Palestinian funerals are not militant pageantry

Palestinians love their children and want them to live just like the rest of us. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I feel it’s necessary following a New York Times piece by Jodi Rudoren critiquing the funeral held for members of the Dalou family killed in a single Israeli airstrike on Gaza, four of who were small children between the ages of one and six. Rudoren is the New York Times  Jerusalem bureau chief ... From beginning to end, the piece is packed with racially loaded buzzwords that reflect common negative stereotypes westerners hold about arabs and muslims. The trouble begins in the opening sentence:
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Cease-fire agreement almost identical to that reached in Operation Cast Lead

Haaretz
Agreement reached despite terror attack on Tel Aviv bus; Israel wins assurances on security, Gaza on freedom of movement; Obama pressures Netanyahu; Morsi emerges as prestigious leader.

Regurgitating Israeli talking points, Amanpour lectures Meshal that ‘int’l agreements’ bar right of return

Phil Weiss (Mondoweiss)
Interviewing Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Cairo last night on CNN, Christian Amanpour stated repeatedly that Palestinian refugees had no right to return to Israel according to "international agreements." (Transcript below)
In fact there are UN resolutions guaranteeing the right of refugees to return to their homes. Max Blumenthal challenged Amanpour "to cite one legally binding international resolution that prevents the Palestinian right of return. It is clear... she has no understanding of international law on refugees, no idea of Res 194." He continues, by email:
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‘New York Times’ fails dismally again, this time in Congo

James North (Mondoweiss)
I am experienced and world weary, and it takes a lot to leave me speechless.  But once Jodi Rudoren's Orientalist pop anthropology had flabbergasted me, her New York Times colleague in east Africa finished the job.
Jeffrey Gettleman missed the actual breaking news in eastern Congo two days ago, when several thousand armed predators calling themselves the M23 Movement seized Goma, a major regional city.  Once he did show up, he opens his article with a favorable portrait of the M23, describing them as "lean, young rebels in pressed fatigues." Only right at the end, almost as an afterthought, does he note that those pesky scolds at Human Rights Watch have found M23 guilty of "ethnic massacres, recruitment of children, mass rape, killings, abductions and torture."

Palestinian solidarity isn't going anywhere soon! We're here until justice is served!

Not all Palestinians are celebrating the tenuous ceasefire. Many are still trying to remove tonnage of rubble to recover bodies. Hundreds are mourning & burying their dead. Some are surveying their bombed out fields & thousands are left homeless. All face even more severe food shortages, lack of medical supplies, & power blackouts. It’s all over but the suffering.

And so it must be asked: exactly what was Israel’s purpose in this murderous assault? The Arab uprisings, which are not completed, transform politics in the Middle East & change the narrative peddled for over 60 years about Israeli democracy & Arab terrorism. They threaten the Zionist edifice built on lies & alter power relations in the entire region, previously dominated by Israeli & US military terror. The Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions (BDS) movement has been growing in strength around the world, challenging the Zionist lies. Palestinians have been heartened by this growing support after being isolated & beleaguered for so long & strengthened by the support expressed in all the Arab uprisings. This siege was not just an escalation of Israeli ethnic cleansing; it was intended to demoralize Palestinian resistance & to terrorize Arab democracy protestors in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, & elsewhere by a massive show of military aggression. And it was an attempt to discourage Palestinian solidarity by making their cause look hopeless.

Well, we have a purpose too & that is to remain undaunted, to continue to build the BDS movement, to continue to organize speak-outs, forums, rallies, to continue to tell the truth & to support the Palestinian people. Our demands are clear: boycott all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729) & end all US aid to Israel. Our full solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Here people survey the damage in Gaza City. (Photo by Tyler Hicks/NYTimes)

Ceasefire? What ceasefire!?

Even as a ceasefire was announced yesterday, hundreds of Israeli bombs & missiles continued to rain on Gaza. Palestinian health officials now put the death toll in Gaza at over 150, although they don’t know the actual number of deaths because bodies are still being recovered from rubble. Reports are that 90 of those killed are “civilians,” including 30 children, but since there is no military in Gaza, it’s not clear what distinguishes civilians from non-civilians.

