Middle East Madness
Richard Spencer
The Telegraph
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:42 EST
Israeli settlements
The move, despite demands for a freeze by the Palestinians, also undermined Nicolas Sarkozy, just as the French president arrived in Saudi Arabia to push for a Middle East peace conference.
It lessens still further the chance of any meaningful negotations between the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mahmoud Abbas, the beleaguered president of the Palestinian Authority.
Mr Abbas, under pressure from his own Fatah party as well as the militant group Hamas, which has control over the Gaza strip, has said he will not agree to talks until there is a freeze on settlement building.
Xinhua
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:22 EST
The European Union (EU) expressed its dismay on Wednesday for Israel's decision on the expansion of the settlement of Gilo in East Jerusalem.
"The presidency recalls that settlement activities, house demolitions and evictions in East Jerusalem are illegal under international law," Sweden, which is current rotating presidency of the EU, said a statement.
Such activities also prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations and threaten the viability of a two-state solution. The presidency recalls that the European Union has never recognized the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967 nor the subsequent 1980 basic law," said the statement.
"Actions taken by the Israeli government contravene repeated calls by the international community, including the Quartet, and run counter to the creation of an atmosphere conducive to achieving a viable and credible solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians," the statement added.
Richard Beeston and Catherine Philp
United Press International
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:36 EST
The U.N. nuclear watchdog and Iranian officials met secretly on a deal to lift sanctions and allow Iran to keep most of its nuclear program, officials said.
The 13-point agreement was drafted in September by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to try to break the stalemate over Iran's nuclear program before he leaves at the end of November,
The Times of London, which reviewed a draft document, said.
While IAEA denied the document's existence,
The Times said it received a copy of the documentfrom a party that said it was alarmed by the contents.
Ma'an News Agency
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:18 EST
A woman who refused to remove her clothes in front of Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in Hebron was detained and taken to an Israeli prison facility Tuesday afternoon, local sources said.
Umm Wisam Dovch approached the Martyrs street checkpoint in central Hebron, and was asked to remove layers of her clothing so soldiers could search her person after she passed through metal detectors at the military post. When the middle-age woman refused to remove her clothing she was struck several times by one of the soldiers and forced into a military vehicle.
Max Hastings
Times of London
Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:27 EST
Every nation cherishes its own myths and legends. Most Americans believe themselves to be anti-imperialists, though their ancestors colonised a continent, almost annihilating its native inhabitants. The French fancy themselves descended from ancient Gauls, though like the rest of us they are mongrels.
But Israel's favoured historical narrative possesses special significance, because it defines the state's proclaimed right to existence. It holds that the world's Jews are descended from the ancient tribes of Israel, evicted by the Romans following the fall of the temple in AD70, and today permitted to return to their rightful homeland after almost 2,000 years of foreign persecution.
Shlomo Sand, who teaches contemporary history at Tel Aviv University, rejects most of this as myth. He argues that the alleged history of the Jewish people has been distorted, reshaped or invented in modern times to fit the political requirements of Zionism.
© Gift of Mr and Mrs Joseph Tenenbaum, Toronto
The Wailing Wall, 1880 (oil on canvas) by Gerome, Jean Leon (1824-1904) The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Tehran Times
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:19 EST
A prominent rabbi of the Iranian Jewish community has urged his congregation to burn The King's Torah, a controversial book, which supports the murder of non-Jews.
In his recently released book, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva (religious school) in the occupied West Bank, endorses the murder of non-Jews -- even babies and children -- if they pose an actual or potential threat to Israel.
The book, co-authored by Yossi Elitzur, states that Jews are allowed to kill ""those who, by speech, weaken our sovereignty"", adding that it is permissible ""to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation.""
The decree is backed by several Israeli rabbis including Yitzhak Ginsburg and Yaakov Yosef.
Shapiro claims that the Torah and Talmud fully justify his edict.
The Iranian rabbi, however, said on Monday that the book's message, in fact, directly contradicted the teachings of Moses. Rabbi Golestaninejad said the book was not based on the tenets of the Jewish faith.
DPA
Haaretz
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:56 EST
© Reuters
Hamas men participating in an anti-Israel rally
Hamas on Saturday accused Israel of fabricating a pretext for a new offensive in the Gaza Strip, after Israel said the Islamist militant group had test-fired a rocket that could reach Tel Aviv.
"These claims are part of the Israeli lies to justify a new aggression on the Gaza Strip," said Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas' spokesman in Gaza, in a statement.
