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Indymedia Israel Feature Archive: January 14 - April 12, 2003Thursday 14 Aug 2003
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Indymedia Israel Feature Archive: January 14 - April 12, 2003
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Between 4:30 and 5:00 PM today Israeli snipers shot another ISM
activist in the head. Tom Hundall from Manchester Britain is currently in critical
condition in a helicopter on his way from Europa Hospital in Khan Younis to
a hospital in Bir Sheva. He is 22 years old. According to Laura, the activists
were being shot at while protecting some children from Israeli gunfire. Tom
was in plain view of the sniper towers and was wearing a bright orange fluorescent
jacket with reflective stripes. The nine ISM activists and many children were
in the process of leaving the area. Sniper fire from the tower was hitting the
wall close beside the children, who were afraid to move. Tom was attempting
to bring them to safety when he was shot. There was no shooting or resistance
coming from the Palestinian side at all.
To read the whole article, click
here.
For another article on the shooting,click
here.
To go to the ISM website, click
here.
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While the US and British Governments drop tons of bombs on the
Iraqi people, a group of approximately 300 Jewish and Palestinian citizens of
Israel and tens of Internationals brought a semi-truck loaded with around 40
tons of flour to the Palestinian village of Karawat Bani Hasan, situated in
the Tsalfit district of the central West Bank.
To read the whole article, click
here.
To look at pictures,click
here.
To go to the Ta'ayush website, click
here.
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At about 5.20 pm on the 16th of March, Rachel Corrie from Olympia
in Washington State, USA died of her injuries in A-Najar Hospital in Rafah
after being deliberately run over by an Israeli military bulldozer. Rachel
had been working as an ISM activist in Rafah for seven weeks when she was
killed trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes and property
in the Hi Salaam area of Rafah. The confrontation between the ISM and the
Israeli Army had been under way for two hours when Rachel was run over. Rachel
and the other activists had clearly identified themselves as unarmed international
peace activists throughout the confrontation.
To read the whole statement by ISM, click
here
For earlier news about the incident, click
here
For a statement from her parents and a letter Rachel wrote, click
here
For "Rachel Corrie-In Memoriam", click
here.
For "International Peace Activists Being Targeted By Israel", click
here.
For "Eyewitness to Corrie's Murder", click
here.
For "Rachel's e-mails to her family", click
here.
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A few days ago it snowed in Jerusalem. On Tuesday, Ferbruary 25th,
the cold wave featured in all Israeli papers as the main news. Even in my heated
home in Tel Aviv it was cold. My thoughts wandered to my Palestinian friends
- colleagues from Bir Zeit University. How does the snow fare with a family
that still has a home, but not that much money to heat it? And what's with those
who no longer have a home? It snowed in Jenin as well. How did the Jenin refugees
survive the cold, and those who were recently made to flee from Hebron? And
what about the old people, for whom the cold is particularly dangerous? Where
did the new homeless of Gaza spend the night - those whose homes were destroyed
that same day? Is UNRWA still able to provide them with blankets and tents?
At the beginning of February, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA), renewed its emergency appeal to the international
community for urgent contributions for the first half of 2003. They stated that
without these contributions, which have decreased lately, their budget would
end in March
To read the whole article, click
here.
For For other articles by Tanya Reinhart, click
here.
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World attention is focused nowadays on Iraq and the effect of
the US-led attack on regional stability. Millions of people all over the world
demonstrate their opposition to the war and attempt to avert it. However, the
message we, the Palestinian civilian population, are receiving from Israeli
officials is threatening us with dangerous consequences. Statements made over
the last two months by both Israeli officials and media indicate what they are
proposing, planning and preparing to execute in the Palestinian occupied territories
in case of war against Iraq. Such statements could be meant as intimidation,
deterrent or real threat. In view of our past and present experience, we, the
Palestinians, tend to see them as a threat endangering our very existence in
this land of ours.
To read the whole article, click
here.
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I can't remember exactly when I decided I wasn't prepared to take
an active role in the army. I remember I started talking about it, I decided
to open up questions that I was afraid to ask, hard questions that the society
I lived in always took for granted, as pre-determined. Pretty spontaneously
I announced to my friends that I didn't intend to enlist in the IDF. The problem
was that, even for myself, I couldn't explain exactly why. I knew about the
occupation and I knew about the oppression but it was so far away. I guess I
was wrong and it was actually so close by. My best friend couldn't take my decision.
She told me she didn't respect me, that we have no choice, that we have to fight...
To read the whole article, click
here.
For more on the right to refuse to perform military service (conscientious objection),
click
here.
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Without even watching the news (our satellite dishes were buried
in the snow 48 hours ago) we can imagine that newspapers and TV stations around
the world are running pictures of a snowy Jerusalem and Ramallah. Pastoral pictures
of a snow covered Dome of the Rock and Wailing Wall, or perhaps a snow covered
Israeli tank in Hebron, or Palestinian children throwing snowballs at Israeli
soldiers...The snow will soon melt and the destroyed homes, bullet riddled walls,
tank-rippled roads will re-appear, only to jog the collective memories of those
Palestinians that remain the victims of this thirty-six year man-made tragedy
called Israeli Occupation.
