URUK Net 18 March, 2010: Israel Is Boss
Israel Is Boss
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
March 18, 2010 – …Corporate media pretend U.S.-Israeli relations are in “crisis,” just as they have many times in the past. It’s all a charade, a play for national and international audiences. In real crises, relationships are called into question. But there has never been any question about who is in charge of this “partnership”: Israel. And don’t you dare forget it…
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Dozens of Students Injured After Israeli Police Storm Negev Secondary School.
By Salman Abu Obeid
March 18, 2010 – Eyewitness accounts given to our correspondent in the Negev confirm that on Wednesday morning, the playground of the Secondary Peace School in the town of Hurra in the Negev was turned into a bona fide battlefield after a vast police force invaded the school yard and threw stun grenades and tear gas, injuring dozens of students and teachers. According to the eyewitnesses, the clashes broke out when police attempted to arrest individuals from the school shop…
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Taliban controlling Marjah by night
by Tom Mellen
March 18 2010 – Militants are regaining control of Marjah, residents have reported, less than a month after Western military officials claimed to have seized the Afghan town from the Taliban. Marjah is now home to an occupation force numbering more than one Nato soldier or Afghan police officer for every eight residents. But militants are stepping up an underground campaign against officials loyal to the Western-backed Karzai regime…
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Zionism’s Invented State: Book Review
By Sam Bahour
March 18, 2010 – Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism arrived in the mail shortly after I completed sending a thank you note to two other authors and friends, Kathleen and Bill Christison. The Christison’s had just released their newest title, Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (Pluto Press) and I felt that they deserved a huge thank you for encapsulating their eyewitness report of Israeli military dispossession and occupation in the warped ideological framework of Zionism…
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Sarah’s Garden’: A Tribute to Sarah Meyer
By Felicity Arbuthnot
March 18, 2010 – I never met Sarah Meyer, who died on March 4th, aged seventy three, but like so many across the globe, struggling to make sense of and draw attention to the crimes of enormity, committed in the name of a tragi-farcical “war on terror”, discovering her exhaustive, meticulous research, especially on Iraq and Afghanistan was finding Wordsworth’s “light to guide; a rod ..” No fact omitted, no stone unturned, in minute detail, her talent was for uncovering truth and reality behind the smoke, mirrors and lies. Thus we corresponded. She would send her latest work of academic impeccability, I my articles, more aptly “letters from a broken heart”. Andy Worthington, in tribute writes aptly of: “a wonderfully supportive friend in the struggle for a better world.”..
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Comrade Mizher: Mass action needed to support Palestinian steadfastness
PFLP – Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
March 18, 2010 – Comrade Jamil Mizher, member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, called for an immediate and complete end to the farce of negotiations with the occupation, and ending the internal Palestinian division in order to confront the occupation and its newest attacks on Jerusalem and al-Aqsa. He emphasized the need for a mass movement of the Arab and Muslim public to support Palestinian steadfastness under occupation. In a March 17, 2010 statement to Al-Alam News, Comrade Mizher said, “There is a mass movement in occupied Palestine and in exile to preserve Palestinian national constants and principles in the face of the attacks of the occupation and the latest Israeli brutality in Jerusalem and the West Bank,” noting that this movement was also struggling against the cover provided to the occupation by the U.S. administration and the silence of the so-called “international community.”..
