GAZA; THE FORGOTTEN SIEGE

May 31, 2013 at 13:06 (Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, zionism)

‘Peace Talks’ between Kerry and Abbas …. both seem to have forgotten the situation in Gaza.
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Instead of “easing” the closure, as has been repeteadly promised, it has just become institutionalized with the consent and legitimation of the UN, the European Union and other international bodies.
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Yes, Gaza is still under siege

by Ali Abunimah 
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At Rafah, Israeli-built walls still stand between Egypt and Palestinians in Gaza.

We stood on the wooden planks of a large, circular platform, big enough to park two cars.

The operator pressed the button and a warning horn sounded. A few seconds later the platform began to descend down the deep cement-lined shaft, guided by well-engineered steel rails, cables and motors on two sides.

In less than a minute we were at the bottom of the shaft, some 30 meters below, the bright sky a mere circle high above.

The air was cool and clammy and got cooler still as we walked off the platform into the tunnel mouth which was wide enough for one car.

Reinforced every few feet with arches made from steel I-beams and lit with electric lamps, this is one of the famous tunnels that connects the Gaza Strip to Egypt.

My trip underground, a few days ago, along with other members of the Palestine Festival of Literature (palfest.org) delegation in Gaza, was coordinated for us by community members from the border city of Rafah.

“We are lions!”

Tunnel workers and security forces in the area repeatedly reminded us not to take photos every time they saw one of us reach for a mobile phone – a reasonable safety concern given that Israel has regularly bombed the tunnels, and Egypt (at the US’ behest) has variously tried to build an underground steel wall, or in the case of the current Egyptian government, deliberate flooding.

Between collapses during construction and bombing attacks, more than 240 tunnel workers have died in this area.

Before we went down the big tunnel we were shown the mouth of a smaller tunnel which had caved in during construction just two days earlier, killing 19-year-old Hamada Abu Shalouf from Rafah.

As we stood at the mouth of that tunnel, I asked one of the young workers if he didn’t get scared going underground. “Never!” he said. “We are lions!” But even a lion cannot survive being buried alive.

What could justify the price of the life of Hamada and all those sons, brothers and fathers who died before him to connect Gaza to the outside world?

Still an essential lifeline

Tunnel trade: sacks of Egyptian wheat in Gaza

According to some media reports, the tunnels might have been a necessity, but are now often depicted as money-makers so Palestinians in Gaza can import frivolities and luxuries from iPads to deliveries of KFC.

While there’s no doubt that a lot of consumer goods come through the tunnels (and why shouldn’t they?), the scope of what we saw indicates that the underground link plays a fundamental role in keeping the Gaza economy from collapse.

Tunnels operate on a large scale in an area that was once residential – thousands of homes were demolished by Israel in this area in 2003-2004 and we were not far from where Rachel Corrie was murdered.

Now, the area is full of equipment, warehouses and tunnel heads that are covered by canopies or steel sheds.

We saw impressive quantities of goods coming in, principally gravel, steel rebar, bags of cement and bricks for construction. Some tunnels bring in gasoline which is pumped through hoses then discharged into large plastic water tanks to be transported all over Gaza.

Electric winches suspended over deep shafts haul up large canvas baskets of gravel. Then workers slide the baskets sideways along an overhead rail and dump the gravel into pits below. Trucks roll down ramps into the pits to load up and take the cargo away. It is all cleverly engineered for maximum efficiency.

Other essentials coming in through the tunnels include generators to help cope with the blackouts that still leave Gaza dark for 8-12 hours per day, and the Chinese-made tuc-tucs or moto-taxis that are replacing many of Gaza’s ubiquitous donkey carts that provide transport for goods and people.

Whether all this commerce meets the needs of Gaza – with its population close to 1.7 million – is not something I can judge. There is definitely construction visible in Gaza, but nothing I would call a boom.

I also saw many workers up and down Gaza breaking rubble at bombed sites to recycle concrete and steel rebar.

This suggests that whatever is coming in from the tunnels may not meet the need, or at least not at a price people can afford. People in Gaza need to build and rebuild.

The question that struck me seeing all this is, why? Everyone knows this is going on – tunnel operations on this scale cannot be concealed.

Underground economy

Notwithstanding the gratuitous violence against tunnel workers, if Egyptian authorities wanted to shut down the tunnels completely, they know where they are, and the area they operate in is fairly limited.

So why doesn’t Egypt just let the goods in above ground? Israel’s goal has long been to separate Gaza economically, to rid itself of what it sees as a burden (although you would not know this seeing the large quantities of Israeli consumer goods on which Gaza is forced to depend – at great profit to the Israeli producers).

Israeli frozen chicken for sale at the Abu Dallal Supermarket in Nuseirat refugee camp.

Egypt ostensibly refuses to allow Israel to shift the responsibility for Gaza onto it. Palestinians too do not want to see Gaza politically and economically separated from the rest of Palestine (though they do want to see the siege and enforced dependency on Israel ended!).

And Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood government has continued Mubarak’s policy of acting as a US-Israel subcontractor when it comes to the Palestinians.

All this militates against the Egypt-Gaza border turning into a large-scale commercial crossing any time soon. The tunnels, it would seem, are a compromise that comes at a high price in human life: desperately-needed imports come in, sustaining the economy, but without formally legitimating or succumbing to Israel’s plan to permanently separate Gaza.

The tunnels are undoubtedly helping Gaza to survive the ongoing siege, but according to Hamdi Shaqurra of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Gaza’s private sector, the backbone of its economy, already diminished by Israeli restrictions and sanctions, is undermined even further.

“We have been moving from a formal economy to an underground economy,” Shaqurra told us during a visit to his office in Gaza City.

The long-term consequences of this may include further de-development and de-instutionalization of Gaza’s economy while placing significant parts of it into the hands of clandestine organizations on the other side of the border.

A siege on people and knowledge

As we exited Gaza on Wednesday, fellow PalFest participants, Palestinian American writer Susan Abulhawa and Egyptian journalists Lina Atallah and Nora Younis had a taste of the cruel and arbitrary reality at the Rafah crossing described by Ayah Bashir.

“More than two years after the uprising in Egypt, the Rafah crossing remains a prison gate,” Bashir writes as Palestinians must humiliatingly beg and plead to be allowed out for any purpose, and sometimes even for life-saving treatment.

Egypt makes it hardest on men under 40 who are most often sent back with no reason, a policy apparently copied from Israel which severely limits the movement of Palestinian men under 40 between Jerusalem and other parts of the occupied West Bank.

As we waited in the crowded, dirty Egyptian departure hall for a relatively modest three hours to be allowed out of Gaza, I spoke to several Palestinian men who waited nervously, not knowing if they would be let out by the unreformed Mubarak-era security apparatus.

One young man, a student in Germany, had been visiting Gaza because his mother had suffered a stroke. He told me he always left Gaza at least 72 hours before his flight from Cairo, not knowing how long he would be kept at the border. On one visit, he slept at the crossing for two weeks.

Now I can understand better the words of Sameeha Elwan, one of our hosts, who wrote after our departure:

We bid farewell to Susan, Ali, Lina and Nora yesterday after four days of Palfest (Palestine Festival of Literature) events in Gaza. But even after they left, I can still inhale the air of euphoria that accompanied their presence filling the space. During their stay, an air of easiness prevailed, and those internal feelings of entrapment, of imprisonment, of siege, which troubles the feigned normalcy of our everyday life, were suddenly suspended. Gaza was no longer the bearer of borders, the enclaved concentration camp, or the inevitability of death and life. We transcended that through imagination; or maybe I did.

I only wish that Susan, Lina, Nora and myself really did have the ability to change those realities just by spending a few days in Gaza, yet Sameeha’s poignant words reflect those we heard from many others.

We heard of the anxiety of students who have studied so hard but see an iron ceiling holding down their ambitions and prospects. We heard it from writers, media-makers and activists who participated in Palfest workshops.

We heard it from academics, including Dr. Walid Amer, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Islamic University of Gaza, who spoke of the persistent difficulty obtaining books, research materials and supplies for the university’s 23,000 students and the entire education sector. It is also impossible for academics to engage in any sort of regular travel for research or conferences.

We heard it from the educators at the Rachel Corrie Cultural Centre in Rafah regugee camp with whom we played a game of musical chairs.

We, the visitors, played the role of Gazans, and they played the besiegers.

But the game was rigged: the besiegers sat on the chairs before the music stopped – sometimes before it even started – or pulled the chairs out from under us if we managed to sit down. They blocked our way until finally we gave up.

And they told us that for all the people who do stay steadfast and insist on living their lives, some young people in Gaza do give up, and turn to abusing the pain reliever Tramadol to numb the agony of a hopeless routine.

The fact that a visit like ours that ought to be so ordinary, to pass without notice, was so extraordinary in Sameeha Elwan’s eyes, is a measure of how much isolation people in Gaza are enduring.

I hear Sameeha’s words as a call on all of us outside Gaza to intensify our solidarity work with those under siege.

Isolated from the rest of Palestine

After 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip (along with the Syrian Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai), present-day Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip functioned to a large extent as a single territory. Though lacking basic rights, Palestinians could still travel and work throughout historic Palestine.

“One of the undesired effects of occupation from Israel’s perspective,” according to PCHR’s Hamdi Shaqurra, “is that it strengthened Palestinian identity and unity under occupation.”

