UN envoy hits Israel ‘apartheid’ February 25, 2007
Posted by C.A.R.D in Arab, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Di, family re-unification, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Israel apartheid, John Dugard, Muslim, Palestinians, UN, UN envoy, West Bank.comments closed
A UN human rights envoy has compared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to elements of apartheid. The UN’s Special Rapporteur, John Dugard, describes the regime as being designed to dominate and systematically oppress the occupied population.
Mr Dugard is a South African professor of international law assigned to monitor Israeli human rights abuses.
He has extensively studied apartheid in South Africa and has compared it to what he saw under Israeli rule.
Special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the UN secretary general to present reports on human rights to the organisation.
Their findings do not represent UN policy.
In a new report, Mr Dugard says: “Israel’s laws and practices certainly resemble aspects of apartheid”.
He points to what he describes as “unashamed discrimination” against Palestinians in favour of Israeli settlers.
“It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel’s laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination,” says the report.
“House demolitions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are carried out in a manner that discriminates against Palestinians.
“Throughout the West Bank, and particularly in Hebron, settlers are given preferential treatment over Palestinians in terms of movement (major roads are reserved exclusively for settlers), building rights and army protection and laws governing family re-unification”.
Arab Cabinet Pick Stirs ‘Zionism-Racism’ Debate January 21, 2007
Posted by C.A.R.D in Arab, Arabs, Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Discriminate, Discrimination, Esterina Tartman, Gaza, Ghaleb Majadleh, Israel, Israeli, Isreal, Jerusalem, Jew, Jewish, Jews, Knesset, Muslim, Muslims, Palestinian, Racism, Racist, Zionism, Zionism-Racism, Zionist.comments closed
Jerusalem – When Knesset member Esterina Tartman opened her mouth on Israel Radio last week to attack the Labor Party for naming Israel’s first-ever Muslim Arab Cabinet minister, she did more than just rattle Ehud Olmert’s shaky coalition. She opened up a raging national debate on the taboo topic of where Zionism ends and racism begins.
“What [Labor leader] Amir Peretz did this morning is to swing an enormous ax at the tree called Zionism,” said Tartman, a member of the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party, referring to Peretz’s January 11 designation of Labor lawmaker Ghaleb Majadleh as minister of science, sports and culture. “We need to drive out and destroy this evil from our environs…. The State of Israel is a Jewish state that is supposed to be ruled by Jewish values, with a Jewish regime and Jewish sovereignty.”
Tartman’s comments sparked outrage across the political spectrum from politicians and commentators who called her views racist and compared them to the outlawed doctrines of the late Meir Kahane. “The Zionism of Herzl, Jabotinsky and Begin always advocated the integration of Arabs who are loyal to the state in all of its institutions,” said Knesset member Michael Eitan of the opposition Likud party. Eitan demanded a formal Knesset debate on Tartman’s “racist comments.” “No believer in equality and democracy can accept them being on the agenda,” Eitan said.
Israel Passes Nazisque Racial Marriage Law August 6, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in ban, Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, court, family unification, Gaza, Haaretz, Iran, Israel, Israeli, Israelis, Isreal, Jerusalem, Jew, Jewish, Law, Lebanese, Lebanon, marriage, Marriage Law, Nazi, Nazisque, Palestinian, Palestinians, Racial, Racism, spouse.comments closed
In approving an effective ban on marriages between Israelis and Palestinians this week, Israel’s Supreme Court has shut tighter the gates of the Jewish fortress the state of Israel is rapidly becoming. The judges’ decision, in the words of the country’s normally restrained Haaretz daily, was “shameful”.
By a wafer-thin majority, the highest court in the land ruled that an amendment passed in 2003 to the Nationality Law barring Palestinians from living with an Israeli spouse inside Israel — what in legal parlance is termed “family unification” — did not violate rights enshrined in the country’s Basic Laws.