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Operation Enduring Occupation
Dahr Jamail
March 18, 2010 – …On March 16, 2010, Gen. David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, told lawmakers that the US military may set up an additional headquarters in northern Iraq even after the September 2010 deadline. Petraeus said that putting a headquarters in northern Iraq was “something we are looking at.” What reason is there to doubt our commander in chief ‘s assertion that there is need to maintain an (approximately 50,000 strong) US “strike force” in or near Iraq to guarantee US interests in the Middle East, to allow Washington to move quickly against jihadists in the region and to make clear to “our enemies” that the US will not be “driven from the region”?…
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Reflections on the targeted assassination of academics on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the war on Iraq
Prof. Lieven De Cauter, President of the BRussells Tribunal
March 18, 2010 – While the anniversary of the war waged on Iraq is approaching, I think of what I wrote seven years ago: that this illegal invasion had nothing to do with the war on terror but was planned well in advance and was not about democracy but about the destruction of Iraq. I was openly taunted for it. At best, I was considered endearing or pathetic in my anger, but not on the level when it came to world politics. In preparation for an evening on the occasion of this seventh anniversary on March 20, I am reading a book: Cultural Cleansing in Iraq. Why museums were looted, burned libraries and academics murdered. The basic thesis is, believe it or not, that the purpose of the war was from the onset the destruction of the Iraqi state. But there is more: cultural cleansing, tolerating the looting of museums, the burning of libraries and the murder of academics was part of the war strategy, the authors argue. State ending will certainly become established as a concept, alongside genocide and its derivatives, such as urbicide (destruction of cities), sociocide (destruction of the social fabric) mnemocide (destruction of the collective memory)…
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US/NATO death squads killing indiscriminately in Afghanistan
By James Cogan
March 18, 2010 – The New York Times reported this week that the overall commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan is seeking to impose tighter control over the activities of special forces units, after recent operations led to more civilian deaths. General Stanley McChrystal’s concern is not the deaths, however, but the manner in which they are fuelling Afghan hatred for the US-led occupation and their occasional exposure in the international media. On March 5, McChrystal publicly released a portion of a directive he had issued—reportedly in late January or early February—which had placed conditions on the night raids that occupation troops regularly conduct on Afghan civilian homes…
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Storm over Israeli settlements as unreal as the peace process
Hasan Abu Nimah
March 18, 2010 – Since Israel announced yet another new settlement in occupied East Jerusalem during the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden last week, Israel has been subjected to a storm of criticism from friend and foe alike. Biden was in Jerusalem to show US support for Israel and to launch “proximity talks” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) of Ramallah. Instead the Israeli announcement caused him and the US administration deep embarrassment, prompting several officials to term it an “insult” and an “affront” and to stir talk of the worst crisis in US-Israeli relations in decades. This might be music to the ears of those long frustrated by American silence on Israel’s constant violations of international law, but it actually amounts to little…
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Palestinian classes held at Israeli army checkpoint
Haitham Sabbah
March 18, 2010 – Israeli soldiers prevent students and others from crossing a checkpoint between their homes and schools on the edge of the West Bank city of Qalqiliya on 17 March 2010. Some teachers used the checkpoint as a makeshift classroom and held studies despite the closure, which was linked to clashes elsewhere in the occupied territories…
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Please help little Amal from Gaza
by Avigail Abarbanel
March 18, 2010 – A couple of nights ago I watched the documentary ‘Children of Gaza’ on Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’. The film was made by the award winning documentary maker Jezza Neumann. Since then I can’t get the face of Amal, one of the four children featured in the film, out of my head. Amal was wounded during Israel’s attack on Gaza just over a year ago. She was found under rubble and I understand that for a while she lay near the dead and mutilated bodies of her uncles, one of whom had his head split in two. Since Israel’s attack over a year ago, Amal has been living with several pieces of shrapnel lodged in her head. She is suffering from frequent awful headaches and nosebleeds. This is in addition to the obvious psychological trauma that she has to live with…
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So much for freedom of speech: Nakba Law passes first Knesset vote
Noam Sheizaf
March 18, 2010 – The Knesset voted yesterday in favor of Israel Beitenu’s “Nakba Bill”, which authorizes the finance minister to hold funds from institutions or groups who question the nature of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, or who mark the Palestinian Nakba on Israel’s Independence Day. The goal of this bill – as stated by MK Alex Miller, who initiated it – is to prevent Palestinians from commemorating the national disaster they suffered in 1948, when most of the Arabs in (then) Palestine were expelled or fled from their homes…