From the early 1990s, Israel began to gradually separate Palestinians from eachother, a process that accelerated after the 1993 Oslo Accords, and then again using the pretext of security.

Before 1990, approximately 40 percent of students in West Bank universities were from Gaza. Today the number is effectively zero. “Israel is pushing Gaza toward a separate identity,” Shaqurra said.

It is indeed striking how rare it is to meet a young Palestinian in Gaza who has seen any other part of Palestine. When Shahd Abusalama did reach Jerusalem and Jaffa last year for a few hours, she wrote that it “felt like a dream, one so happy that I never wanted to wake up.”

For most Palestinians in Gaza it is a dream, as seemingly unttainable as reaching the moon.

After my visit, I can understand better Palfest Gaza organizer Rana Baker’s recent piece on her own struggle to make sense of and maintain her Palestinian identity in Gaza.

Gaza as warning and hope

Farmers harvest wheat at Khuza’a on the eastern edge of Gaza as a Spanish solidarity worker in orange vest faces toward an Israeli watchtower from which soldiers frequently open fire.

 (Ali Abunimah)

When we asked Shaqurra to evaluate the human rights situation in Gaza since last November’s Israeli attack, he observed that things had almost returned to the pre-warstatus quo: Israel is enjoying a truce that is scrupulously observed by the Palestinian side, while the siege remains intact and Israel pays no political price.

Instead of “easing” the closure, as has been repeteadly promised, it has just become institutionalized with the consent and legitimation of the UN, the European Union and other international bodies.

Everywhere that Israel rules Palestinians, it has successfully reduced them to worrying about daily life – the next meal, the next payment, the next permit – too preoccupied, too hungry, mentally even more than physically, to mount a successful resistance.

All of this is buying Israel the peace and quiet it needs to pursue the project that is really important to 21st Century Zionism: completing the colonization of the West Bank. And when that’s done?

“What I am afraid of is that sooner or later the Israeli leadership will do to parts of the West Bank what it has done to Gaza,” Shaqurra said.

Take for example the city of Qalqilya. “It is surrounded by a wall, just like Gaza,” Shaqurra noted. “Israel could declare Qalqilya a separate zone and say, ‘We don’t care who runs Qalqilya as long as Qalqilya observes the same rules of the game as Gaza.’”

All of this would be presented – just like Israel’s 2005 so-called “disengagement” from Gaza – as the merciful act of a liberal Israeli nation which claims “we do not want to be occupiers.” But the catastrophe for Palestinians of fractured geography and identity would worsen.

I know all of this and yet I did not come away from Gaza depressed or hopeless. The feeling I came away with is that for all the hardships they face, people in Gaza have not surrendered and won’t surrender any time soon.

Rather, the worry I heard from more than one person in Gaza is that the rest of the Palestinian people might forget about them, or give up first.

All photos by Ali Abunimah.

Written FOR

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WHY WOULD ROBERT DE NIRO SAY THIS?

May 31, 2013 at 09:28 (Apartheid, Civil Liberties, Collective Punishment, Hasbara, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, zionist harassment)

945653_130418327152858_1809520829_n (2)

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Here’s just one reason …
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Dozens of graduates of a Palestinian medical school gathered outside the Health Ministry in Jerusalem on Thursday to protest their continuing ineligibility to work in Israeli hospitals.
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Palestinian medical school grads protest exclusion from Israeli hospitals

The Al-Quds School of Medicine, east of Jerusalem, is considered neither Israeli nor foreign, leaving its graduates ineligible to take the Israeli licensing exam.

By Nir Hasson
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Al-Quds graduates at the Supreme Court in 2012.
Al-Quds graduates at the Supreme Court in 2012. Photo by Emil Salman
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Dozens of graduates of a Palestinian medical school gathered outside the Health Ministry in Jerusalem on Thursday to protest their continuing ineligibility to work in Israeli hospitals.

The graduates of the Al-Quds School of Medicine in Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, had hoped new Health Minister Yael German would reverse her predecessors’ policy on the matter.

The policy, which has been in place for seven years, is political. Because part of the Al-Quds University campus – though not the medical school – is located within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, the Health Ministry and Council of Higher Education refuse to allow graduates in medicine and other health professions to sit for their licensing boards as “foreign university” graduates. Nor can they can they take the boards as Israeli graduates, because Al-Quds in not accredited by the council.

As a result, some 60 physicians, a similar number of dentists, and a few hundred lab technicians and physiotherapists who have finished their studies cannot work in the health system, even in East Jerusalem. This flies in the face of the serious shortage of Arabic-speaking health professionals in the capital in general, and East Jerusalem in particular.

Moreover, the Al-Quds School of Medicine is considered a top-notch medical school. In the past, when the Health Ministry allowed Al-Quds graduates to take the licensing exams, they consistently scored higher than the graduates of any other foreign medical school. Graduates of medical schools elsewhere in the territories can take the Israeli exams and work in Israel, even though their training is not as highly regarded.

The Health Ministry admits its policy on the medical school is political and that it was formulated in consultation with diplomats. But what makes the situation even more peculiar is that Al-Quds law graduates and graduates of other departments are allowed to sit for the Israeli Bar Association or other relevant Israeli professional licensing exams.

“It isn’t clear why the health minister has to be the pipeline for exerting diplomatic pressure on the backs of doctors and patients in Jerusalem,” says attorney Shlomo Lecker, who is representing the doctors.

In 2011, Lecker filed suit with the Jerusalem District Court, sitting as the Administrative Affairs Court, against the Health Ministry’s policy. After losing that case in February 2012, he appealed to the Supreme Court, which in July 2012 affirmed the lower court ruling. The justices, however, called on the Council of Higher Education to examine the possibility of splitting the university so that the medical school could be recognized separately as being outside the Jerusalem city limits. Al-Quds University president Sari Nusseibeh and the Council on Higher education have exchanged letters in the past few months, but the state has yet to change its position.

The Health Ministry noted that both the district and high courts had rejected the Al-Quds doctors’ appeals.

“Al-Quds University operates both in the Palestinian Authority territories and within the State of Israel (without CHE approval), and as a result it isn’t possible to recognize this university as a foreign university,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. “A solution was suggested to the university administration, but apparently the good of the students is not the university administration’s highest priority, but some other agenda. The Health Ministry is waiting for the parties to coordinate so that a solution can be found that will enable the graduates to be licensed.”

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WHY WOULD CARLOS LATUFF SAY THIS?

May 30, 2013 at 15:37 (Apartheid, Civil Rights, Israel, Just Plain Disgusting, Palestine, zionist harassment)

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Here’s just one of many reasons …. Notice how it’s denied after being admitted;
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Amusement park denies entry to Arab teacher, students

Superland Rishon Lezion is trying to minimize damage after its decision not to allow Arab students in its gates on certain days caused tumult. Education Minister to discriminated teacher: I’m shocked

Shahar Chai

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A Jaffa school teacher complained that Superland Rishon Lezion prevented him from buying tickets for Arab students, a complaint which was followed by the amusement park’s management admission that the park is open to Jewish schools on certain days and Arab schools on other days. The park management released another statement on its Facebook page Thursday morning, announcing that the policy, which provoked fierce public criticism, will be reexamined.

“Throughout most of the year, Superland is open to the entire public without any difference to different segments of the population,” the management tried to explain the discrimination.

“In June, various schools ask to use Superland grounds to hold end of year events. The Superland management received requests from both Jewish and Arab schools to conduct the events on separate days. We have taken the requests into consideration and this month a few different days were set for different sectors. However, in the next few days, we will reexamine the decision to agree to these requests.”

The exposure of this discrimination led the Chairman of the Education, Culture and Sports Committee MK Amram Mitzna to hold an urgent hearing on Monday. Mitzna called on Education Minister Shai Piron to stop schools from sending their students to Superland and the mayor of Rishon Lezion to take legal actions against the discriminators. “This behavior is a slap in the face of the efforts to deal with racism within Israeli society,” said Mitzna.

‘No place in Israeli society’

Piron himself spoke on the phone with Khaled Shakra, the Jaffa high-school teacher who exposed the story. The minister said: “I’m shocked at the face of such acts that have no place in Israeli society. I see a joint life, between Jews and Arabs, as one of the fundamental values of the Declaration of Independence. Values of equality, partnership and tolerance are at the heart of the Education Ministry’s policies.”

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon referred to the story on his Facbook page: “When I hear the teacher who was discriminated against at Superland, and when I read Superlan’s unprecedented response, I ask myself how any one of us would respond if in any other country there would be a discrimination in parks between regular and Jewish schools. I believe I would be as shocked and ashamed as I am now.”

The Abraham Fund Initiatives, operating a venture to promote coexistence between Jews and Arabs, responded to the discrimination: “It is important that the Education Ministry send a clear message that there should be no activity in or with places that racially segregate between Jewish and Arab students.

Minister Piron spoke last week in front of the Knesset Education Committee about the importance he finds in programs that bring Jewish and Arab students together, and the severe incident at Superland highlights the urgency in implementing these measures in the education system.”

