Ethnic Cleansing: Some Common Reactions by Ran HaCohen 5:14pm Mon Jan 13 '03

oriental Jews were pushed out of
Arab countries as a result of the conflict with Israel, and at the same time
pulled by Israel, to consolidate its Jewish majority, and by Zionism, that regarded
the Jewish state as the only proper place for Jews to live in. It is a major
case of hypocrisy to compare those Jewish immigrants to Palestinians who fled
or were driven out of Israel to other countries during a war, people for whom
Palestine was their only homeland and who found themselves against their will
as refugees in foreign and hostile Arab states, people who were willing but
not allowed to return home, and whose property was dispossessed by Israel.



To read the whole article, click
here.

To read "Ethnic Cleansing: Past Present
and Future", click
here.

Environmentalism, Zionism and the Social Framing of Natural Open Spaces by Bryan Atinsky 8:52pm Fri Jan 3 '03

Much discussion in the past several
years, on the issue of land and nationalist ideology in Israel, has been focused
on the ways in which building and active use of land operates in Zionist ideology
and action as a form of legitimation of control and ownership. However, until
recently, little has been said of the ways in which the retention of 'natural'
spaces operates in Zionist ideology in much the same manner. The dominant Israeli
discourses on nature and the environment, as expressed by the principal governmental
and non-governmental environmental organizations, and the educational system,
act as elements that contribute to framing the public's conception of their
social space. These environmental constructs, which partially stem out of, and
partially become reintegrated into the Zionist nationalist discourse, are utilized
by different social elements as a legitimation for both the creation of demarcated
open 'natural' spaces, and the enforced retention of their 'pristine' state.



To read the whole article, click
here.

Just over a month ago, Mitzna appeared to offer
a new hope to Israeli politics. He was even perceived by some as the potential
Israeli de Gaulle. Throughout all the years of the Israeli occupation of the
Palestinian territories, the Israeli political system has managed to generate
only two alternatives: eternal negotiations while preserving the occupation
and expanding settlements - the Oslo model of the Labor party, or slow elimination
of the Palestinian people - Sharon's model. The hope that many (including myself
) attached to Mitzna was that a third alternative is possible as well, following
the model of Lebanon - an immediate withdrawal from the territories that most
Israelis are willing to evacuate (all of Gaza and about 90% of the West Bank),
and the opening of serious negotiations over the rest. But by now, it is obvious
that a vote for Mitzna is a vote for Sharon.



To read the whole article, click
here.

To read a review of Tanya Reinhart's new book
on Israel/Palestine, click
here.

Surviving Armegeddon, Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Apocalypse by Rita Corriel 12:33pm Sun Dec 15 '02

What do fundamentalist Christianity, the U.S.
'War on Terror' and the hit movie 'Signs' all have in common? Everything. It
is a movie that promises to be about the enigma of crop circles but turns out
to be an insipid morality play; a cinematic trojan horse that delivers a subliminal
attack on our collective psyches. It has been several months since I left the
theatre feeling intellectually insulted and spiritually violated, and yet I
still feel a deep sense of malignment and outrage whenever I think about it.
So why does a movie that has all the passion, sophistication and emotional depth
of Pat Roberson's '700 Club' elicit such a powerful response? 'Signs' is a propaganda
film. But unlike the pentagon financed Black Hawk Down, which is a straight
forward piece of revisionist history, 'Signs' goes much further. There is something
really scary and malevolent about this movie; not because of its content, but
because of its intent. It is an insideous psycho-spiritual manipulation that
echoes the tone of the post 911 American zeitgeist. This movie evoked the precise
feelings I had when George W. Bush announced his war on terror. In fact, I believe
that this film is actually part of the arsenal in that 'war'. And it mirrors
that same dissonace which tells us to be very afraid, while telling us there
is really nothing to worry about.



To read the whole article, click
here.

The Sad Decline of Indymedia by Chuck0 for InfoShop news 10:40am Mon Dec 9 '02

It was a great idea when the Independent Media
Center opened up its first website for the Seattle anti-WTO protests in December
1999. The first IMC website came out of years of alternative and grassroots
media activism. By a strange quirk of fate, the Seattle IMC also included something
called the "open newswire," an experiment that allowed every reader to be a
reporter, if they wanted to get involved in DIY, participatory media production.
The IMC network recently observed its 3rd anniversary and the 100th IMC went
online, but the IMC project is facing some serious problems which, if they aren't
addressed by the supporters of the IMC network, will eventually destroy the
wonderful idea that is Indymedia.



