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Vol. 14 No. 46…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…November 14, 2011

Bit of History

Israeli Blockade on Gaza (Excerpts)

By David Poort

The Israeli policy of actively laying siege to the territory, tacitly supported by Egypt under the rule of former president Hosni Mubarak, has been in place since Hamas violently took over power from Fatah in 2007 after it won elections a year earlier.

Contrary to popular belief, the blockade did not begin five years ago. Israel has been limiting travel between the Gaza Strip and West Bank since the first Intifada in the beginning of the 1990s, a strategy that has had far-reaching consequences for Palestinians.

Under the widely ignored Oslo accords of 1993, the Gaza Strip and West Bank are defined as two territories of a single unit, between which Palestinians should be allowed to move freely and trade goods without restrictions. Israel had been using "security" as a pretext for restricting movement of people and goods long before the current siege was put in place, states the non-governmental organization Gisha.

With the help of the freedom of information act, an Israeli law, Gisha recently managed to expose official documents given to the Israeli army, detailing who, and what, is allowed in and out of the Gaza Strip. These guidelines go into extensive details, painting a clear picture of the limitations that people in Gaza have been, and partly continue to be, subjected to until today.

At the height of the siege, no Gazans were permitted to exit the Strip through the Erez crossing, with the exception of a small number of high-placed businessmen, people in need of specialized medical care, and certain other "exceptional" cases.

In its efforts to punish Hamas and other armed groups, the documents shed light on how Israel fine-tuned the siege, with an aim to hurt Gazans but not let the situation there to reach "humanitarian crisis-levels".

Since 2007, Israel has allowed only those goods into the territory that it deemed as "vital for the survival of the civilian population". For example, hummus was considered a vital good, whereas hummus topped with pine nuts or mushrooms was banned. Items such as shoes, paper, and even coffee and tea were banned.

All goods that Israel deemed "dual-use" - material that could be used for both manufacturing weapons and for construction - such as wood, cement and iron were banned, despite the dire need for these goods for reconstruction following Israel's 2008-2009 war on Gaza.

The quantities of goods allowed in were calculated using formulas that determined the level of daily consumption of each of the basic products, based on data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, multiplied by the population of the Gaza Strip. Export of goods is virtually banned, with limited exceptions, such as a seasonal harvest of agricultural goods. With this policy, Israel maintains that the siege of Gaza does not fall under "collective punishment" as it considered itself fulfilling the minimum requirements that an occupier is obliged with under the fourth Geneva Convention rules.

In addition to the land blockade, Israel has maintained its naval cordon on Gaza, where attempts by flotillas to break the siege have been halted in international waters. The Israeli government, under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and under current Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has dismissed the flotilla attempts as provocations with the sole purpose of trying to break the blockade, rather than to bring aid.

Under the 1994 Gaza-Jericho agreement fishermen are permitted to sail out to fishing grounds up to 37km offshore; however, Israel only allows them to reach to 5.6km, a restriction Israel says is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks and smuggling.

The prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas sparked new hope the siege on Gaza would be lifted. A recent flare-up of violence has dashed that hope. (Source: www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/10/20111030172356990380.html)

Hood Notes

Palestinian Freedom Riders

By Philip Weiss

How many times have friends of the Palestinians urged them to command American attention by mimicking the freedom riders of Jim Crow? Well the Palestinian movement has imagination, and it is taking just that step.

Palestinian activists will reenact the US Civil Rights Movement's Freedom Rides by boarding segregated Israeli public transportation in the West Bank to travel to occupied East Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 11 A.M, Palestinian activists will attempt to board segregated Israeli public transportation headed from inside the West Bank to occupied East Jerusalem in an act of civil disobedience inspired by the Freedom Riders of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 60's.

Fifty years after US Freedom Riders staged mixed- race bus rides through the segregated South, Palestinian Freedom Riders will be asserting their right for liberty and dignity by disrupting the military regime of the Occupation through peaceful civil disobedience.

The Freedom Riders seek to highlight Israel's attempts to illegally sever occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, and the apartheid system that Israel has imposed on Palestinians.

Several Israeli companies, among them Egged and Veolia, operate dozens of lines that run through the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, many of them subsidized by the state. They run between different Israeli settlements, connecting them to each other and cities inside Israel. Some lines connecting Jerusalem to other cities inside Israel, such as Eilat and Beit She'an, are also routed to pass through the West Bank.