HaShomer HaTzair youth movement decided in response to these events that its thousands of members would not go to Superland as part of their summer camps. Hashomer Hatzair spokesperson Ofer Neiman said that “racism is a criminal and sick act that must stop leading the discourse in the Israeli public. If the Superland management conducts a proper investigation and deals with those responsible for this embarrassing behavior we will reconsider our collaboration with the park.”

The National Student and Youth Council said “this is contempt of the Israel democracy. Here, on our piece of land, to which we returned after many years of persecution and discrimination, it is inconceivable we would do the same thing. We call on school principals to cancel any agreements with Superland and demand the company operating the park to renounce this criminal act.”

Source

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ISRAELI RABBIS ENDORSE BOYCOTT

May 30, 2013 at 11:08 (Boycott Israel, Insanity, Israel, Palestine)

  
Not quite …. but I thought it is a cute headline for the following (ridiculous) report from Ynet ;
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Chief Rabbinate Spokesman Ziv Maor says that Coca-Cola is made in Israel and abroad according to the company’s secret and accurate formula, yet there is no way of knowing whether a factory which is not supervised by the Rabbinate uses the machine that produces the Coke to pack other drinks which are not kosher, such as camel milk.
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stopcola
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Rabbinate: Palestinian Coke not kosher

Chief Rabbinate warns Israeli public against Coca-Cola manufactured without supervision in PA. Businesses asked to avoid selling beverage ‘so as not to get public used to purchasing products without kosher mark’

Itzchak Tessler

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The Chief Rabbinate released an urgent statement this week, warning the Israeli public against Coca-Cola manufactured in the West Bank town of Beitunia, near Ramallah, which is marketed alongside the strictly kosher beverage that has been manufactured in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak for the past decades.

According to the statement, written by Rabbi Yaakov Sabag, director of the Chief Rabbinates Kashrut Department, and Rabbi Rafi Yochai, head of the Kashrut Fraud Division, “We have recently discovered the marketing of a four-pack Coca-Cola, in which each bottle carries a caption in Arabic with no kashrut mark.

“This product is being sold for a reduced price and has created confusion among the population, as the brand is known to be kosher inIsrael. An inquiry has revealed that the product is manufactured in the village of Beitunia, near Jerusalem, without any kosher supervision.”

Businesses supervised by the Rabbinate were asked in the letter to avoid selling the Coke bottles from Beitunia, even if there is allegedly no fear that the beverage is not kosher. Moreover, many kashrut observers around the world buy the brand in local stores even without a kosher mark, and it is perceived as kosher.

Nonetheless, the Rabbinate wrote in its warning, businesses must avoid selling the Palestinian drink “due to the educational aspect, so as not to get the public used to purchasing products without a kosher mark.”

"שלא להרגיל את הציבור". הקולה פלסטינית

Rabbinate’s statement on Palestinian Coke

Chief Rabbinate Spokesman Ziv Maor says that Coca-Cola is made in Israel and abroad according to the company’s secret and accurate formula, yet there is no way of knowing whether a factory which is not supervised by the Rabbinate uses the machine that produces the Coke to pack other drinks which are not kosher, such as camel milk.

The warning, he adds, is aimed at making it clear to be public that it must only consume beverages manufactured in a factory supervised by the Rabbinate.

The Coca-Cola Israel company said it had nothing to do with the production of the beverage in the Palestinian Authority. “There is no need to mention that all our products are under the fine supervision of Rabbi Landa and the Tel Aviv Rabbinate,” the company noted in a statement.

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PALESTINE SOLD TO HIGHEST BIDDER FOR $4 BILLION

May 29, 2013 at 10:11 (Associate Post, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Right of Return, zionism)

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
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The situation has gotten worse since THIS was posted ….
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It is vital we make things amply clear for our people. The U.S. simply wants to bribe the easy-going easy-coming PA leadership into giving up the paramount right of return for Palestinian refugees, East Jerusalem and accept a deformed state-let on parts of the West Bank, all in order to enable the resumption of the so-called peace process.
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Kerry bullies Abbas to cede right of return for 4b. dollars
By Khalid Amayreh

During the recently held World-economic Forum in Amman , U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that the U.S. would offer the Palestinian Authority (PA) $4 billion dollars for reactivating the Palestinian economy.

However, Kerry made it unmistakably clear that the implementation of the American inducement package was dependent on the resumption of the stalled peace process between an imperial Israel, armed to the teeth and in tight control of the American government. And the PA, a vanquished supplicant whose very survival depends on Israeli good will as well as western handouts.

Some gullible observers have hailed the American “gesture,” ignoring the poisoned chalice the Palestinians are being urged to drink as part of the deal. The PA has denied that it would sacrifice Palestinian rights in return for some transient economic benefits. However, from early Palestinian reactions it is noticed that a majority of Palestinians have deep suspicions as to whether Abbas will be able to withstand and resist America’s bullying.

It is vital we make things amply clear for our people. The U.S. simply wants to bribe the easy-going easy-coming PA leadership into giving up the paramount right of return for Palestinian refugees, East Jerusalem and accept a deformed state-let on parts of the West Bank, all in order to enable the resumption of the so-called peace process.

In other words, Kerry wants to get Abbas, et al, to agree to liquidate the essence of the Palestinian national cause in return for some financial inducements. They just want to reproduce the same false optimism and euphoria that accompanied all peace conferences ever since the Oslo Accords. And as we all know, all these conferences ended up in a gigantic fiasco, with the main reason being Israel’s adamant refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 war and allow for the repatriation of the refugees to their homes and villages from which they were expelled at gunpoint when Israel was created 65 years ago.

It would be a huge disaster if the Palestinian leadership were to relate seriously to the American proposal. It would amount to a kind of committing an act of lewdness with the enduring national cause, something the Palestinian people would never allow to happen.

In fact, one could claim that the very American offer carries with it a great deal of naivety if only because everyone knows that economic prosperity is impossible under a sinister foreign military occupation. Indeed, one doesn’t have to be a great economic expert to realize that in the absence of sovereignty and freedom of movement, there is a little chance for sustained economic development. It would be lamentable if the PA failed to realize this point after all the lessons of the past 20 years.

Peres: notorious liar, war criminal

During the economic conference mentioned above, the elderly Israeli President Shimon Peres, a certified war criminal par excellance, tried to cajole Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas into coming to terms with the fait accompli which Israel created ever since 1967.

Peres, a figurehead head of state, delivered a “moving speech” urging the Palestinians to return to the peace table without conditions. He claimed that a majority of Israelis wanted peace. However, Peres didn’t say why Israel was building dozens of colonies in the West Bank and transferring hundreds of thousands of fanatical settlers to live on land that belongs to another people,

Abbas, notoriously known for his complacency, seemed overly eager to respond positively to Peres’ tricks and deception. He told reporters in Jordan that there was still a chance for the two state solution.

The Palestinian leader simply didn’t know what he was taking about. Well, in order to give Abbas the benefit of the doubt, one would have to disbelieve one’s eyes and up all his mental faculties.

This is so because Israel has killed any remaining possibility for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state as dozens of Jewish settlements have been created in and around East Jerusalem, the contemplated capital of the contemplated Palestinian state.

This is not to mention the estimated 150-200 other settlements and settlement outposts which Israel built all over the occupied territories.

In short, the Palestinian people must not be duped into being bitten by the same snake again. Some people learn from other people’s mistakes, others learn only from their own mistakes. Unfortunately, there are certain people with the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah who learn neither from their nor from other people’s mistake. This is really a disaster.

 

 

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ISRAELI AIR CRIMES GO UNREPORTED

May 29, 2013 at 08:11 (Corporate Media, Israel, Lebanon War, Media Blackout)

Israel inflicts different methods of terror on Lebanon daily: F-16s and F-15s stage mock raids and drones stalk our skies — all in violation of UN resolution 1701. Lebanese citizens are kidnapped near the border, Israeli landmines and cluster bombs continue to await their victims on Lebanese soil, not to mention the Israeli army’s continued occupation of parts of Lebanon.
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Why aren’t Israeli F-16s over Beirut headline news?

Moe Ali Nayel *
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UN soldier atop armored vehicle overlooks Lebanon-Israel border

Israel’s daily violations of Lebanese sovereignty are ignored in the Western press.

 (Karamallah Daher / Reuters)

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Recently there has been a sound coming from the skies over Beirut triggering unpleasant recollections: the distant roar of Israeli fighter jets as one lies in bed at night.

This noise brings with it images and memories from the last war Israel waged on Lebanon, the 33-day war during the summer of 2006. Even as I write this from my office near the center of the city, the ominous rumbling of Israeli fighter jets, announcing their illegal incursions into Lebanese airspace, can be heard over the capital.

But this threatening behavior above Lebanon is non-existent, or so the Western media corporations would have us believe. While information-sharing web tools have broken the mainstream media’s monopoly over covering and analyzing world developments, there is still a long way to go. The Israeli politics of dispossession enjoy near unconditional support in the editorial rooms of New York, London and Paris, a bias still undetected by most of the Western audience they claim to serve.

On 25 April, these editors saw to it that one story dominated the front pages: reports of an alleged unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, that flew from Lebanon to historic Palestine, with accompanying reportage and commentary treating information given by Israeli government and military sources as the definitive truth of the incident.