To read the whole article, click
here.

The Israeli Elections by Tanya Reinhart 11:09pm Sun Dec 1 '02

If Mitzna sticks to this plan, which offers a
real alternative and hope, there is a good chance that he will be the next Israeli
prime minister. But there are many dangers lurking on his way. From the right-wing
pole, pressure is exerted on him to 'appeal to the center' and, thus, become
vague and meaningless. But the bigger danger is from the pole labeled left,
in his own Labor party. Beilin and the other masterminds of Oslo are working
against the idea of immediate evacuation: -Why evacuate immediately - they say
- when we can simply resume the road of negotiations. Let's sit down with the
Palestinians; let's talk and discuss. In the meanwhile, the IDF (Israeli army)
will continue to maintain order in the occupied territories. Perhaps the Palestinians
will give up eventually, and allow us to implement the Beilin Abu-Mazen plan,
which does not require the dismantling of a single settlement.



To read the whole article, click
here.

A Glimmer of Hope? by Dr. Michael Dahan 10:56pm Wed Nov 27 '02

Lately, there have been calls from the far left
to boycott the elections or to cast a blank ballot. The goal of this strategy
is clear - to contribute to the rise of a far right government whose radical
actions will finally convince the public as a whole to support the left. Palestinian
Israelis, disappointed with the Arab parties' ability to bring about significant
change of their 2nd class status as citizens, are also calling for a boycott
of the elections. While one can understand the call for a boycott of the elections
- a call borne out of the despair of the public on the far left - it is clearly
mistaken and misguided, particularly when there is the chance of alternative
leadership. It is also dangerous and irresponsible to leave the leadership of
the country in the hands of the radical right.



To read the whole article, click
here.

Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors by Sara Roy in The Journal of Palestine Studies 12:41pm Sat Nov 23 '02

Israel's occupation of the Palestinians is not
the moral equivalent of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. But it does not have
to be. No, this is not genocide, but it is repression, and it is brutal. And
it has become frighteningly natural. Occupation is about the domination and
dispossession of one people by another. It is about the destruction of their
property and the destruction of their soul. Occupation aims, at its core, to
deny Palestinians their humanity by denying them the right to determine their
existence, to live normal lives in their own homes. Occupation is humiliation.
It is despair and desperation. And just as there is no moral equivalence or
symmetry between the Holocaust and the occupation, so there is no moral equivalence
or symmetry between the occupier and the occupied, no matter how much we as
Jews regard ourselves as victims.



To read the whole article, click
here.

Feeding the Cuckoo by Paul de Rooij 7:11pm Tue Nov 19 '02

Israel is America's cuckoo. Massive aid flows
go in ever increasing quantities to the cuckoo, and the negative aspects of
this are evident for all to see. It is increasingly dangerous for Americans
to set foot in the Middle East, the hostility directed at them originates primarily
from Israeli actions in the area. Few people forget that the bomb dropped on
them was US-made (maybe even US-owned), dropped by a US-made F16, piloted by
an Israeli pilot, and the whole thing made possible by US funds. We all know
that some Middle Eastern hostility has hit America's home soil. Why Americans
should subject themselves to the whims and demands of the cuckoo remains as
one of today's greatest mysteries. All the justifications proffered for the
aid flows ring increasingly hollow, and raise significant questions on why this
detrimental relationship continues.



To read the whole article, click
here.

"Blaming one side and not mentioning the wrongs of the other side" by Yehudith Harel 3:27pm Wed Nov 13 '02

The Zionist left always calls "to stop the
Violence on both sides" and pays such careful attention to address both
sides as if they were equal in their respective positions, in power, in responsibility,
in accountability and culpability. By doing so the Zionist Left creates a corrupt
and incorrect equation between two kinds of violence: the Violence of the colonization
and occupation which are in contravention to International law and legitimacy,
and the violence generated by this occupation and the legitimate de-colonization
struggle, a struggle that is a reaction to a result of 35 years of military
occupation and ongoing and ever increasing and intensifying colonization process.



To read the whole article, click
here.

