We can’t. Look at what happened in Gaza. We withdrew and what did we get in return? The Hamas with its rockets. Imagine us withdrawing from the West Bank, and five years later we get the Hamas there as well, 15 minutes from Tel Aviv! You can never trust the Palestinians. All they want is to destroy us.

And so it goes on and on. The Israelis found the perfect argument. It’s the reason and the outcome of everything. It’s the way to understand the past, behave in the present and foresee the future. It’s the full circle, the ying and the yang, and there is no way to break it, since Israelis seem to know what’s in the Palestinians’ hearts. And this is something you can’t debate.

The only possible solution is to surrender. “OK,” I say. “I’ll go along with your logic. We can’t leave the West Bank, and we can’t deport 2 million Palestinians by force…”

- No way! This is a democracy!

- Yeh, I know… and the one-state solution is out of the question…

- Out of the question! We will have an Arab majority! This will be the end of everything!

- So what do you basically suggest we do?

(Silence, followed by a long speech)

- Look. What are you getting at? Are you trying to say we don’t want peace? Don’t you remember the Camp David summit? We offered them almost everything, everything! Not to mention Oslo! And Gaza! And Madrid! It’s not that we don’t want peace! We love peace! It’s the first word in Hebrew! Show me another nation where peace means also Hello!

- Well, in Arabic…

- …The point is that we want peace. Do you think we enjoy all these wars? Remember what Golda Meir said? “We will forgive the Arabs for what they did to us, but we will never forgive them for what they made us do to them.” Beautiful, isn’t it? Captures the whole thing… I mean, look at the people we are dealing with. This is no Europe. It’s the Middle East. The Arabs, they never accepted us here. Remember the second Intifada? The first Intifada? Lebanon? Yom Kippur war? Remember the PLO convention in 64′? That was before we took the territories! Do you remember the partition offer in 47′? Why didn’t they take it? Did you know the Gran Moufti supported Hitler? Hitler! Remember the riots in 36′? There wasn’t even a state of Israel back then! And what about the pogroms in 29′? The Tel-Chai incident in 1920?

- I’m trying to think about the future. This leads us nowhere, the Palestinians have their own list of pogroms, lets take the Nakba for instance…

- The Nakba? What’s that has to do with it? Why are they always so obsessed with the Nakba, those Palestinians? They should look forward, settle the refugees where they are, build their nation… and you, why do you criticize Israel all the time? Can’t you write about them for a change?

- Like what?

- For example, about the incitement in the Palestinian society. They really don’t like us, you know.

- They want to destroy us.

- I see you are learning something after all.

Turkey boosts ties with Syria amid renewed Israel row

By Rim Haddad
Agence France Presse
October 14, 2009

ALEPPO, Syria: Turkey boosted its ties with Syria on Tuesday at the first meeting of a newly formed cooperation council, only days after Ankara’s relations with Damascus foe Israel took a downturn. The foreign, defense, interior, economy, oil, electricity, agriculture and health ministers of the two countries attended the strategic talks in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

Their agenda called for a series of meetings between respective ministers in their fields and the signing of diplomatic and economic agreements.

The foreign ministers signed a deal on scrapping visa requirements for each other’s nationals.

Turkish-Syrian relations have improved after decades of mistrust based on Ankara’s accusations that Damascus supported Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

But Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told a news conference with Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu that Damascus regarded the PKK as a “terrorist organization banned” in his country.

Turkey’s ties with Israel took a turn for the worse on Sunday when Israel announced Ankara had decided to exclude it from the “Anatolian Eagle” joint military exercises.

The move came after Syria and Turkey signed an agreement in Istanbul last month to establish the cooperation council as part of efforts to forge closer links. Under the accord, the council will meet once a year.

The air force exercises involving Turkey, Israel and members of the NATO military alliance had been due to be held near Konya in central Turkey from October 12 to 23.

On Tuesday, Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom urged Turkey “to come to its senses” following the spike in tensions between the two allies.

“Turkey is an important Muslim state sharing strategic ties with Israel. I hope the Turks come to their senses and realize that the relationship between the two states is in their interest no less than ours,” he said.

“The deterioration of ties with Turkey in recent days is regrettable,” Shalom said.

In contrast,Moallem said “it is natural that we would welcome” Ankara’s decision to exclude Israel from the maneuvers.

“The Turkish decision was taken because of Turkey’s position toward the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip” between last December and January, he said.

Damascus “welcomes the cancellation, because Israel always attacks the Palestinian people, maintains an embargo on Gaza and rejects any Turkish effort to resume peace talks” between Syria and Israel, Moallem added.

Syria and Israel began indirect peace talks through Turkey in May 2008.