The most damning & horrific aspect of yesterday’s siege was that the Israeli land, sea, & air assault with tanks, naval guns, attack helicopters & bombers shifted to dense residential neighborhoods of Gaza City, small towns, & refugee camps & reportedly, the places Palestinians fled to after the Israeli air force dropped leaflets ordering people to evacuate.

Here, blood leaks under the door of the al-Shifa hospital morgue in Gaza City which is taking in the bodies of those killed in this murderous siege. Boycott all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729) to support the Palestinians against ethnic cleansing. Demand the US end all aid to Israel & stop bankrolling genocide!  (Photo by Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images)

The ugly combination of gentrification & racism

In this moving photo, Vicente Gabarri Valdes comforts his 7-year-old nephew, Saul, distraught at the demolition of his home in the Spanish Roma settlement of Puerta de Hierro in the outskirts of Madrid. Roma families settled that area in the 1960s but since 2010, the Madrid development authorities have been forcibly evicting them & bulldozing their homes under the pretense the settlement is illegal. It is really, of course, part of the global urban process of gentrification--evicting the poor in order to build luxury condos & shopping malls for the rich--in this instance combining the escalating European persecution of Roma with gentrification. Some seniors residents have been provided public housing; most are left homeless. (Photo by Susana Vera, who has documented this eviction/Reuters)

Patrick Seale in the NYT: What Can the Arabs Do?

To get some sense of Arab opinion, I conducted my own limited poll, phoning and emailing contacts in different Arab countries. I tried to understand how they felt about the punishment of Gaza. Was their reaction one of anger and a thirst for revenge? Or did they feel a painful sense of humiliation, coupled with impatience with their leaders?

Israeli street wants more blood.

Israelis are not khappy khappy with the cease-fire. They got to the street to protest. The street wants more blood.

Small victories add up

Church of Sweden synod votes 148-60 to adopt resolutions including settlement boycott.

Stephen Zunes: Can U.S. Citizens End Israel’s Legal Impunity?

Each time international law has attempted to censure Israel for its recent violations of human rights, the United States has stepped in to stop the process. If anyone is in a position to do something about this, it's the U.S. public.

Stephen Zunes

 

 
 Israeli tanks stationed outside the Gaza Strip.
The great wish of the early Zionist leader Theodor Herzl was that Israel would be treated like “any other state.” Were that the case, there might be more rational and productive discourse regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is particularly critical in light of Israel launching yet another devastating attack against civilian-populated areas of nearby Arab lands.
What we are witnessing from the Obama administration, however is the unfair phenomenon of exempting Israel from criticism.There are certainly those who do unfairly single out Israel, the world’s only predominantly Jewish state, for criticism. There is a tendency by some to minimize Israel’s legitimate security concerns and place inordinate attention on the Israeli government’s transgressions, relative to other governments that abuse human rights. There are also those who, in light of the five-year siege of the Gaza Strip and the enormous suffering of the Palestinian people, try to rationalize terrorism and other crimes by Hamas, the reactionary Islamist group currently in control there.

The spirit of Palestine

A Letter on Gaza: The World Cannot Stand by as Palestine is Battered to Death

Counterpunch
We the undersigned watch with horror yet another ruthless and criminal Israeli  assault on the defenceless people of the Gaza Strip. The assassination of the  Hamas’ military commander, Ahmad al-Jabari, by Israel was intended to disrupt any chance for a permanent cease fire between the two sides and caused the current cycle of  violence. For the last five years al-Jabari had been responsible for limiting rocket attacks on Israel.
1.            Professor Judith Butler (California, US)
2.            Professor Etienne Balibar (London and Paris)
3.            Ms Ahdaf Sueif (London and Cairo)
4.            Mr Moris Farhi MBE (London, UK)
5.            Professor Ilan Pappe (Exeter, UK)
6.            Professor Nur Masalha (London, UK)
7.            Professor Haim Bresheeth (London, UK)
8.            Professor Yehuda Shenhav (Tel Aviv, Israel)
9.            Mr Tariq Ali (London, UK)
10.        Professor Yosefa Loshitzky (London, UK)
11.        Professor Daniel Boyarin (Berkeley, US)

The list is long. Here.