To read the whole article, click
here.
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To fight the anti-intellectual atmosphere within Israel, local
academics need as much support as they can get from their colleagues abroad.
A boycott will only weaken the elements within Israeli society that are struggling
against the assault on the universities, and in this way will inadvertently
help those who want to gain control over one of the last havens of free speech
in the country.
To read the whole article, click
here.
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The IDF top brass has recently decided to judge refuseniks by
the military courts system - a criminal court for soldiers. Thus, we face the
danger that the prisoners of conscience will be sentenced to up to three years
in military jail for their devotion to the cause of peace and their refusal
to take part in the occupation apparatus, an apparatus already hovering on the
edge of the commission of a major war crime. It is obvious that this step is
designed to break the will of Ben Artzi, the first to be judged, and the other
refusenicks.
To read the whole article, click
here.
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Between two and three thousand Palestinian and Jewish demonstrators
marched from the Cinemateque to the Museum Square in Tel-Aviv, against the U.S.
led push for a war against the Iraqi people.
For more pictures, click
here
And even more pictures, click
here.
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Following my last military reserve duty, I was kicked out of my
unit, the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF) educational corps. There was a surrealistic
dimension to the whole experience. I had driven a few hours to a base located
near the Egyptian border after having been asked to lecture about "Leadership"
to 60 soldiers of the Givati infantry brigade who were about to begin officers'
training course. These young men are the military's future commanders, its elite.
I decided to concentrate, in the lecture's first part, on the relationship between
leadership and moral virtue, examining the characteristics distinguishing leaders
such as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot from others like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma
Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. In the discussion that followed, the soldiers
concluded that all of the leaders mentioned possessed charisma, intelligence,
and rhetorical skills, but only the latter three were guided by universal moral
values -- the equality of all people.
To read the whole article, click
here.
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The Apartheid wall will not fulfill its proclaimed destiny - That
it will provide security for the citizens of Israel. The separation policies,
land theft, home demolitions and hardening Palestinians' life is only increasing
terror and is actively preventing any hope for peaceful joint life between Palestinians
and Israelis. The only way to establish security for Israelis is through a just
solution to the conflict, promising equality to every man and woman. There are
not walls high enough or trenches deep enough to prevent the oppressed from
demanding equality...
To read the whole article, click
here.
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It is difficult to comprehend the bloody era in which we now find
ourselves. What began at the 1991 Madrid conference as an attempt at parity
and historical compromise, establishing international law and United Nations
resolution 242 as the peace process terms of reference, was implemented in such
a way as to destroy the very concept of "land for peace." Only the need to provide
security to Israeli citizens was considered, while the need to guarantee security
to the Palestinian people has been ignored. This, we believe, is one of the
gravest problems plaguing the peace process and one that continues today.
To read the whole article, click
here.
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In April 2002, following the Israel's "operation" in Jenin, first
calls for institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities appeared in
England and in France.In the university Paris VI the board meeting on Monday
January 27, 2003, reconfirmed the resolution with an overwhelming majority.
A similar resolution was subsequently approved by two other French universities
in Grenoble and in Montpellier. Below is my expression of support, to appear
(in French) in Le Monde.
To read the whole article, click
here.
To read other articles by Tanya Reinhart, click
here.
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One of the characteristics of much academic writing is an obsession
with theory at the expense of empirical investigation. It is rare to find a
book that combines genuinely novel theoretical exploration with rigorous empirical
study, the more so in fields such as political science where abstraction seems
to have become the norm. It is for this reason that The Global Political Economy
of Israel is such a gripping read. A remarkable investigation into the concrete
workings of the Israeli and U.S. economies that avoids the fatuous generalities
of much of the globalization literature, it presents a challenging theoretical
framework that not only clarifies the past but also seeks to understand the
present. Nitzan and Bichler start by challenging the traditional view of Israel
as a "unique case" characterized by a strong state guided by socialist ideology.
Their argument instead looks beyond the apparent form and seeks to identify
the essence, using as their guiding principles the concepts of capital accumulation,
ruling class formation, and Israel's place in the global political economy.
In so doing, they attack key premises of neoclassical economics; assumptions
such as an economy in equilibrium, full employment, and obsession with so-called
neutral aggregates such as GDP and inflation rates. Instead they ask the questions:
Who are the winners and losers in the economy and how is power exercised?
To read the whole article, click
here.
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Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek spoke on
January 12, 2003 at the Jerusalem Spinoza Institute for a conference on 'Religion,
Nationalism and Violence' on the subject: "Why September 12th is More Important
than September 11th." The lecture is 72 minutes (32 kbps MP3 (16.60 MB)), the
first two minutes are a Hebrew introduction, but the lecture is in English.
The lecture was recorded by Indymedia Israel with the permission of Slavoj Zizek
and the Jerusalem Spinoza Institute.
To listen to the lecture, click
here.
For
more analysis and viewpoints, go to the IMC-Israel Frontpage archive