The Israeli Air Force said it shot down a UAV several miles off the coast of the northern city of Haifa after it entered Israeli airspace from Lebanon. Israel’s deputy defense ministerDanny Danon accused Hizballah of sending the drone: “We’re talking about another attempt by Hizballah to send an unmanned drone into Israeli territory,” he told army radio (“Israel shoots down Lebanese drone,” DefenseNews, 25 April 2013).

Shortly after the Israeli announcement, Hizballah issued a statement denying this was the case (“Hezbollah denies responsibility for drone shot down by Israel,” Al-Akhbar English, 26 April 2013).

This is in contrast to October last year, when Israel said it had shot down a drone over theNegev (Naqab). In that case, Hizballah proudly claimed the drone as its own and celebrated this demonstration of its technological prowess (“Hezbollah admits launching drone over Israel,” BBC).

For its part, a spokesperson with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) announced after the Israeli statement on 25 April: “We learned from the media that the Israeli Air Force has shot down a drone and we’re investigating these reports.”

As part of its peacekeeping mandate, UNIFIL has radars along the coast to monitor Lebanon’s entire airspace, and a few hours later UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said the UN force could not confirm that a drone had flown from its area of operations in southern Lebanon (“Israel shoots down drone off Haifa, Hizbullah denies responsibility,” Naharnet, 25 April 2013).

Inconvenient facts

So Hizballah denied responsibility and the UNIFIL couldn’t confirm that a drone flew over south Lebanon into Israeli-controlled airspace, but far be it for these inconvenient facts to get in the way of a good story. This newest threat to Israel burned like wildfire across the pages of major Western media outlets like The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, France 24, The Daily Telegraph and the BBC, which dutifully reported the worries over Israel’s security being breached.

Poor Israel: one of the strongest armies in the world, sitting on a nuclear arsenal.

These news reports demonstrate the systematic bias of Western corporate media when it comes to Israel. While the reports all spoke of Hizballah’s violation of Israel’s “borders” and sovereignty and the threat this posed to Israeli civilians, none mentioned the daily Israeli violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty and the threat this poses to Lebanese citizens. Without this, a reader might easily mistake the aggressor for the victim.

Then there was the one-sided sourcing of “facts” to back up the story and the rush to judgment. On 26 April — the day after the alleged drone was downed — the Israeli government itself began to shift its narrative to more ambiguous finger-pointing at Iran, rather than directly blaming Hizballah (“Israel points finger at Iran over drone from Lebanon,” The Daily Telegraph, 27 April 2013).

Meanwhile, a 8 May story in Lebanon’s daily As-Safir newspaper claims it was actually anIsraeli drone that had been intercepted by resistance fighters en route to Lebanon.

According to unnamed sources close to Hizballah and Western diplomatic circles cited by the paper, when the Israeli Air Force noticed that its UAV was out of its control, it shot it down over the Mediterranean. This suggestion seems at least plausible when stacked next to the UNIFIL report and Hizballah’s denial.

But taking this into account or following up on it would have required understanding Arabic, which few foreign journalists do.

Daily terror

Israel inflicts different methods of terror on Lebanon daily: F-16s and F-15s stage mock raids and drones stalk our skies — all in violation of UN resolution 1701. Lebanese citizens are kidnapped near the border, Israeli landmines and cluster bombs continue to await their victims on Lebanese soil, not to mention the Israeli army’s continued occupation of parts of Lebanon.

While the UN occasionally condemns these acts of Israeli aggression, the fact that they continue unabated reminds us in Lebanon that accountability and international law end at our southern border. So too does objective journalism, it seems, given that in the past month Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace have heavily intensified, but none of this has made it into the Western press.

As a journalist, I’ve tried to pitch stories to mainstream media outlets on the constant Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty and have been lucky enough, from time to time, for an editor to bother to reply, if only to say that the story is irrelevant.

The adage goes that real journalism is publishing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations. By publishing Israel’s claims as fact, and ignoring the reality on the ground in Lebanon and Palestine, mainstream journalists show how well practiced they are in the art of PR.

*Moe Ali Nayel is a freelance journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon

Written FOR

3 Comments

FATHER’S DAY IN GAZA …. WITHOUT DAD

May 28, 2013 at 12:01 (Collective Punishment, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, zionist harassment)

Image by Skulz Fontaine
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Israel prohibits Gazan children from visiting imprisoned fathers
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Over 500 Gazan men, including 14 minors, are currently being held as prisoners and detainees in Israel. In July 2012, after a five-year hiatus, family visits to Gazan inmates in Israel were resumed. From that time until 22 April 2013, most of the inmates have received visits. Israel permits inmates to be visited by their parents, wives and children under eight years old; children over eight, siblings and grandparents are not allowed to visit. Permission for children under the age of eight to visit their imprisoned fathers was granted only in May 2013. B’Tselem calls upon the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to allow all first-degree relatives, including children of all ages, to visit Gazans being held in Israel.
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1 Comment

STEPHEN HAWKING’S ACTION GIVES ISRAEL SOME ‘FOOD FOR THOUGHT’

May 28, 2013 at 11:40 (Activism, Boycott Israel, Israel, Palestine)

More and more people are going to stop coming to conferences in Israel because the world, whether it’s fair or not, will not accept Israel’s continuing occupation of the Palestinians in the West Bank.
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The prophetic lesson of Stephen Hawking’s Israel boycott

There’s no question that it was wrong of the famous physicist to cancel Peres’ invitation to a conference in Israel. But that’s not really the point.

By S. Daniel Abraham *
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Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking Photo by AP
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What Stephen Hawking did was dishonorable. He accepted an invitation to the Israeli Presidential Conference and then, under pressure, withdrew.

Yes, it was a dishonorable thing to do but the most important lesson to learn is that his actions portend the face of the future.

Ironically, this conference is convened in honor of President Shimon Peres, one of Israel’s strongest voices for peace with the Palestinians.

Ironic, too, that it is Peres who has been predicting that these sorts of reactions to Israel’s occupation are destined to become more and more common.

Almost two years ago Peres voiced his fear that if Israel refuses to commit to its 1967 borders, with modifications, the world will turn against Israel in a far more substantive way than Hawking has done now.

More and more people are going to stop coming to conferences in Israel because the world, whether it’s fair or not, will not accept Israel’s continuing occupation of the Palestinians in the West Bank.

We can write Op-ed articles assuring ourselves that Hawking is a hypocrite, that he lectures in China, where the occupation of Tibet is far more brutal than Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. And he has lectured in Russia, where human rights violations are profound.

Fair or not, Israel is being judged by a different standard than Russia and China. And it will continue to be judged that way.

Even if we conclude that the world’s attitude toward Israel is hypocritical, the important question we must ask ourselves is the following: “Is the price of holding onto the West Bank worth the price of ever-increasing isolation?”

The prophet Isaiah declared that the Jewish people are to be “a light onto the nations.” And in many ways we have been. We brought into the world the idea of monotheism, of one God, in whose image every human being of every race and religion is created. The Jewish people have made extraordinary contributions to the world, and these include the Israeli scientists who created the device that enables the very ill Dr. Hawking to speak.

The Jewish people have many things of which to be proud. But ruling over 2.5 million Palestinians on the West Bank is not one of them.

The sooner Israel realizes this, the sooner they will establish two states, side by side: The State of Israel and The State of Palestine. We can all have a field day denouncing Stephen Hawking for hypocrisy, but at the end of the day what matters most is that we realize just how wrong it is to occupy a people whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, wants to make peace with us.

What Hawking did was wrong. What we are doing is self- destructive. Maybe we can’t change Hawking’s mind but we had better learn how to change ours.

*S. Daniel Abraham is an American entrepreneur and the founder of the Center for Middle East Peace in Washington.

Source

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

 

6 Comments

PALESTINE WINS BIG AT CANNES FESTIVAL

May 28, 2013 at 11:23 (Cinema, Israel, Palestine)

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Israel sees the following as an attack, but we at DesertPeace see it as a victory….
‘The Times They Are A’Changin’ 😉
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“Omar” received a standing ovation at its premiere as the first film fully funded by the Palestinian cinema industry.
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Anti-Israel film wins Cannes prize

Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad’s ‘Omar,’ which presents Israeli security forces in unflattering light, awarded with ‘Jury Prize’ in international film festival

Amir Kaminer

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An anti-Israel film funded by Palestinian and international institutions won the “Jury Prize” in the “A Certain Regard” section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival on Saturday evening. It is the category’s secondary award.

“Omar” is a political thriller directed by Hany Abu-Assad, director of the 2005 film “Paradise Now,” which earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for best foreign film.

The film, which was shot in the West Bank and Israeli Arab town of Nazareth last year, tells the story of three childhood friends. It criticizes Israel’s policy and presents the IDF and Shin Bet in an unflattering light, including a scene in which a Shin Bet officer is seen brutally torturing a Palestinian prisoner.

The cast includes Adam Bakri, the son of Arab actor Mohammad Bakri who directed the 2002 film “Jenin, Jenin,” which asserts that the IDF committed atrocious war crimes and deliberately slaughtered innocent civilians during Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank city.

“Omar” received a standing ovation at its premiere as the first film fully funded by the Palestinian cinema industry.

“It is the only festival that I think still cares about different films,” said Abu-Assad,

  

Festival draws to close with cliffhanger ending

The 66th Cannes festival wraps up with a cliffhanger ending on Sunday, with uncertainty surrounding which film will be declared best picture after a 12-day frenzy of premieres, celebrities, rain and dramatic jewellery thefts.