Israel's war in a nutshel. Of the 162 killed 42 were children.

162 were killed including 42 children, 11 women, 18 elderly.

1222 were injured, including 421 children, 207 women, 88 elderly. 100's of 1000's of Gazans suffer from intense trauma and stress as a result of the relentless air strikes during the 8-day Israeli aggression.

Covering This Gaza War

Sherine Tadros (The Huffingpost)
 Gaza is not a particularly hard story to cover; it's happening all around you. The biggest problem for journalists is in fact that it is so obviously an unbalanced conflict -- there is no equating Israel with Gaza, Palestinian fighters with the Israeli Army and rockets with missile strikes.

But it's precisely that which journalists struggle with. We are taught to be neutral, impartial, balanced. But this is not a balanced conflict and in the pursuit to even things out, some have ended up reporting the wrong story, emphasizing things they would normally not emphasize in the interest of looking balanced.

There is a general problem with media when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The need to sanitize events so as not to be controversial and upset the wrong people, the lack of humanizing the conflict for fear that it will make you look sympathetic or worse empathetic to the Palestinians, which could be career suicide."
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A reminder

Just that you know
Though comments' count still show 0, comments are posted nevertheless (after having been approved that is).

Day Eight of Israeli Attack on Gaza: Ceasefire agreement reached; Palestinian death toll climbs to 145

Via Mondoweiss
The Palestinian death toll has climbed to 145 according to the Ma'an News agency.  The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reports that 91 of the dead were civilians, including 28 children. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has also released some of their initial findings about the civilian dead in Gaza. "Initial investigations indicate that at least 40 of those killed were civilians, among them 19 minors, and 10 women," the human rights group reported. "B'Tselem will continue to investigate the incidents in which civilians have been killed in Gaza, and to review reports coming in even now regarding additional incidents in which civilians have been killed or injured."

When a civilian bus was bombed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, many feared the incident would derail  negotiations for a truce in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. That proved not to be the case. The other anxiety was that an Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is in power would somehow jinx the prospects for peace. That fear proved to be groundless too.  Indeed, the government of President Mohamed Morsy took the lead role in brokering the Gaza truce announced in Cairo Wednesday night, and will reportedly act as its guarantor. “It was unknown how Egypt would react,” Likud party legislator Yohanan Plesner told Britain’s Telegraph. ”When the moment of truth came, the Egyptian leadership moved responsibly and clearly said they were trying to restore stability.” Not only that, says analyst Michael Wahid Hanna at the Century Foundation, “Egypt’s government has put its own international credibility on the line by effectively undertaking to ensure that Hamas observes the terms of its ceasefire — that’s a subtle but profoundly important change.”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/11/21/how-the-gaza-truce-makes-egypts-muslim-brotherhood-a-peace-player/#ixzz2CuIaMdWV

When a civilian bus was bombed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, many feared the incident would derail  negotiations for a truce in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. That proved not to be the case. The other anxiety was that an Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is in power would somehow jinx the prospects for peace. That fear proved to be groundless too.  Indeed, the government of President Mohamed Morsy took the lead role in brokering the Gaza truce announced in Cairo Wednesday night, and will reportedly act as its guarantor. “It was unknown how Egypt would react,” Likud party legislator Yohanan Plesner told Britain’s Telegraph. ”When the moment of truth came, the Egyptian leadership moved responsibly and clearly said they were trying to restore stability.” Not only that, says analyst Michael Wahid Hanna at the Century Foundation, “Egypt’s government has put its own international credibility on the line by effectively undertaking to ensure that Hamas observes the terms of its ceasefire — that’s a subtle but profoundly important change.”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/11/21/how-the-gaza-truce-makes-egypts-muslim-brotherhood-a-peace-player/#ixzz2CuIaMdWV