The Qana Massacre July 31, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Arab, Arabs, Arabs & Muslims, dead children, Death, disturbing, ethnic cleansing, Gaza, Hezbollah, hizballah, Hizbullah, Human Rights, Islam, Israel, Israeli, Isreal, Jew, Jewish, Jews, killed, Lebanon, Massacre, Qana, Qana Massacre, The Qana Massacre, video, youtube.comments closed
A powerful video has been released about the Qana Massacre.
Please note: the video contains disturbing images of dead children.
Save the Lebanese Civilians Petition July 25, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Arab, Arabs & Muslims, Beirut, Canada, Card, catastrophe, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, civilian, civilians, dead, Death, EU, France, Gaza, Germany, Israel, Isreal, Lebanese, Lebanon, Petition, Save, UK, USA.comments closed
To The Concerned Citizen of The World:
“Killing innocent civilians is NOT an act of self-defense. Destroying a sovereign nation is NOT a measured response.”
Lebanese civilians have been under the constant attack of the state of Israel for several days. The State of Israel, in disregard to international law and the Geneva Convention, is launching a maritime and air siege targeting the entire population of the country. Innocent civilians are being collectively punished in Lebanon by the state of Israel in deliberate acts of terrorism as described in Article 33 of the Geneva Convention.
The Lebanese people feel left out by the world that is turning a blind eye on the savagery of the Israeli state. Israel does not seem to be capable of approaching any problem outside the realm of the military power bestowed on it by the government of the United States of America and other western governments.
Fox News analyst compares Israelis to Nazis July 19, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Fox, Fox News, Fox News Analyst, Gaza, Israel, Israelis, Lebanon, Middle East, Nazi, Racism.comments closed
“Saying the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon is like saying the Nazis pulled out of Moscow,” he said. “They invaded Lebanon. They invaded Gaza. They take homes and then they give them back. And they expect some type of great recognition.”
Bevelacqua acknowledged he had business interests in Lebanon – a company that employed 30 people. His Fox News biography says he works with the WVC3 Group in Reston, Va., an elite security group that provides homeland security services, support and technologies to government and commercial clients. (more…)
“Jewish people of Israel re-enact the horrors of their German oppressors” July 15, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Arabs & Muslims, ethnic cleansing, Gaza, Genocide, Holocaust, Human Rights, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Murder, nazis, Palestine, Palestinians, Racism, Religion, UN, West Bank.comments closed
The Invasion of Gaza
Roger van Zwanenberg
The Israeli ongoing invasion of Gaza brings to a head many of the issues that have been fermenting for some time. If it was not clear before, it ought to be clear now, that the Israeli domination of the Palestinian people is a domination of a Totalitarian character. The present invasion, by hugely superior military forces of land, sea and air, on a comparatively unarmed people, cannot be justified by any criteria, legally or morally. That our own British government fails to raise an eyebrow, and that the so called International community does nothing, is a slur on us all of a level that shames our so called democracies. Israel is creating the conditions for a massive famine as the rest of the world looks on and does nothing. This is totalitarianism in action.
The problem is this: Israel is supposed to be a country this is for all the Jewish people a land of refuge where Jewish people will never allow themselves to be destroyed again. To achieve these noble aims the people and government of Israel has ethnically cleaned the land twice, in 1948 and 1967. Israel is now attempting to do so again, through the theft of more land and water resources, through the erection of the Wall, and now through the invasion of the people of Gaza.
This is an ongoing tragedy of huge proportions happening right before our eyes. It is an affront to all human dignity and sensibility. The justification produced by the Israeli media is not worth the time of day, it is all so paper thin. Why should a people who have suffered so deeply themselves impose a new level of suffering on a people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Holocaust. The most awful aspect of the present Totalitarian regime in Israel is the ultimate innocence of the Palestinian people.