Twenty films packed with sex, violence and emotional anguish are vying at the world’s biggest cinema showcase for the Palme d’Or, one of the most coveted film awards after the Oscars.

Frontrunners include French director Abdellatif Kechiche’s love story “La Vie d’Adele” (Blue is the Warmest Color) with its graphic lesbian sex scenes, and “Inside Llewyn Davis” about a struggling New York folk singer by the American Coen brothers.

Also on the short list are “La Grande Bellezza” (The Great Beauty) from Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino, a magical ode to the decadence of Rome, and “Le Passe” (The Past), a tension-filled domestic drama by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi.

Choosing the winner of the top prize and other awards is a jury led by US filmmaker Steven Spielberg with Australian actress Nicole Kidman and Oscar-winning director Ang Lee.

Written FOR

4 Comments

ISRAEL ‘TALKS’ OF PEACE YET PREPARES FOR WAR

May 27, 2013 at 18:34 (Corrupt Politics, Deception, Israel)

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Siren to sound at 7:05 pm in second stimulated attack
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A national war drill simulating a missile attack on Israel from multiple fronts took place on Monday. Named Steadfast Home Front 1, the second round of sirens will be heard at 7:05 pm., aimed at getting families at home to practice seeking cover.

For more instructions, visit The Home Front Command website

Reported AT

2 Comments

GOOD NEWS ON FACEBOOK

May 27, 2013 at 10:39 (Activism, Apartheid, FaceBook, Israel, Palestine)

 Good to see the apple fall FAR from the tree!
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And let’s not forget our dear Carlos ….
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3 Comments

US STATE DEPARTMENT USING ONE HOLOCAUST TO JUSTIFY ANOTHER ONE

May 26, 2013 at 12:11 (Associate Post, Deception, Hasbara, Holocaust, Israel, Oppression, Palestine)

The WWII holocaust lasted for two or three years and the entire world was mobilized to stop it, but the Palestinian holocaust has been going on nonstop since 1948, with the main world political powers either siding with Zionist aggressors or doing virtually nothing to save the Palestinian people from the attempted annihilation by Zionist Jews seeking to emulate the Third Reich.

No one is claiming that six million Palestinians have perished or that Palestinian towns have been transformed into concentration camps, although Israeli blitzes against the Gaza Strip in 2008-9 and 2012 contained unmistakable elements which looked as if borrowed from the holocaust. What is the difference between the Gaza siege and the Ghetto Warsaw siege? Yes, details may differ here and there, given the circumstances in both cases, but the essence is the same.

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Muslim visits to Auschwitz serve Israeli propaganda
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By Khalid Amayreh
 

A number of Muslim clerics and imams reportedly toured the site of the former concentration camp, Auschwitz, in Poland last week. The imams hailed from a number of Muslim countries, including Occupied Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Bosnia and some of African countries.

The tour was sponsored by the American State Department and intended to educate Muslims about Jewish suffering during World War II. No other comparable program to educate Jews about the ongoing Palestinian Nakba was initiated, suggesting moral selectiveness and bias on the Americans’ part.

Israel and Zionist circles often use the holocaust as a mantra to justify the usurpation and occupation of Palestine by Zionist Jewish invaders and colonialists from all over the world.

We Muslims, including Palestinians, are not against visits by Muslims to sites of former concentration camps as a matter of principle. More to the point, we are not against sympathizing and identifying with the victims of Nazism, Jews and non-Jews alike.

However when such visits are manipulated by Israel and Zionist circles to justify and promote the ongoing Jewish-Zionist holocaust against Palestinian national existence, then we must stop and think deeply about the moral implications of such visits.

The WWII holocaust lasted for two or three years and the entire world was mobilized to stop it, but the Palestinian holocaust has been going on nonstop since 1948, with the main world political powers either siding with Zionist aggressors or doing virtually nothing to save the Palestinian people from the attempted annihilation by Zionist Jews seeking to emulate the Third Reich.

No one is claiming that six million Palestinians have perished or that Palestinian towns have been transformed into concentration camps, although Israeli blitzes against the Gaza Strip in 2008-9 and 2012 contained unmistakable elements which looked as if borrowed from the holocaust. What is the difference between the Gaza siege and the Ghetto Warsaw siege? Yes, details may differ here and there, given the circumstances in both cases, but the essence is the same.

Today, more than five million Palestinians are living as refugees around the world, waiting the moment when they can return to their homes from which they were expelled at gun point at the hands of the children and grandchildren of the holocausts.

Other Palestinians who were not deported are living a life of discrimination, humiliation, and constant repression and facing a precarious future as a result of Israeli racism, as the Jewish state continues to seek more lebensraum at the expense of the Palestinian people.

In short, Israel has been using and continues to use the memory of one holocaust to justify and rationalize another protracted holocaust, one that has been going on unabated for 65 years.

It is lamentable indeed that some Muslim imams, including Palestinians, have been duped by the Americans to serve Israeli propaganda efforts.

Perhaps, these gullible clerics should have also insisted they also visit the sites of the massacres of Deir Yasin, Tantura, Dawaymeh, Sabra and Shatilla and Ibrahimi Mosque, just to mention a few Zionist atrocities.

Perhaps the gullible clerics should have insisted they visit or meet with some Palestinian refugees, languishing in misery in Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

We Palestinians are not and will never be anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism, like Islamophobia, is morally and humanly repugnant. However, we will never agree to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism is as moral and as ethical as anti-Nazism.

Indeed, when Jews or anyone else think, behave and act as the Nazis thought, behaved and acted, then we should have no problem comparing them with the Nazis.

There is no such a thing as a kosher genocide or kosher holocaust. And when a peaceable people is massacred and subjected to other forms of ethnic cleansing, we should call the spade a spade especially when we see it in the hands of our grave-diggers.

We must always uphold this truth, however unpalatable and politically incorrect it might be.

Today, Israel and her guardian ally, the United States are trying to define anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism. This is a malicious effort to legitimize evil, especially when committed by Jews.

In the recent past, anti-Semites used to be those who hated Jews for being Jews. Today, we are told that anti-Semites are those who criticize Nazi-like Jewish behavior in Occupied Palestine.

Needless to say, honest people around the world, including conscientious Jews, ought to reject this brazen cheapening of anti-Semitism. It is just beyond chutzpah.

As to the naïve clerics, they should apologize to their respective congregations and Muslims in general. They should also think twice in the future before accepting such invitations from the United States or Germany, the same states that continue to supply Israel with all sorts of advanced weapons of death and destruction that enable Israel to occupy more lebensraum and murder more Muslims.

The holocaust happened nearly 70 years ago, but Israel and Zionist circles would very much like to make it look as relevant as if it occurred a few months or years ago. This is an act of sheer deception and propaganda that should never escape our attention.

This is why we should be extremely cautious and never allow any activity, however innocuous it may look, to overshadow the plight of our people. The Zionists simply want to make the holocaust the main preoccupation of the world, mainly in order to overshadow and eclipse the ongoing and unrelenting Israeli holocaust against the Palestinian people.

We must not help them achieve this sinister goal.

 

4 Comments

NO VIRGINIA, IT’S NOT APARTHEID. IT’S A LOT WORSE!

May 26, 2013 at 09:36 (Apartheid, Boycott Israel, Civil Liberties, Collective Punishment, Dictatorship, Hasbara, Israel, Occupied West Bank, Oppression, Palestine, zionist harassment)

Yes virginia low res
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The proverbial Virginia asked a few questions this week; How can a man like Morgan Freeman accept an award for combatting racism from a group of racists? How can that same man who recently portrayed Nelson Mandela in a film openly endorse apartheid by accepting that award?
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No Virginia, it’s not apartheid. It’s a lot worse! Just this week ….
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Israel effectively barring tourists from West Bank by neglecting to explain mandatory permit

To visit Palestinian-controlled areas, some foreign nationals need military entry permit that Israel doesn’t explain how to get.

By Amira Hass
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The separation fence east of the West Bank settlement of Alfei Menashe.

The separation fence east of the West Bank settlement of Alfei Menashe. Photo by Nir Kafri
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Since the beginning of 2013, Israel has forbidden tourists from the United States and other countries to enter the territories under Palestinian Authority control without a military entry permit – but it has not explained the application process to them.

Haaretz has learned of a recent case where clerics from the United States had to sign a declaration at the Ben-Gurion International Airport, promising not to enter Area A without permits from the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories.

The clerics signed the declaration, but representatives of the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority did not explain to them how to get the permits.

Not every tourist who is planning to visit the West Bank is required to sign the declaration, and no criteria have been published for how people are selected to do so.

The American clerics, who spoke with Haaretz on condition of anonymity, were sent by their church to work with Christian communities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. As a result of the declaration they signed and their inability to decipher the procedure for obtaining the permit, they have been unable to meet with the members of Christian communities in West Bank cities or visit holy places, like the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

One of the signers, who turned to the United States Consulate in Jerusalem for help, told Haaretz that the consulate employees are unaware of the existence of the declaration.

The text of the English-language version of the document reads:

“1. I understand that this permit is granted me for entry and visitation within Israel only, and it has been explained to me that I am unable to enter the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority without advance authorization from the Territory Actions Coordinator and I agree to act in accordance with these regulations.