When a civilian bus was bombed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, many feared the incident would derail  negotiations for a truce in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. That proved not to be the case. The other anxiety was that an Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is in power would somehow jinx the prospects for peace. That fear proved to be groundless too.  Indeed, the government of President Mohamed Morsy took the lead role in brokering the Gaza truce announced in Cairo Wednesday night, and will reportedly act as its guarantor. “It was unknown how Egypt would react,” Likud party legislator Yohanan Plesner told Britain’s Telegraph. ”When the moment of truth came, the Egyptian leadership moved responsibly and clearly said they were trying to restore stability.” Not only that, says analyst Michael Wahid Hanna at the Century Foundation, “Egypt’s government has put its own international credibility on the line by effectively undertaking to ensure that Hamas observes the terms of its ceasefire — that’s a subtle but profoundly important change.”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/11/21/how-the-gaza-truce-makes-egypts-muslim-brotherhood-a-peace-player/#ixzz2CuIaMdWV

When a civilian bus was bombed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, many feared the incident would derail  negotiations for a truce in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. That proved not to be the case. The other anxiety was that an Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is in power would somehow jinx the prospects for peace. That fear proved to be groundless too.  Indeed, the government of President Mohamed Morsy took the lead role in brokering the Gaza truce announced in Cairo Wednesday night, and will reportedly act as its guarantor. “It was unknown how Egypt would react,” Likud party legislator Yohanan Plesner told Britain’s Telegraph. ”When the moment of truth came, the Egyptian leadership moved responsibly and clearly said they were trying to restore stability.” Not only that, says analyst Michael Wahid Hanna at the Century Foundation, “Egypt’s government has put its own international credibility on the line by effectively undertaking to ensure that Hamas observes the terms of its ceasefire — that’s a subtle but profoundly important change.”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/11/21/how-the-gaza-truce-makes-egypts-muslim-brotherhood-a-peace-player/#ixzz2CuIaMdW

When a civilian bus was bombed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, many feared the incident would derail  negotiations for a truce in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. That proved not to be the case. The other anxiety was that an Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is in power would somehow jinx the prospects for peace. That fear proved to be groundless too.  Indeed, the government of President Mohamed Morsy took the lead role in brokering the Gaza truce announced in Cairo Wednesday night, and will reportedly act as its guarantor. “It was unknown how Egypt would react,” Likud party legislator Yohanan Plesner told Britain’s Telegraph. ”When the moment of truth came, the Egyptian leadership moved responsibly and clearly said they were trying to restore stability.” Not only that, says analyst Michael Wahid Hanna at the Century Foundation, “Egypt’s government has put its own international credibility on the line by effectively undertaking to ensure that Hamas observes the terms of its ceasefire — that’s a subtle but profoundly important change.”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/11/21/how-the-gaza-truce-makes-egypts-muslim-brotherhood-a-peace-player/#ixzz2CuIaMdWV

Ad campaign in the New York Times

 Ad campaign in the New York Times run by 'US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation'. Help us tell President Obama to lift the siege on Gaza, and hold Israel accountable for the misuse of U.S. supplied weapons against Palestinian civilians.

An army of professional liars, beside being killers that is!

 Still from YouTube video/idfnadesk

Exposed: UN agency rips IDF for video alleging militants use its Gaza schools to launch rockets

A UN relief agency has shot down allegations levied by the IDF via an animated film posted on their official YouTube channel saying Hamas used UN schools and facilities to fire rockets at Israel.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) issued a statement Tuesday expressing its “concern” for the use of footage which wrongly suggested the agency’s complicity in “terrorist activities” targeting Israel. The agency also took issue with "the unauthorised use of its logo in computer-generated material."

“In a situation of conflict these allegations have potentially grave consequences. UNRWA takes with utmost seriousness the neutrality of its installations, particularly in times of heightened violence,” the agency said in a statement.

Israel bombs AFP's Gaza office for second time, 3 Palestinian reporters killed in previous attacks

 On Tuesday, two Israeli strikes killed three Palestinian journalists. The building housing AFP was hit in another attack later, and no casualties were reported. A Wednesday attack on AFP’s building killed a two-year-old child.