Settlers and Trash by Al-Bireh Mayor, Walid Hamad 10:36am Wed Nov 6 '02

While the Israeli military strangulation of the
West Bank tightens by the day, the Israeli settler community of Psagot, a settlement
illegally erected near my city of Al-Bireh, is taking advantage of the Israeli
government’s determination to militarily crush Palestinian society to pursue
their three decade old policy of illegal land confiscation. Just as the Israeli
occupation of the entire Palestinian civilian population has taken on new shapes
and forms in the absence of any international intervention, Israeli settlers
are camouflaging this latest round of land confiscation behind a facade of environmental
issues..



To read the whole article, click
here.

Roadmap To Nowhere by Sam Bahour and Michael Dahan 7:40am Mon Oct 28 '02

The new US "road map" for peace in the
Middle East presented by US Assistant Secretary of State William J. Burns is
no more than a placebo for consumption by both Palestinians and the world community
in response to their pressuring Israel for positive movement toward immediately
ending the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.



To read the whole article, click
here.

Dialogue on the book "Blood Brothers" by Fr. Elias Chacour, with commentary by Angela Godfrey and Norma Archbold 11:54pm Mon Oct 2 1 '02

Some months ago I read Father Elias Chacour's
book Blood Brothers (of which MidEast Web says in its Bibliography of the Israeli
Palestinian Conflict: A Galilee priest tells of his fight for brotherhood and
coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis). I was so impressed by its message
of peace and truth that I posted 33 pages here on Indymedia, where it is still
to be found.

You responded on-line from Illinois: "Don't
take too seriously the things written in this book. Chacour in Blood Brothers
leads us to believe that the Israeli Army slaughtered the people of an Arab
Christian town (Jish or Gish) and buried them in a shallow grave where 8-year
old Chacour discovered the decomposed bodies."You continued: "I went
with another journalist to Gish and spoke with an Arab Christian who was 16-years-old
and living in Gish when the massacre was supposed to have happened. He had never
heard of a massacre there." And: "I spoke to the town historian on
the phone and he had never heard of a massacre there. When I mentioned Chacour
and Blood Brothers, he said, "I wouldn't take too seriously the things
written in that book."You say: "Chacour presents himself as forgiving
the Israelis for a massacre that (according to the people living there) didn't
happen. How difficult is it to forgive someone for something that never happened?"
You end: "What concerns me about this book is that it is sixth on Amazon's
bestselling list out of more than 8,000 books. That means that tens of thousands
of people around the world have received false information. The Middle East
is a powder keg. False information could start a world war there. It is in the
best interests of everyone in the world to demand that absolute truth be published
about the situation there. The false information is all the more damaging because
of the beautiful ideas expressed, which make us want to believe what Chacour
says. Two publishers stopped publication of this book and a third publisher
listed it as fiction after finding out that it is not true."

Norma, following communication with you, and having
visited Fr. Elias Chacour, I have the following to report. You told me to speak
to "the priest and historian of the village". I spoke with him this
week by phone (after seeing Fr. Elias, because I wanted him to have the first
word). He tells me, contrary to what you have written as above, that everyone
knew about the massacre. In his Hebrew words "Haya kever. Ze haya yadua."
(There was a grave. It was well-known.) He says that you were told this by the
people you interviewed, but that they threw some doubt on whether an 8-year
old boy would have found the mass grave.

To read the whole article, click
here.

To read the book excerpt and the critique
by Norma Archbold, click
here.

Reform by Imprisonment by Sam Bahour 6:00pm Sun Oct 13 '02

While the most brutal of measures
are being taken against the Palestinian population, the world is being deceived
into believing that political reforms can happen in the Israeli-occupied territories
of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. As the Bush Administration
continues to call for regime change in the Palestinian Authority, Israel is
silently pursuing a violent strategy of establishing internment camps that imprison
Palestinians from all walks of life. With over 12,000 acts of detainment and
over 5,000 Palestinian detainees now languishing in Israeli jails, the fa?ade
of reform unfolds in a political vacuum.

To read the whole article, click
here.

Joint Israeli Palestinian Demonstration in Abu Dis. by ICAHD and Indymedia Israel 6:00pm Sun Oct 13 '02

Yesterday (Oct. 12, 2002) over three hundred activists
from Ta'ayush, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Bat Shalom and
others, joined with five hundred Palestinians in a joint demonstration against
the separation wall built by the Israeli government in Abu Dis. Three months
ago the state of Israel constructed the wall which isolates 60,000 Palestinian
residents (the majority of whom have Israeli residency) from the city of Jerusalem.

To read the whole article, click
here.

To look at more pictures from the demo, click
here.

