Israel Bars New Palestinian Students From Its Universities, Citing Concern Over Security October 16, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in ban, Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Discrimination, Israel, Israeli, Jew, Jewish, Muslim, Palestine, Palestinian, Race, Racism, Racist, university, West Bank.comments closed
Sawsan Salameh, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was thrilled to get a full scholarship from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to begin a doctorate in theoretical chemistry.
But a recent move by the Israeli Army to ban new Palestinian students from Israeli universities for security reasons is keeping her from studying at the campus, just two miles from her home.
“The first time I applied for a permit I was rejected,” said Ms. Salameh, 29, a Muslim wearing a firmly fastened head scarf and a black denim skirt that skimmed the floor. “I was shocked, because I thought there must be some kind of mistake, so I kept trying. I kept hoping.”
Her situation is familiar to many Palestinians whose freedom of movement has been limited in recent years because of the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ms. Salameh said that after she appealed six times to the Israeli government agency that handles Palestinian affairs, she decided to turn to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, Gisha, an Israeli group that is an advocate for Palestinian rights, submitted a petition on her behalf to the court, calling the ban illegal.
“Gisha calls upon Israel not to prevent Palestinian students from studying just because they are Palestinian,” said the group’s director, Sari Bashi. “No one should be denied access to education based on his or her national identity.”
Shocking images of “Gifts from Israeli Children”: The Indoctrination of Israeli Children July 19, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Arab, Arabs & Muslims, bombs, Card, Children, children sign bombs, children signing, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, explosives, Genocide, Gift, Gifts from Israeli Children, Hezbollah, Hizbollah, Human Rights, Israel, Israeli, Israeli children sign, Israeli children sign bombs, israeli children signing bombs, Isreal, Jewish, Kill, Lebanese, Lebanon, missiles, Muslim, Palestine, Palestinian, Palestinians, Racism, rockets, sign, sign bombs, victims.comments closed
Israeli children sign bombs, as ‘gifts’ to the Lebanese children:
Below are disturbing pictures of Israeli children sending gifts of hatred to their Arab counterparts in what is a systematic method of teaching children to kill others. These pictures were taken at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona close to the Lebanese border.
The victims:
Middle East news roundup July 15, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Arabs & Muslims, Beirut, cease-fire, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, civilians, Conflict, Hizbullah, Human Rights, Iran, Israel, killed, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, Palestinian, Syria, UN, West Bank.comments closed
Here are some of the new stories about the Middle East conflict:
Ahmadinejad compares Israel to Hitler
TEHRAN (AFP) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad compared
Israel’s military strikes on Gaza and Lebanon to tactics used by Adolf Hitler against Jews during World War II.
“Their methods resemble Hitler’s. When Hitler wanted to launch an attack, he came up with a pretext,” Ahmadinejad said during a speech in Tehran.
“Zionists say they are Hitler’s victims, but they have the same nature as Hitler,” he said.
The ultraconservative president has already called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and described the Holocaust of six million Jews as “a myth.”
Vatican condemns Israel for attacks on Lebanon
The Vatican on Friday strongly deplored Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, saying they were “an attack” on a sovereign and free nation.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said Pope Benedict and his aides were very worried that the developments in the Middle East risked degenerating into “a conflict with international repercussions.”
“In particular, the Holy See deplores right now the attack on Lebanon, a free and sovereign nation, and assures its closeness to these people who already have suffered so much to defend their independence,” he told Vatican Radio.
Israel gives Syria ultimatum
London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat says Israel gave Syria 72 hours to stop Hizbullah’s activity, bring about release of kidnapped IDF troops. ‘Israel will not end military activity until new situation created that will prevent Syria, Iran from using terror organizations to threaten its security,’ newspaper quotes Pentagon official as saying
Israel killed at least 32 civilians on Saturday, including 15 children, in air strikes
Israel killed at least 32 civilians on Saturday, including 15 children, in air strikes meant to punish Lebanon for letting Hizbollah guerrillas menace the Jewish state’s northern border.
Israel’s bombing of Lebanese roads, bridges, ports and airports, as well as Hizbollah targets, is its most destructive onslaught since its 1982 invasion to expel Palestinian forces.
An Israeli missile incinerated a van in south Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the four-day-old campaign launched by Israel after Hizbollah captured two of its soldiers and killed eight.
Police said the van was carrying two families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes.
Lebanon calls for cease-fire under U.N.
Neither side showed signs of backing down from the conflict, which erupted Wednesday when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. As civilian deaths mounted, diplomatic efforts to end the crisis had yet to get off the ground.
In an emotional televised speech, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora called on the
United Nations to broker an immediate cease-fire to end Israel’s land, sea and air offensive against Lebanon.
“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.”
C.A.R.D 