“2. I understand that in the event that I enter any area under the control of the Palestinian Authority without the appropriate authorization all relevant legal actions will be taken against me, including deportation and denial of entry into Israel for a period of up to ten years.”

In the Hebrew version, there is also a clear statement that unauthorized entry to the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority is a transgression of the law. This is omitted from the English version.

The English version does not use the official and common English title “Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories,” but translates the Hebrew as “Territory Actions Coordinator,” raising doubts as to whether the coordinator’s office has seen the form.

The spokeswoman for the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority, Sabine Haddad, wrote to Haaretz that the Entry into Israel Law authorizes the interior minister to decide on the entry of foreigners to the State of Israel, but in the case of Judea and Samaria, the Israel Defense Forces chief of general staff makes the determination – with a permit from the coordinator’s office required by security legislation.

“When a tourist/foreign national arrives at the international border crossings and it is believed that he wants to enter Judea and Samaria, he should be informed [of the procedure] and asked for his promise to receive a permit from the coordinator’s office before his entry – a permit that constitutes an essential condition [of entry to the Palestinian Authority controlled areas],” said Haddad.

Haddad did not reply to Haaretz’s request for explanation of the pertinent clauses of the law, nor did she provide Haaretz with information about the department in the coordinator’s office from which to request the permit. On the English website of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories – a military unit that carries out and implements civilian policy in the territories – including the part dealing with ties with international organizations, there is no mention of the existence of such a procedure. In reply to an inquiry by Haaretz, the spokesman for the coordinator’s office said the matter of the procedure and the form is being examined.

About seven years ago, there was a report of a similar declaration that tourists were required to sign, but the practice was discontinued and renewed only at the beginning of this year. Several years ago, the Interior Ministry also began to limit the freedom of movement of tourists with work and family ties in the West Bank and to prevent their entry into Israel by means of a permit with the stamp “For the territories of Judea and Samaria only.”

Attorney Adi Lustigman turned Haaretz’s attention to a legal decision from August 2010 by Jerusalem District Court Judge Moshe Yoed Hacohen, which dealt with the appeal she filed against preventing the entry into Israel of an American citizen. Hacohen ruled that even according to the Oslo Accords, which the Interior Ministry occasionally relies on to explain restrictions on the movement of tourists, citizens of countries that have diplomatic ties with Israel need only an entry permit for Israel and a valid passport to enter Palestinian Authority territories. They are not required to have visiting permits from the Palestinian Authority, which are granted with the approval of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (as is required of citizens of countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel, and citizens from Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan).

Lustigman believes the policy behind the declaration is illegal because it discriminates between foreign citizens whose destination is the settlements and those whose destination is Palestinian areas. The form itself, Lustigman says, “is not legal because it was formulated for an improper purpose – isolating the occupied territories – and in an improper manner. It makes the assumption that people who arrive in Israel as tourists, as clerics and for other purposes want to act in contradiction to the law, which may not even have been explained to them clearly.

“There is no reason to threaten foreign citizens, to turn them into suspects and to make them sign, as a condition for entering Israel, a form whose wording and content are unclear … If there really is such a procedure, it should be publicized in a simple, clear and accessible manner, and instead of handing out a threatening sheet of paper, they should hand out a paper containing an explanation and procedures for making the request. Because the Interior Ministry does not do so, and as far as I know neither does the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, it seems that there is no operative procedure, nor any procedure for submitting a request. We are left only with a prohibition, which, as we have mentioned, is invalid.”

The spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate did not answer Haaretz’s question as to whether Israel has informed the American authorities about the restriction and the obligation to sign, and did not explain the viewpoint of the U.S. Department of State on the issue.

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Coincidentally, the Ediitor’s pic at Comment Is Free was the following, By our very own Sam Bahour …It was written two years ago.
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Welcome to Palestine – if you can get in
Israel’s threat to deny visitors entry to Palestine is as disturbing as it is shocking. Our protest will be a civil society tsunami
By Sam Bahour 
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Separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank
A Palestinian flag is attached to barbed wire in front of the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank in 2010. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/EPA/Corbis
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Palestinians have globally touted an array of rights that Israel systematically denies. There is the right of return, the right of freedom of movement, the right to water, the right to education, the right to enter(not to be confused with refugees’ right to return) and so on.

But the right to receive visitors, or lack thereof? This is the most recent addition. The prohibition on freely receiving foreign visitors is as disturbing as it is shocking, especially for a country that claims to be the only beacon of democracy in the Middle East.

Yes, you read correctly. Israel is threatening to refuse to allow Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territory to receive visitors from abroad. We are not talking here about visitors such as the 5 million Palestinian refugees whom Israel has refused to allow to return to their homes after being expelled by force and fear when Israel was founded in 1948. Rather, the issue now is that foreigners who desire to visit the occupied Palestinian territory are being denied entry into Israel.

Remember, there is no other way to get to the Palestinian territory of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is under military occupation by Israel, except by passing through Israeli-controlled points of entry such as Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv or one of Israel’s sea ports or land crossings. The entry point to the Gaza Strip from the West Bank requires passage through Israel as well.

So, more than 300 international activists plan to arrive in Tel Aviv during the week of 8 July at the invitation of 30 Palestinian civil society organisations, to participate in an initiative named “Welcome to Palestine“. Delegations from France, Great Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, the USA, Japan and several African countries are expected.

Upon arrival at Ben Gurion airport, the invited guests, all from countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel, will make no secret of their intent to go to the occupied Palestinian territory. This nonviolent act, a civil society tsunami of sorts, only comes after Israel’s restriction of movement and access to and from Palestine for Palestinians and foreigners has exhausted all established channels that carry the responsibility to uphold international law first and their domestic laws second.

The greatest inaction has come from the US state department, even though it has put on record, multiple times, the fact that Israel is discriminating at its borders against US citizens.

It is also worth noting that the 1951 Israel friendship, commerce and navigation treaty explicitly states: “There shall be freedom of transit through the territories of each Party by the routes most convenient for international transit …” and persons “in transit shall be exempt from … unreasonable charges and requirements; and shall be free from unnecessary delays and restrictions.” So much for respecting signed agreements.

Israel, as a state and previously as a Zionist movement, has gone to every extreme to fragment and dispossess the Palestinian people. It has had accomplices every step of the way, starting with Great Britain and continuing to this very day with the US and the flock of UN member states that act more like parakeets to the US than sovereign states when it comes to Palestine.

Well, the game of inaction is coming to an end. When states fail, people take over. It is these people, like those coming to Palestine this week, or those attempting to reach the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip by sea, or those living in Palestine and resisting the occupation day in and day out, who will prove to historians once again that history is made of real people who have a keen sense of humanity and the courage to sacrifice.

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1 Comment

LIFE IS STILL TOO SHORT

May 25, 2013 at 19:49 (DesertPeace Editorial, Flashback.... from the archives, Israel, Ramblings...)

Almost two years after this originally appeared, the subject of the post is still here, still mouthing off and definitely still bugging me.
I have mastered the art of blocking him out of my sight and hearing, but surely he knows after all this time that he just doesn’t fit in …. but the message of the post is an important one, hence the repeat.
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The time has come in my life where I just won’t waste it listening to certain opinions or be with the people that have them… call me closed minded if you wish, but you would be way off base.
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Case in point
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I live in a fairly mixed and progressive community in Jerusalem.  Mixed as there are both religious and secular Jews living here as well as hundreds of Palestinians. We have maintained our own level of Peace throughout what have been very turbulent years in the city. 
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English is the official ‘second language’ in this area which is a big attraction to new immigrants from the States. One such person moved in not too long ago…. one very strange person. He is the type that gets an idea in his head and proceeds to spout it out for the remainder of the week, literally ‘testing the waters’ to see if anyone was in agreement with him. People were tolerant towards him probably out of pity as he was here only with his wife and completely estranged from his children that remained in the States.
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I was one that offered my ear to his ramblings, hardly ever agreeing with them….. BUT last week he crossed the line. He started spouting off about the violence displayed in baseball and how terrible that was….. but ended his rant with “Israel should learn something from that game, we should have bombed all of the ships in the Flotilla and killed them all”! I was beyond words, shocked would be too mild a word to express my feelings at the moment. I simply responded that “this is the end of this conversation” and walked away from him.
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Last night he approached me again …. but I cut him off before he started talking by telling him that “whatever friendship we might have had ended last week when you expressed the most outrageous opinion I ever heard”. He was not expecting that from me, but should have as he is aware of my views regarding the situation in general in this country. He silently walked away from me, probably with the hope that I won’t be telling others about his madness.
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Simply put, it’s bad enough having to witness the crimes against the Palestinians in this country, crimes that I can (and do) speak out against constantly…. but there is no reason in the world why I should have to listen to certain opinions regarding those crimes. Life is way too short to waste it on one ignorant person, there are others with open minds that one day might work together with us to make a real difference.
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Hopefully this person will have learned something about ‘resting his gums’ so to speak. Either that or realise that his views are totally unacceptable in certain areas and leave, in which case not a tear would be shed by anyone in the community.