But they were suspended last December after Israel launched a 22-day war on the Gaza Strip that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

In Aleppo, Davutoglu underlined the importance of the Aleppo meeting for the two Muslim neighbors. “Turkey is the gateway for Syria to Europe just as Syria is the gateway for Turkey to the Arab world.” – AFP

Venezuela Grants Land to Indigenous Communities On Indigenous Resistance Day

By Kiraz Janicke

Venezuelan Analysis

October 14, 2009

Celebrating 517 years of indigenous resistance to invasion and colonization Venezuela marked Indigenous Resistance Day on Monday with a street march through the capital, Caracas, the granting of title deeds to indigenous communities, and a special session of the National Assembly.

Across the Americas October 12 is widely celebrated as Columbus Day, the day in 1492 when Christopher Columbus, representing the Spanish Crown, first arrived in the Americas. In 2004 the Venezuelan government officially changed the name to Indigenous Resistance Day.

In Caracas, thousands of members of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), together with members of Venezuela's 44 indigenous groups, marched to the National Pantheon, in order to celebrate achievements for indigenous peoples under the Chavez government and claim their rights as the original inhabitants of the country.

A special session of the National Assembly then took place in the Pantheon, where the remains of 16^th Century Indigenous Cacique (Chief) Guaicaipuro lie as well as those of Venezuelan independence leader Simon Bolivar, who fought against Spanish colonialism.

Also during a special ceremony in Zulia state, Venezuelan Interior Relations and Justice Minister, Tarek el Aissami, handed over title deeds covering some 41,630 hectares of land to three Yukpa indigenous communities in the Sierra de Perija National Park.

"Today we join in this celebration of Indigenous Resistance Day, the day of the dignity of the indigenous peoples of Latin America and particularly of the Bolivarian and Revolutionary Venezuela," stressed the minister.

Yupka community spokesperson Efrain Romero said, "It's historic to receive title to the lands we inhabit," and added, "We reaffirm our fight for this revolution to continue advancing (...) we reaffirm our support for President Hugo Chávez."

In recent years the Sierra de Perija region has been the scene of a fierce conflict between large "landowners" and the indigenous communities who were forcibly driven off their lands during the Perez Jimenez dictatorship in the 1940s.

The situation came to a head in July 2008 when Yukpa indigenous communities occupied 14 large estates to demand legal title to their ancestral lands. Estate owner Alejandro Vargas and four others, armed with guns and machetes, responded by attempting to assassinate the Yukpa cacique (chief) Sabino Romero, who was leading the occupations, and beat and killed Romero's elderly 109-year-old father Jose Manuel Romero.

Then on August 6 hundreds of armed mercenaries, hired by large landowners, attacked the indigenous communities.

At the time Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed what he described as the "ambiguous attitudes" of some government functionaries in dealing with the land demarcation process and ordered an investigation into the violent attacks.

"There should be no doubt: Between the large estate owners and the Indians, this government is with the Indians" Chavez said.

During his speech today El Aissami emphasized that the delivery of title deeds of land to indigenous peoples is one of the policies promoted by the National Executive to ensure comprehensive recognition of the ancestral territorial rights of indigenous peoples.

Sergio Rodríguez, a spokesperson for the Environment Ministry clarified that other areas belonging to Yukpa communities are yet to be demarcated but said the ministry, together with the indigenous communities and other agencies that comprise the National Demarcation Commission, "will continue to work to resolve the situation. Our goal is to provide land titles to those Yukpa sectors that lack them by the end of the year."

However, another dispute in the Sierra de Perija region between the Barí, Yukpa, and Wayúu indigenous peoples resisting coal mining on their lands on the one hand and the state-owned Corpozulia, still has not been fully resolved.

The government is also expected to hand over title deeds covering 5,310 hectares to the 366 strong Palital community, belonging to the Kari'ña ethnicity in the state of Anzoategui.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the III Congress of the Great Abya Yala [the Americas] Nation of Anti-Imperialist Indigenous Peoples from the South in the remote Amazonas state, Minister for the President's Office, Luis Reyes Reyes, also granted credits to representatives of indigenous communities to assist in agricultural production.

Despite many unresolved issues, indigenous peoples have made significant advances in Venezuela over the last 10 years. The Bolivarian Constitution adopted in 1999, through Art. 8 specifically emphasizes recognition and respect for indigenous land rights, culture, language, and customs. According to the constitution, the role of the Venezuelan state is to participate with indigenous people in the demarcation of traditional land, guaranteeing the right to collective ownership. The state is also expected to promote the cultural values of indigenous people.

Article 120 of the Constitution also states that exploitation of any natural resource is "subject to prior information and consultation with the native communities concerned."

In 2003 the government also initiated the Guaicaipuro Mission, a social program aimed at the promotion and realization of indigenous rights as recognized in the constitution.

Venezuela's indigenous people, who comprise approximately 1.6% of the population, also have three indigenous representatives in the National Assembly.