Israelis suffer almost no limitations on their freedom of movement in the occupied territory, and are even allowed to settle in it, contrary to international law. Palestinians, in contrast, are not allowed to enter Israel without procuring a special permit from Israeli authorities. Palestinian movement inside the Occupied Territories is heavily restricted, with access to occupied East Jerusalem and some 8% of the West Bank in the border area also forbidden without a similar permit.

While it is not officially forbidden for Palestinians to use Israeli public transportation in the West Bank, these lines are effectively segregated, since many of them pass through Jewish-only settlements, to which Palestinian entry is prohibited by a military decree. (Source: http://mondoweiss.net/2011/11/from-the-american-south-to-the-west-bank-a-freedom-rider-bears-witness-to-human-rights-in-israelpalestine.html)

Politics Y2K11

What Israel Doesn't Want You to Know About Gaza

By Mya Guarnieri

Israel relies on collective amnesia to justify its blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Here's four facts that the Israeli government would rather you forget.

As the Israeli navy prepared to intercept the flotilla "Freedom Waves for Gaza," the "IDF Spokesperson" tweeted: "Gaza is under a maritime security blockade according to international law." According to the same Twitter feed, the most recent attempt to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip is not a flotilla but, rather, a "provocatilla."

Setting aside the issue of whether the blockade is legal, here's a few of the things the Israeli army fails to mention when it issues statements about the blockade:

1) In August of 2008 and October of the same year, boats manned by activists reached Gaza, breaking the blockade that Israel is now so intent on enforcing.

2) Israel itself selectively breaks the blockade when it needs or wants to. Take, for example, the recent decision to import palm fronds from Gaza for Sukkot.

3) Even though both the Israeli government and the mainstream media claim that the blockade began in 2007, the closure of Gaza was a gradual process that started in 1991. While what we see today is, thus far, the most severe manifestation of this process, Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip have been subject to collective punishment for two decades.

Pegging the hermetic sealing of the Strip to 2007 offers Israeli officials and those who do hasbara an easy opening to talk about Hamas and Gilad Schalit. But Gilad Schalit is home now. And the blockade has only made Hamas stronger.

Hamas taxes goods coming in through the tunnels from Egypt. While those products aren't enough and the tunnel economy does not sustain Gaza, what is entering is enough for Hamas to maintain the image of resistance in the face of the Israeli blockade. For example: according to a recent article from the Alternative Information Center, Hamas is using building materials smuggled into Gaza for a new housing project. This won't be enough and Gaza will remain in a housing crisis. However, such symbolic initiatives can boost the popularity of Hamas.

4) As for that boogeyman, Hamas? Israel helped create it, encouraging the growth of Islamist groups to counter Fatah. While the Wall Street Journal refers to Israel's relationships with Islamists as "a catalog of unintended…consequences," I suspect Israel had a divide and conquer strategy. What can't be argued is that the chilly relations between Hamas and Fatah-serve Israeli interests. (Source: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/what-israel-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-the-gaza-blockade/)

Venue for an Artist

Jailed for Sailing to Gaza, Challenging the Blockade

By Medea Benjamin and Robert Naiman

Two boats full of courageous passengers were on their way to Gaza when they were intercepted on November 4 by the Israeli military in international waters. We call the passengers courageous because they sailed from Turkey with the knowledge that at any moment they might be boarded by Israeli commandos intent on stopping them--perhaps violently, as the Israeli military did in 2010 when they killed nine humanitarian aid workers on the Turkish boat named Mavi Marmara.

The boats--one from Canada and one from Ireland--were carrying 27 passengers, including press and peace activists from Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia and Palestine. They were unarmed, and the Israeli military knew that. They were simply peace activists wanting to connect with civilians in Gaza, and the Israeli military knew that. Yet naked aggression was used against them in international waters--something that is normally considered an act of piracy.

The boats were sailing to Gaza to challenge the U.S.-supported Israeli blockade that is crippling the lives of 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza. They were sailing to stand up against unaccountable power--the power of the Israeli government--that has been violating the basic rights of the 5.5 million Palestinians that live inside Israel's pre-1967 borders or in the Occupied Territories. They were sailing for us, civil society, who believe in human rights and the rule of law.

The blockade of Gaza's civilians is an extreme example of unaccountable power. Palestinians in Gaza aren't allowed to vote for Israeli or American politicians. But due to political decisions taken in Israel and the United States, Palestinians in Gaza are prevented from exporting their goods, traveling freely, farming their land, fishing their waters or importing construction materials to build their homes and factories.