Class, Economy, and the Second Intifada by Adam Hanieh in The Monthly Review 3:32pm Fri Oct 4 '02

The current Palestinian Intifada and Israel's
brutal response has been the subject of countless articles over the last two
years. What is strikingly absent from virtually all left analysis is any discussion
of class and political economy in both Israel and the Occupied Territories.
While this may seem a strange accusation to make of left-wing writing, I believe
the absence of class-based analysis is in itself indicative of the confusion
with which much of the left views the Israeli state. For much of the left, Israeli
politics is simply understood as the binary opposites of the right-wing Likud
and the more peace-inclined Labor Party. I aim to show below that such a view
stems from a mistaken approach to understanding class formation in Israel and
that without placing class at the center of our analysis, it is difficult to
develop an adequate understanding of what is actually occurring on the ground.

To read the whole article, click
here.

Looking Behind Ha'aretz's Liberal Image by Ran HaCohen 8:30pm Wed Oct 2 '02

Ha'aretzdaily.com is not a full translation of
the Hebrew paper; it's a selection. It often omits certain items, certain columns,
that Ha'aretz does not find "suitable" for foreign eyes, like the
report I just mentioned. Another way to achieve the same hidden bias is by "nationalistically
correct" translations



To read the whole article, click
here.

Unprecedentend Pressure From Bush And Public Protests Forced Sharon To Let Arafat Breathe by Hans Lebrecht, Kibbutz Beit-Oren 8:07pm Mon Sep 30 '02

No doubt, the sudden turn-around of Sharon and
his army commanders of releasing Arafat to breath some air (hardly much more
for the time being), was the result of an unprecedented pressure from the Bush
people in Washington, who could not risk an interference with their impudent
own war designs against Iraq. Sharon’s own war against Arafat was too dangerous
for the anyway almost "operation impossible" to win the Arab world,
with the exception of the few stools in Kuwait and one or two of the Gulf Emirates,
for their aggression against Iraq. But, no less, Sharon and his gang were pressed
by the rapid growing pressure of public opinion the world over, the U.S. and
England included, as well as in Israel itself.



To read the whole article, click
here.

Wake Up And Smell The Occupation by Sam Bahour 9:02am Sat Sep 28 '02

The peace and security that Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon promised during his year 2001 election campaign have vanished in
the dust of Israeli tanks rampaging Palestinian cities. Israel’s economy
is declining at a record pace. The right-wing Sharon government has sparked
a national debate in Israel that questions the legal right to citizenship for
over 1.1 million of its Palestinian citizens. Israeli families across the social
strata are sending their children to study abroad and emigrating at a pace that
was not thought possible only a few years ago. Over 400 Israeli conscripts,
soldiers, or reservists are refusing to serve in the occupied Palestinian areas
and some are now imprisoned in Israeli jails as conscientious objectors. The
moral fabric of Israeli society is tearing apart at the seams as the Israeli
military proudly reverts to a policy of assassination, imprisonment, demolition
of homes, deportation, and collective punishment.



To read the whole article, click
here.

Academics' statement: Israeli government may be contemplating crimes against humanity by Jacob Katriel 12:22pm Sun Sep 22 '02

We, members of Israeli academe, are horrified
by US buildup of aggression towards Iraq and by the Israeli political leadership's
enthusiastic support for it. We are deeply worried by indications that the "fog
of war" could be exploited by the Israeli government to commit further
crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing...




To read the whole article, click
here.

From besieged Ramallah by Rita 6:56pm Sat Sep 21 '02

It has been so stressful again here in Ramallah,
not only strict curfew and the sounds of bombing and shooting basically all
night, but today, emergency has meant that many people, simple ordinary citizens,
are in a serious need of assistance:



To read the whole article, click
here.

Racist Double Entendre in Ha'aretz Advertisement by Bryan Atinsky 4:32pm Fri Sep 20 '02

Though Amos Schocken and Ha'aretz may have won
an award recently from the University of Missouri "in recognition of its
long tradition of fiercely independent and balanced reporting under the most
difficult of conditions.", the newspaper has no qualms about accepting
advertising money for an obviously racist full page ad. On Sept. 15, 2002, Ha'aretz
ran a full page advertisement, three-quarters of the page taken up by a purposefully
ambivalent statement, which means either: "At our place, there are no Arabs!"
or "With us, no need for guarantors!"



To read the whole article, click
here.