5 Comments

ZIONISTS SHOULD LOOK IN A MIRROR BEFORE THEY LOOK AT OTHERS

May 24, 2013 at 14:04 (Boycott Israel, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

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OK ….. let’s get one thing straight …. NOT ALL SO-CALLED JEWISH GROUPS SPEAK FOR ALL JEWS! Having said that, let me be specific … The Simon Wiesenthal Center DOES NOT speak for me. Their comparisons to nazi Germany in the report below is totally off base. Instead of seeing zionism for what it is, instead of condemning Israel for continually using nazi tactics to eliminate the Palestinian people, they condemn those that are trying to stop this …. they should look in the mirror before they look elsewhere.
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NOT IN MY NAME!
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See for yourself in the following pathetic report blasting the Electronic Intifada …
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“Surely they should be feted as a vehicle for peace, rather than voices for conflict such as electronic intifadas. Intifada brought suicide terrorism to the cities and streets of Israel…From the Middle East, the scourge of indiscriminate murder in the name of Jihad was to spread across the globe, even targeting sports—most recently at the Boston Marathon.”
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Jewish Group Blasts ‘Electronic-Intifada’ for Sports Boycott
“Ideological forebearers of today’s racists, in Nazi Germany had ‘ethnically cleansed’ sports, as blatantly demonstrated in 1936 Olympics.”
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent a letter to the Union of European Football Association (UEFA), slamming the call by ‘electronicintifada.net’ for the sportsassociation to boycott the state of Israel.

Director for International Relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Shimon Samuels, wrote the letter to UEFA President Michel Platini, in response to the Arab group’s call to the UEFA to “remove its Under-21 European Championship from Israel, where it is scheduled to play from 5 to 18 June.” 

Samuels argued that, “‘electronicintifada.net’ is, apparently, an arm to wage a boycott of the Jewish State through universities, trade unions, cultural agencies, NGOs and, indeed, sport.” 

“The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has long been active in combating racism and hate, especially in European and Latin American football,” he said. 

“On the pitch and from its terraces, Jews, Blacks, Muslims and migrants share the taunts of neo-Nazis,” the letter noted. 

“The ideological forebearers of today’s racists, in Nazi Germany had ‘ethnically cleansed’ sports, as blatantly demonstrated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.” 

“Jews especially, were the object of boycott as Hitler Youth stormed their stores to the screams of ‘Kaufen nicht bei Juden’ (Buy not from Jews)! Anti-Jewish boycott has now returned, in the guise of the so-called ‘B.D.S.’ (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel,” it continued. 

“Its latest emanation will gather on Friday, 24 May, outside the UEFA Congress inLondon, where extreme-left and Islamist radicals will join the extreme-right in anti-Semitic calls to cancel the UEFA Under-21 European Championship and to agitate for member football associations to boycott the event.”

Samuels pointed out that “the ’11 Key Values’ of UEFA’s mission statement include: ‘respect for diversity… tolerance against racism and violence… football unites people and transcends differences.” 

The letter highlighted “a little known factor inculcating these values, which are the Israeli-Arab football clubs, hailed by fans throughout the Arab world — best known among them, is an Israel State Cup Champion, B’nei Sakhnin. In 2004, they became the first Arab team to ever play in Europe—it was the UEFA Cup. Their Doha Stadium in the Galilee was financed by the Emir of Qatar. The acclaimed 2010 documentary, ‘After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United’, features Arabs from Israel, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, attending the Cup match.” 

“Surely they should be feted as a vehicle for peace, rather than voices for conflict such as electronic intifadas. Intifada brought suicide terrorism to the cities and streets of Israel…From the Middle East, the scourge of indiscriminate murder in the name of Jihad was to spread across the globe, even targeting sports—most recently at the Boston Marathon,” it continued. 

Samuels stressed that, “‘Intifada’ has become a fig leaf for terrorists, as ‘anti-Zionism’ is a cover for anti-Semitism; threats and boycotts from electronic intifadas are tantamount to incitement to violence,” suggesting, “When these target Europeanfootball, UEFA must act to condemn them in the name of its ’11 key values’.” 

“Our Centre congratulates UEFA in selecting Israel for its 2013 Under-21European Championship and wishes the best to all the participating teams. May this Championship make the beautiful game a force for peace, rather than bringing the Middle East conflict onto its pitch and terraces,” concluded Samuels.

From my ziocrap file

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DAILY TOON ~~ OBAMA AND THE GUANTANAMO HUNGER STRIKERS

May 24, 2013 at 08:15 (Associate Post, Cartoons, Corrupt Politics)

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
greve-de-fome-em-guantanamo
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“Gitmo has become a symbol around the world of an America that flouts the law.”

– President Obama

1 Comment

J STREET’S DREAM OF PEACE IS PALESTINE’S NIGHTMARE

May 23, 2013 at 14:00 (Israel, J Street, Oppression, Palestine, zionism)

In a mass email sent on 5 May, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of the pro-Israel lobby group J Street, wrote to his supporters: “I’ve just arrived in Israel with a delegation of J Street leaders on our annual fact-finding mission to the region.” He added: “It’s an energizing time to be here. After years of frustrating deadlock, talk of peace is in the air again.”

What air is he breathing?

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J Street’s pipe dreams of peace

Miko Peled*
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Sixty-five years after their forced dispossession, Palestinian refugees are forbidden from returning home.

 (Issam Rimawi / APA images)

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May and June are once again upon us, which means Palestinians are commemorating theNakba (the catastrophe of their 1948 dispossession) and Naksa (the disaster of the 1967 War and subsequent occupation). Meanwhile Israelis celebrate the establishment of their state and the conquest of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Sinai. This inevitably leaves one to ask the banal question: “Will there be peace in our lifetime?”

In a mass email sent on 5 May, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of the pro-Israel lobby group J Street, wrote to his supporters: “I’ve just arrived in Israel with a delegation of J Street leaders on our annual fact-finding mission to the region.” He added: “It’s an energizing time to be here. After years of frustrating deadlock, talk of peace is in the air again.”

What air is he breathing?

US Secretary of State John Kerry recently told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that “the window for a two-state solution is shutting” (“Kerry: two years left to reach two-state solution in Middle East peace process,” The Guardian, 18 April 2013).

Myths and double standards

In fact, it’s been shut for decades. Kerry is merely regurgitating the old, numbing talking points. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is deadlocked because of the myths and double standards that dominate the debate.

Zionists claim that Jewish people have a right to “return” to Palestine — or the Land of Israel, as they call it — because they are related to the ancient Hebrews, a tribe that lived there thousands of years ago. Yet Palestinians who lived in Palestine only 65 years ago and remember when they were forced to leave as refugees are forbidden from returning to their homes and their land.

A nation whose connection to the land is based on something that took place thousands of years ago is telling a nation that still has the keys to their homes and the deeds to their land that they must stay out.

The State of Israel was established on the ruins of Palestine, but today close to half of the population residing under Israeli control are Palestinians. Israel maintains laws that discriminate against the Palestinian portion of the population — or what it calls the non-Jewish population.

Catastrophe continues

One may wonder why Palestinians call Israel’s establishment a catastrophe, or Nakba. It might be hard to grasp how this historic marvel, the revival of the Jewish state, could be called a catastrophe. However, a closer look will show that characterizing the war of 1948 as catastrophic is not only justified, it involves understating what happened.

The war of 1948 was an act of terrorism initiated by Zionist militias that ended up in the destruction of Palestine and the forced displacement of its people. What makes it even worse is that the catastrophe did not just take place in 1948. It began in 1948 and has been going on ever since.

The catastrophe continues with thousands of Palestinians in jail, 1.6 million living undersiege in Gaza, another 1.5 million living as second-class citizens in Israel, close to three million in the West Bank living at the mercy of the Israeli army, which knows little mercy, and approximately seven million Palestinians living as refugees outside of Palestine who are not permitted to return to their homes.

This May and June, it is time to reflect on the reality in which Palestinians are forced to live, and separate it from the virtual reality that Israel and its supporters try to paint. Perhaps this year it is time to assert in clear terms that supporting an exclusivist and discriminatory Jewish state means supporting a state that violates the most basic human and civil rights of millions of Palestinians, including the right to life itself.

If peace is indeed in the air then one would hope that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the refugee camps and in Israeli jails are also breathing it. If so, they can leave their cells and their makeshift homes, close the camps, open the prisons and return home, to Palestine. It also means that a bi-national democracy that respects and represents the rights of all people is on its way.

*Miko Peled is an Israeli writer and activist living in California. He is the author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.

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CHECKPOINT STREET THEATRE FOR BDS

May 23, 2013 at 13:51 (Activism, Boycott Israel, Divestment, International Solidarity, Israel, Nakba, Palestine)

On May 15, students at Middlebury College in Vermont staged a checkpoint outside their dining hall during the busiest meal of the year to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which led to the establishment of the state of Israel.

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Middlebury students stage Israeli checkpoint to push divestment

Jay Saper*
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On May 15, students at Middlebury College in Vermont staged a checkpoint outside their dining hall during the busiest meal of the year to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which led to the establishment of the state of Israel.

As the Middlebury divestment campaign from arms and fossil fuels gains nationalattention, a coalition that included Palestinian, Israeli and American Jewish students staged the act of political theater in solidarity with Nakba Day demonstrations aroundthe globe as a call to add apartheid to the students’ divestment demands.