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Afghan Children ‘Face World’s Worst Conditions’
Reuters
March 18, 2010 — Afghanistan is the hardest place in the world to be a child, the South Asia regional director for UNICEF said, with high child mortality rates, poor levels of nutrition and rampant sexual abuse. “The situation in Afghanistan as a whole is one of the most dramatic in South Asia and also in the world. Afghanistan is the most difficult place to be born as a child,” Daniel Toole said on a visit to Afghanistan this week. “If I could take one challenge, it’s survival.”…
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Kucinich’s Healthcare Sell-out
by Billy Wharton
March 18, 2010 – …Most of all, Kucinich’s betrayal points to the burning need for political activity, both electoral and social movement based, independent of the Democrats and Republicans. The political system is already so saturated with corporate money that Democrats and Republicans are structurally incapable of acting in the interests of working people in America. Now is the time for a green and red rebellion at the ballot box and on the streets. Only then can we can be done with the wavering Kucinichs of the world and get down to the task of creating a society that values human needs over corporate profits. We need a single-payer healthcare system now and only an uncompromising movement made up of everyday people will get us there…
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A Prosthetic Leg at the Palestinian Auschwitz
Kawther Salam
March 18, 2010 – Monday 14 March 2010 at quarter past nine in the morning at the Zionist Qalandiya checkpoint towards entry into Jerusalem, the gate of Auschwitz 2. A female Israeli Nazi soldier orders an invalid Palestinian girl to take off her pants in front of the crowd of Palestinians waiting at the checkpoint, thousands of waiting men and women. The girl had a prosthetic leg which was fixed with metal screw. She was carrying an Israeli permit issued by the military intelligence in Beit Ill, which supposedly allows her access to Jerusalem for medical treatment. To understand this, it is important to know that the Israeli military intelligence only issues permissions to people who either themselves or their extended families never had so-called “security problems”, who are not political activists…
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Gazan Fisherman Struggle to Stay Afloat
By Rada Daniell and Bianca Zammit
March 18, 2010 – Gazan 45 kilometers long, beautiful Mediterranean coast is fished by 3,500 professional fisherman. Many more people earn their daily bread doing jobs related to this trade, such as producing and repairing nets, transporting fish and selling it at the markets, running restaurateurs etc. We met Mr Mahfouz Kabariti the President of Palestine Sailing Federation and Palestinian Association for Fishing and Maritime Sports and a group of fishermen at the end of January for a long evening chat to find out more about what it means to be a fisherman in Gaza. A few days ago Mr Kabariti took us to the the Mina (Port) of Gaza to meet another group of fishermen who we chatted with while they were preparing for their next fishing trip. The majority of them wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of being targeted by Israelis for speaking out…
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A Very Dangerous Racial Israeli Publication in Jerusalem!
Shadi Nassar
March 18, 2010 – These are translated copies (English and French) of the publication which was published by the Israelis in Arabic to people of Jerusalem within their savage campaign to judaize Jerusalem and the historical holy land of Palestine: […] It is written in Torah that this small land is a property of the Jewish people ONLY! And it is forbidden to let others live here permanently. It is also written in Books of Nevi’im (Books of the Prophets) that we were dismissed because we did not achieve this divine order! The Jewish people were dismissed and stayed outside their homeland for 2000 years. Now and after we have returned back to the land of Israel, as we were promised by Prophets; it is time for the Israeli people to achieve this divine order. So, we ask you to leave the land of Israel!!!…
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Boys disappearing from Hebron Old City
Paulette Schroeder
March 18, 2010 – I am most concerned these recent weeks in Hebron. Young teens and even smaller children are disappearing from our neighbourhood in the Old City of Hebron. It’s not by kidnapping. It’s not by trafficking. It’s not an unknown person with a criminal record perpetrating the crimes. Rather, the Israeli military is again pressing its boots down harder on the heads of the Palestinian people. If restrictions on travel and commerce, land confiscations, home invasions, and forced business closures have not succeeded in convincing Palestinian families to leave their land, then MAYBE taking their children will. Our Palestinian neighbor sent her 15 year old son to buy bread. Fifteen minutes later, Israeli soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed him, accusing him of throwing stones. The boy insisted he did not throw stone/s at the soldiers. Nevertheless, he is now spending time in the Israeli prison system…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64289
Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (11-17 March 2010)
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