I should add here that I’ve been involved in Israel and Palestine for over 40 years. As a very young man, I learnt the art of “radical” political analysis from a 6 month stint in an Israeli Kibbutz. I was born into a Christian family with deep Jewish roots; all my first cousins were and are deeply Jewish. Mine is a family with deep fault lines everywhere, enough to make me a person deeply involved in the tragedy being played out in the Middle East.
Trained psychoanalysts can explain the actions of Israel better than I. The British have a huge responsibility, which is never admitted. Britain gave away a piece of land in 1948 which was not theirs to give. Israel could have behaved very differently after 48 and at any time thereafter. They could have realized the indignity of what they did in 48 and made an attempt to build up the people of Palestine along with themselves. Never an easy job, of course, but through it much of the hatred that has now built up over 60 years would have been dissipated.
As it now stands the goal of a safe home for all Jews is further away than ever. The Greater Middle East policy of the USA is now Israels only hope of achieving this goal. And it is now clear that such a policy can be carried out only by inflicting untold suffering across the Arabic world. The Arab world divided against itself in 1920 and then further divided in 1948. It has never been allowed by the external Imperial powers to unite, as with the European Union, into a single political entity with its own Central Bank and free trade between all its parts. Instead only buffer States like Jordan, weak States like Syria, and old rich States closely allied to Western interests have been allowed to exist. If one or the other of these States seems to become too powerful they are invaded.
The Arab world has, in short, been consistently undermined in its Development while Israel has been encouraged to become the dominant military State in the region. Israel and its people are now behaving with impunity, just like the State of Germany did in prosecuting the final solution. We are schooled in the belief that we must say “never again!” to such barbarity. But Israel knows that all the surrounding states are too weak to intervene. As we watch with horror the invasion of Gaza, we all feel our helplessness. All the fine words, how the horrors of the Holocaust must always be remembered, are quickly forgotten by the world’s governments as the Jewish people of Israel re-enact the horrors of their German oppressors—the horrors that their mothers and fathers underwent 60 or more years ago.
Just as Nazi Germany could not survive for long, so too, a brutal Israel, brutalizing her own and all the surrounding people, cannot survive for long. As things stand, I cannot see how that demise will come about. But the acts of evil we are now witnessing cannot last without having deep and lasting effects on all of us.
Some Israelis contemplate low-grade ‘genocide’ for Palestinians July 15, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in ethnic cleansing, Gaza, Genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Palestinians, Racism, Racist, Religion, West Bank.comments closed
A interesting article from 2003 asking if ethnic cleansing/genocide is being carried out in front of our eyes:
One way to cover up a crime is to find a benign term that hides the violence and cruelty of the act. Such is the case with “transfer,” an idea increasingly being put forward in Israel as a solution to conflict with the Palestinians.
Transfer conjures up images of a worker reassigned to a new office, or a slip allowing a rider to change buses for free. But transfer of the Palestinians would be nothing less than ethnic cleansing.
The main public proponents of this have been on the far right of Israeli politics, such as the Moledet Party, which refuses to recognize Palestinian rights. But in a poll earlier this year, 46 percent of Israelis supported transfer of Palestinians out of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, while 31 percent favored transferring Israeli Arabs out of the country.
As Israeli author Tanya Reinhart argues in her new book “Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948,” there has long been planning for “the second half of 1948” by some Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The phrase refers to the 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 war, which ended with Israel controlling 78 percent of Palestine that existed under the British Mandate (compared with 56 percent under the U.N. partition plan in 1947). Now some Israelis ponder whether can they take 100 percent.
A military campaign to achieve that had been unthinkable, but many now believe that under the cover of a U.S. war against Iraq, Israeli soldiers would be free to finish the job.
I say “finish,” because a slow ethnic cleansing is already under way, primarily through the systematic destruction of the Palestinian economy; when people cannot make a living, many will leave. A study for the U.S. Agency for International Development released in August showed that one-fifth of Palestinian children were malnourished, due to dramatically lowered Palestinian incomes and disruptions of food distribution because of the tightened Israeli occupation.