Israel receives over $3 billion a year in military aid from the United States with stipulations on how that money is to be spent. As a consequence, nearly all weapons used by the Israeli military to support the occupation are produced by U.S. arms manufacturers, in which Middlebury has $6 million invested.

The objective of the checkpoint was to urge the college to honor the call by Palestinian civil society for those who are invested in corporations that profit from the occupation to stop their complicity in the oppression of the Palestinian people and fulfill their “moral responsibility to fight injustice” by divesting from Israeli apartheid.

At a midnight breakfast event during finals week, students were greeted in the dark with barricades blocking the entrance to the dining hall and flashlights from full uniformed soldiers asking for identification cards.

Alex Jackman, a junior from New York City, described the checkpoint as “one of the coolest pieces of theater I have seen on Middlebury’s campus. Performed during the time when all students are wrapped up in stress about exams and schoolwork, the piece served as a reminder that there are greater battles to fight beyond our campus.”

A gate was lifted for students who had received Israeli documentation. They could pass freely to prepare themselves a plate of pancakes. Those with Palestinian IDs were not greeted with a welcoming tone. As their “Israeli” friends were able to pass through, “Palestinians” were ordered by soldiers to stop.

While they were held, three actors whose wrists were zip-tied and eyes blindfolded — alluding to the hundreds of Palestinians held under administrative detention without being charged or tried — pleaded for water and demanded to be released. Those with Palestinian papers were only able to eventually pass into the dining hall after being directed to walk all the way around the checkpoint.

Some students voiced their frustration with being held up, “This is not cool, I am trying to get to midnight breakfast.” One shouted, “I have to study for finals.”

Jackman contended it was important for students to confront the checkpoint. “Middlebury College students tend to abstract issues of social injustice, a method that allows us to remove ourselves from these issues,” she explained. “But by being confronted, quite literally, with this piece of theater, we were not able to remove ourselves from our privileges — even if only for a moment.”

The performance, developed by students as part of a course on Theater and Social Change and members of the organization Justice for Palestine, was broken up by campus public safety.

“This is not theater; we can tell it is political,” one officer voiced. “Everything that is political has to be approved by the college.”

For Palestinians, checkpoints are not a momentary interruption, but one persistent piece of a dehumanizing system of apartheid. Between 2000 and 2005 there were 67 Palestinian mothers who were forced to give birth at Israeli military checkpoints and 36 of those babies died.

Apartheid is not enabled through merely subjecting a people to oppressive conditions, but rather through creating separate realities whereby a group of people is not forced to confront their implication in the domination of another group.

Middlebury College itself is a settlement on stolen Abenaki land. With its pristine limestone buildings and perfectly manicured grass, Middlebury manufactures an environment seemingly separate from the oppressions it perpetuates, which is itself a political act.

Students at Middlebury are stepping up and refusing to allow a separation of conscience that tolerates inaction in the face of a school profiting from Israeli apartheid. Justice for Palestine has one message for administrators, particularly fitting of a midnight action, “We will not rest, until you divest.”

 

*Jay Saper is a student organizer with Justice for Palestine at Middlebury College.

 

 

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IS DEFENSE OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN ANTI-SEMITIC?

May 23, 2013 at 13:34 (Israel, Oppression, Palestine, Rights of The Child, United Nations)

בית-אומר-2010-אן

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It has already been met here with a typical shrug of the shoulders, the report by the United Nations Children Fund declaring that Palestinian children detained by the Israel Defense Forces are subject to widespread, systematic ill-treatment that violates international law.

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UNICEF isn’t anti-Semitic

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UNICEF has published a report no less harsh, this time with respect to Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children. Now, you can no longer say it was because of anti-Semitism.

By Gideon Levy
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It has already been met here with a typical shrug of the shoulders, the report by the United Nations Children Fund declaring that Palestinian children detained by the Israel Defense Forces are subject to widespread, systematic ill-treatment that violates international law.

Now it’s no longer “the automatic majority” at the UN’s General Assembly, nor is it “Israel-haters” on the UN Human Rights Council. Now it’s UNICEF − and UNICEF is really another story entirely.

The UN International Emergency Children’s Fund, as it was originally known, was founded in 1946 at the initiative of a Polish-Jewish pediatrician and Holocaust survivor. And it has become, over many years, an organization of global celebrities.

Its name is displayed on the jerseys of Barcelona soccer players − jerseys that are also worn by many Israeli children. Barcelona forward Lionel Messi is a goodwill ambassador for the organization, as are fellow soccer player David Beckham, Princess Caroline of Monaco, British actor Sir Roger Moore, Columbian pop musician Shakira, and even our own musician David Broza and actress Yona Elian. This is the charity club of choice for the international jet set.

The Israeli Zena Harman received a Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the organization in 1965. Over a year ago, a festive ceremony was held by Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, during which Israel signed onto the new Convention on the Rights of the Child proposed by the organization.

An Israeli representative was chosen this year to serve on UNICEF’s executive board for the first time in 40 years, in what was portrayed as a rare diplomatic accomplishment. Even Judy Shalom Nir-Mozes served as the honorary chair of the Israeli branch of UNICEF.

UNICEF is concerned with protecting the rights of the world’s children, ensuring that they have access to clean water, proper nutrition, a fitting education and the like. From time to time, it publishes frightening reports about the abuse faced by children in the darkest of regimes and the world’s worst failed states.

Now, UNICEF has published a report no less harsh, this time with respect to Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children. Now, you can no longer say it was because of anti-Semitism.

The photo of the walls of the Israeli Ofer Prison in the West Bank on the cover of the report, and the picture depicted in its pages, should evoke dread among every Israeli parent. Some 7,000 Palestinian children were arrested in the past decade, an average of 700 per year.

The report described the process by which this generally occurs: A large military force invades a home in the dead of night and rudely wakes up its occupants. After a violent search that sometimes includes the destruction of furniture, the young suspect is bound with hand restraints, their eyes are blindfolded and they are ripped from their shocked and frightened family.

The child is taken to a jeep and usually forced to sit on the floor of the vehicle. On the way to the detention facility, the child is sometimes struck by the soldiers’ fists and legs while they are tied up.

At the investigation facility, the child waits hours, sometimes even an entire day, without food or water and without access to a toilet. Their interrogation includes threats of death, sexual threats directed toward them and their family members, and sometimes also physical blows.

No lawyers or family members are present when any child is investigated, as is required by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the one signed with so much pomp and circumstance at the education minister’s office.

By the end of their interrogations, most of the children admit everything they are accused of − usually stone-throwing. They sign confessions written in Hebrew, even when they have no idea what these “confessions” say.

Afterward, the child is sent to solitary confinement for a period that can sometimes last as long as a month. They are treated in a manner that is “cruel” and “inhuman,” according to the UNICEF report.

The child first meets their lawyer at the juvenile military court, and their remand is likely to be extended up to a period of 188 days, in violation of international standards. In contravention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that detention must be a last resort, there is practically no chance of release on bail for children facing charges.

Then the punishment comes, usually a draconian one. Two of the prisons in which these children are incarcerated are located within Israel, in contravention of the Geneva Convention, which makes it very difficult for the children’s family members to visit them, also in violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized. It is understood that in no other country are children systematically tried by juvenile military courts that, by definition, fall short of providing the necessary guarantees to ensure respect for their rights, the UNICEF report states.

All of this occurs in a country where children are considered a source of joy, where concern for their well-being is of the highest priority. All of this occurs in your country, a short hour from your children’s bedrooms.

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‘HOLOCAUST BUSINESS’ REACHES FOR THE SKY

May 22, 2013 at 16:02 (Holocau$t Bu$ine$$, Israel)

Some 25,000 Israeli teenagers visit Nazi death camps in Poland annually in trips organized since 1988 by Israeli high schools and Israel’s Education Ministry, according to The Marker financial news daily. Parents pay about $1,500 per student, with some $580 going to cover flight costs. In 2010, the ministry spent approximately $30 million on trips to Poland.
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Low-Cost Airline Mulls Israel-to-Auschwitz Flight

Tel Aviv Link to Krakow Would Cater to Death Camp Visitors

By JTA*

The low-cost airline Ryanair announced it was considering flying a route from Tel Aviv to Krakow, the southern Polish city situated near the former Auschwitz death camp. The announcement Monday came one month after Israel’s government decided to allow new flights to Europe. “It seems that every Israeli child has to go to Poland to go and see Auschwitz. We can help them with that,” the Dublin-based carrier’s deputy chief executive, Howard Millar, said at a news conference in London. A Ryanair spokesman on Tuesday confirmed to AFP, the French news agency, that the airline “has had discussions with a number of Israeli airports, but they are purely exploratory at this time.” Some 25,000 Israeli teenagers visit Nazi death camps in Poland annually in trips organized since 1988 by Israeli high schools and Israel’s Education Ministry, according to The Marker financial news daily. Parents pay about $1,500 per student, with some $580 going to cover flight costs. In 2010, the ministry spent approximately $30 million on trips to Poland. A spokesperson for Israel’s education ministry said the ministry uses Israeli airliners as well as LOT, the Polish carrier. On April 21, Israel’s Cabinet approved an open skies agreement to boost airline traffic to and from Europe. Set to go into effect next April, it will ease restrictions and quotas on flights between Israel and European Union countries and likely will increase competition and lower prices.

Source

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