March 18, 2010 – Summary – Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law escalated in the OPT during the reporting period (11 – 17 March 2010): Shooting: During the reporting period, 31 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children and 5 women, were wounded when IOF used excessive force against peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall and settlement activities in the West Bank. During the reporting period, IOF issued a military order declaring the area of the Annexation Wall in Bal’ein and Ne’lin villages, west of Ramallah, a closed military zone on Fridays, banning access of Palestinian civilians to the area. According to the order, such ban will remain effective until 17 August 2010. In the Gaza Strip, IOF fired at Palestinian workers and fishing boats. They also fire at a peaceful protest against the security zone IOF plan to establish along the border. On 12 March 2010, Israeli warplanes bombarded and destroyed a factory of plastics in Khan Yunis…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64304
‘Day of Rage’ Engulfs Palestine
By Mel Frykberg
March 18, 2010 – On Tuesday tens of hundreds of Palestinians of all political persuasions took to the streets, alleys and sidewalks as widespread rioting and protests spread across East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and into Israel proper. The worst violence in several years, something of a mini Intifadah or uprising, followed the Islamist movement Hamas calling for a ‘Day of Rage’ to protest Israel’s continued Judaisation of East Jerusalem and what Palestinians see as an attempt to take over Islamic holy sites. The numbers rioting were kept relatively low by Israeli military roadblocks and a closure imposed on the West Bank to prevent Palestinians from reaching Jerusalem…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64288
The Lawfare Project’s Anti-Democratic Agenda
by Stephen Lendman
March 18, 2010 – Its web site (thelawfareproject.org) calls Lawfare: “The use of the law as a weapon of war.” Fact Check: Provided they contradict no others, laws are sacrosanct, especially fundamental international ones like the UN Charter, Four Geneva Conventions, their Common Article 3, the Rome Statute, Nuremberg Tribunal and judgment, Genocide Convention, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and many others – ones Israel and America are sworn to uphold but consistently violate with impunity…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64301
Obama: ‘No crisis’ in Israel ties
Aljazeera.net
March 18, 2010 – Israeli plans to build more homes near East Jerusalem are not helpful for the Middle East peace process, but the recent row over the issue does not amount to a crisis in US-Israeli relations, Barack Obama has said. In his first public comments on the issue, the US president told the Fox News network on Wednesday that despite the recent spat over settlement construction, Israel remains “one of our closest allies”. He rejected a suggestion from the interviewer that the Israeli announcement had triggered a “crisis” in relations. “We and the Israeli people have a special bond that’s not going to go away,” Obama said…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64287
Sonic blasts over Gaza after projectile kills Thai worker
Ma’an News
March 18, 2010 – No strikes or injuries were reported after Gaza residents reported hearing what sounded like a dozen explosions across the Strip on Thursday, hours after the death of a Thai worker hit by projectile fire. The Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed to have fired the projectile that killed the foreign worker, in a statement moments after reports from Ashkelon police said a man was injured while working in the greenhouses of the Terra Seva region of the southern Israeli town…
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Iraq snapshot – March 18, 2010
The Common Ills
Thursday, March 18, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, ballot counting continues, the US military announces another death, the Senate hears from Mr. Crazy, Gordon Brown’s error hasn’t yet washed away and more […] Katrina Kratovac and Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) reports that 89% of the ballots have been counted as of today and paint a scene of “chaos” where votes are announced and then pulled back, where votes are no longer displayed for the reporters on screens but instead they’re handing compact discs and hustled off elswhere. Martin Chulov (Guardian) reports that the final (unofficial) tally has been postponed “yet again”. AP is listing the 89% for the vote counted (Margaret Coker says 86%) but what the vote actually is appears to be changing regularly…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64306
PCHR Strongly Condemns Inauguration of Synagogue in Occupied East Jerusalem
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
March 18, 2010 – The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns recent measures taken by Israel in East Jerusalem, the latest of which has been the inauguration of a synagogue in the old city. PCHR holds Israel responsible for the escalation of the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). PCHR also confirms that East Jerusalem constitutes an integral part of the OPT, in which international humanitarian law and international human rights law is applicable. PCHR calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to fulfill their legal and moral obligations, and to ensure Israel’s respect for the Fourth Geneva Convention in the OPT in accordance with article 1 of the Convention. PCHR believes that if the international community does not make clear its position towards Israel’s acting as a State above the law, Israel will be encouraged to continue violating international human rights and humanitarian law…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64302
NATO plans ‘northern Afghanistan offensive’
AFP
March 18, 2010 — The NATO military alliance is planning a large-scale offensive in northern Afghanistan this year against Taliban insurgents, a senior German general was quoted as saying on Thursday. “There will definitely be an operation up there in Kunduz (province),” General Bruno Kasdorf, chief of staff in the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, told the German ARD public radio…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64305
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