"Such threats are coming under the title of incitement and creating pretexts in order to commit more new crimes against Gaza and cover up the previous crimes that were committed during the last war."
He was referring to the Israel Defense Forces' winter campaign against Hamas in Gaza, code-named Operation Cast Lead, whose stated goal was to halt cross-border rocket fire by militants in the coastal strip.
Comment: Hamas makes a good and logical point. As Joe Quinn points out in this
article:
Israel claims that the homemade, sugar-fueled rockets that wobble their way from Gaza towards the vicinity of nearby Israeli towns and which generally land harmlessly far and wide of their targets are its causus belli. These rockets are clearly primitive and by now every Palestinian must realise that they are useless as a weapon against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. More than that, every Palestinian must realise that the surest way to increase the chance that they or several members of their family will be dismembered by an Israeli missile is to keep firing impotent rockets into Israel. The REAL value of such rockets therefore is as justification to the Israel government to continue massacring and generally brutalizing the Palestinian people.
The logical deduction therefore is that it is not Hamas that has been firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza strip but the state of Israel itself. Back in October a senior Hamas leader said as much:
Hamas blames 'Israeli collaborators' for launching rockets
Albawaba.com
Sun, 12 Oct 2008
The Hamas rulers of Gaza Strip on Tuesday lashed out at gunners who fire rockets at Israel from the Palestinian territory in violation of a seven-week-old calm, calling them Israeli collaborators. "About the rocket-firing, I think those who are responsible are those who collaborate with Israel because there is a consensus by all Palestinian groups to respect the truce," said Dr. Mahmud Zahar, a senior leader of the Hamas movement.
On Monday, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in an empty field outside the southern Israeli city of Sderot, causing no casualty or damage.
According to AFP, Zahar told a Gaza radio station that the party which fired the rocket was "linked to Israel as they provide a pretext to exercise pressure on the Palestinian people."
After the latest incident, Israel on Tuesday closed the Nahal Oz crossing to Gaza Strip that is used to ferry in fuel and the Sufa passage for food deliveries to the impoverished and blockaded territory. On his part, MP Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular committee against the siege, strongly denounced Tuesday the Israeli decision to close the crossings, noting that the Gaza commercial crossings are already paralyzed despite the calm.
In June 2008, in an admission that he did not know who was firing rockets from Gaza into Israel, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh appealed for "factions" to maintain the cease fire.
That agents of the state of Israel are behind much if not all of the "Hamas rockets" is a reasonable conclusion and backed up by the Israeli governments long term penchant for fabricating Muslim terrorism.
Press TV
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:16 EST
© Unknown
The Sawasya Center for Human Rights has stated that the Israel is using Palestinians held in its detention centers as guinea pigs to test the effectiveness of new drugs manufactured by its health industry.
According to the Palestinian Information Center, the Cairo-based rights center cited evidence that Israeli interrogators gave prisoner Zuhair al-Iskafi and several other Palestinian inmates an injection which resulted in complete loss of their hair on the head and body -- a medical condition referred to as
alopecia universalis.
The Sawasya Center called on human rights organizations and the World Health Organization to dispatch a delegation of medical experts to Israel to examine Palestinian detainees allegedly subjected to these tests.
Juan Cole
Informed Comment
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:19 EST
The Palestinian leadership is
making medium-term preparations to go to the United Nations to ask for a declaration of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders (i.e. in the West Bank and Gaza).
The move comes because the Obama administration's
attempts to kickstart the peace process have crashed and burned, as Elaf pointed out. The Obama team told far rightwing Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Israel was to cease creating new colonies on the West Bank in preparation for the resumption of talks.
Netanyahu defied Obama, insisting that new Israeli squatter settlements would be started in the Palestinian West Bank.
The Palestinian leadership had made an Israeli settlement freeze a prerequisite for new talks, and so refused to sit down with the Israelis as long as the latter were stealing ever more Palestinian land.
Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:50 EST
© AP / Hatem Moussa
The collapse of the Palestinian Authority, the result of Israel's 42-year refusal to implement a two-state solution, leaves the Palestinians no option but to unilaterally declare an independent state. Israel acted unilaterally when it announced independence in 1948. It is the Palestinians' turn. It worked in Kosovo. It worked in Georgia. And it will work in Palestine. There are 192 member states in the United Nations and as many as 150 would recognize the state of Palestine, creating a diplomatic nightmare for Israel and its lonely ally the United States. Israel will face worldwide censure if it attempts to crush the independent state by force and very likely be subjected to the kind of divestment campaigns and boycotts that brought down the apartheid government of South Africa.
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