Life for Palestinians means constant harassment at checkpoints. Olive trees, central to agriculture there, are bulldozed by Israeli troops who claim they provide cover for snipers. Palestinian homes are demolished, supposedly because Palestinians built on their land without appropriate permits, which Israel will not give them. This fall the residents of the Palestinian village Yanun chose to leave rather than continue to endure the property destruction and assaults from Israeli settlers from nearby Itamar.
As Effi Eitam of the right-wing National Religious Party has put it, if Palestinians find “the situation so hard and so dangerous that they prefer to move to some other part of the world,” well, he will shed no tears.
The plan appears to be working. According to the Jerusalem Post, by August last year about 80,000 Palestinians had left the West Bank and Gaza, a 50 percent increase over last year.
If this ethnic cleansing–either the slow version or expulsion by Israeli soldiers–is successful, another term may come into play: genocide. The crime of genocide is generally associated with mass killing, but international law defines genocide as acts intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” One of the five types of acts is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
Creating conditions “so hard and dangerous” that they drive people off their land is a way to eliminate the Palestinian people. Not all the Palestinians need be killed; once completely dispersed in other countries, they will cease to be a recognizable group that could press a claim to that land.
Is the world ready to accept that kind of genocide as a solution to the conflict?
No doubt the world is not; for years there has been a consensus on a diplomatic settlement that calls on Israel to withdraw from illegally occupied territory in return for peace. The key is whether the United States will allow it.
For years the United States–which supplies Israel with diplomatic support, military assistance, and at least $3 billion a year in economic aid–has backed Israeli power and called it a “peace process.” Unless we demand that our government press for peace rooted in justice, this process will be the end of the Palestinian people.
ROBERT JENSEN, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of “Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.”
Israel enters into Lebanon and authorizes ‘severe’ response to abductions…………… (Human Rights Watch) July 13, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Conflict, Gaza, Hezbollah, Human Rights, Israel, Lebanon, Palestinian, Politics, Religion, UN.comments closed
This news comes just after:
UN rights council condemns Israel
THE United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday voted to condemn Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip and called for the release of Palestinian officials and civilians arrested during the offensive.
In a resolution adopted by 29 votes to 11, the 47-member Council demanded a halt to Israel’s military operation and decided to “dispatch an urgent fact-finding mission by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.
JERUSALEM (CNN) — The Israeli Cabinet authorized “severe and harsh” retaliation on Lebanon after Hezbollah guerillas kidnapped two soldiers and killed three others in a cross-border raid Wednesday.
Israel quickly blamed the Lebanese government for the raid — and charged it with the soldiers’ safe release — and the Israel Defense Forces began hammering Lebanon with artillery and airstrikes hours before the Cabinet met to discuss a response.
It is the second time in three weeks that an Israeli soldier has been abducted. Concerns abound that the situation on Israel’s northern border will escalate to the level it has reached in Gaza, where the IDF launched an ongoing offensive June 28 after the abduction of Army Cpl. Gilad Shalit three days prior.
At least 19 Palestinians were reported dead in Gaza in Wednesday’s fighting, according to Palestinian sources.
Israel called Wednesday’s abductions an act of war, and Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of Israel’s Northern Command, said he has “comprehensive plans” to battle Hezbollah throughout Lebanon, not just in its southern stronghold.
“This affair is between Israel and the state of Lebanon,” Adam said. “Where to attack? Once it is inside Lebanon, everything is legitimate — not just southern Lebanon, not just the line of Hezbollah posts.”
Earlier, Israel’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told Israel’s Channel 10, “If the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years.”
Five more Israeli soldiers died in fighting following the raid. Four died in an attack on their tank, and another died as soldiers tried to help them, the IDF reported.
Four Israel civilians and six soldiers have been wounded so far in the fighting, which has included more than 100 airstrikes on what Israel says are Hezbollah bases, and road and bridges that could be used in transporting the kidnapped soldiers.
C.A.R.D 