We have been to Gaza before, where we have seen the devastation firsthand. We have also been to Israel and the West Bank, where we have seen how the Israeli government is detaining Palestinians at checkpoints, building walls that cut them off from their lands, demolishing their houses, arbitrarily imprisoning their relatives and imposing economic restrictions that prevent them from earning a living. We have seen how Palestinians, like people everywhere, are desperate to live normal and dignified lives.

A UN Report released in September found that "Israel's oppressive policies [in Gaza] constitute a form of collective punishment of civilians", that these policies violate both international humanitarian and human rights law, and that the illegal siege of Gaza should be lifted. The International Committee of the Red Cross also called the blockade of Gaza a violation of international law because it constitutes "collective punishment" of a civilian population for actions for which the civilians are not responsible. The Red Cross is a neutral humanitarian organization. It doesn't usually go around making pronouncements on matters of public policy. The fact that it has done so in this case should be a strong signal to the international community that the blockade of Gaza is extreme and must fall.

The Israeli military stopped these two small ships carrying peace activists to Gaza, but they won't stop the Palestinians who are demanding freedom, and they won't stop the solidarity movement. We won't stop challenging the blockade on Gaza's civilians--by land and by sea-- until the blockade falls. And we won't stop challenging the denial of Palestinian democratic aspirations until those aspirations are realized.

About Me: Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. Robert Naiman is the Director of Just Foreign Policy. See www.alternet.org/story/152966/jailed_for_sailing_to_gaza%2C_challenging_the_blockade.

News You Use

The BDS Movement

The global movement for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel was initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005. It is coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee. BDS is a strategy that allows people to play an effective role in the Palestinian struggle for justice.

For decades, Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights of freedom, equality, and self-determination through ethnic cleansing, colonization, racial discrimination, and military occupation. Despite abundant condemnation of Israeli policies by the UN, other international bodies, and human rights organizations, the world community has failed to hold Israel accountable and enforce compliance with basic principles of law. Its crimes continue with impunity.

In view of this continued failure, Palestinian civil society called for a global citizens' response. In 2005, a year after the International Court of Justice's historic advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel's Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), a clear majority of Palestinian civil society called upon their counterparts and people of conscience all over the world to launch broad boycotts, implement divestment initiatives, and to demand sanctions against Israel, until Palestinian rights are recognized in full compliance with international law.

The campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) is shaped by a rights-based approach and highlights the three broad sections of the Palestinian people: the refugees, those under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinians in Israel. The call urges various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law by:

Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall; recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

The BDS call was endorsed by over 170 Palestinian political parties, organizations, trade unions and movements. The signatories represent the refugees, Palestinians and citizens of Israel.

Boycotts target products and companies (Israeli and international) that profit from the violation of Palestinian rights, as well as Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions. Anyone can boycott Israeli goods, simply by making sure that they don't buy produce made in Israel or by Israeli companies. Campaigners and groups call on consumers not to buy Israeli goods and on businesses not to buy or sell them.

Israeli cultural and academic institutions directly contribute to maintaining, defending or whitewashing the oppression of Palestinians, as Israel deliberately tries to boost its image internationally through academic and cultural collaborations. As part of the boycott, academics, artists and consumers are campaigning against such collaboration and 'rebranding'. A growing number of artists have refused to exhibit or play in Israel.

Divestment means targeting corporations complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights and ensuring that the likes of university investment portfolios and pension funds are not used to finance such companies. These efforts raise awareness of Israel's policies and encourage companies to pressure Israel to end its systematic denial of Palestinian rights.

Sanctions are an essential part of demonstrating disapproval for a country's actions. Israel's membership of various diplomatic and economic forums provides both an unmerited veneer of respectability and material support for its crimes. By calling for sanctions against Israel, campaigners educate society about violations of international law and seek to end the complicity of other nations in these violations. (Source: www.bdsmovement.net)

Intuit's Vibe

Occupy Birthright Israel, Un-Occupy Palestine

The Young Jewish Declaration

We call for young Jews and allies nationwide to join in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and with our Palestinian siblings living under their own form of occupation. Let us stand up to the 1% in our own community -- the powerful institutions that support Israel's corporate-backed military control of the Palestinian people and act as the gatekeepers for our community."

The Young Jewish Declaration is a vision of collective identity, purpose and values written by and for young Jews committed to justice in Israel and Palestine. It is an invitation and call to action for both our peers and our elders, launched as a counter-protest at the 2010 Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans.

I. We exist. We are everywhere. We speak and love and dream in every language. We pray three times a day or only during the high holidays or when we feel like we really need to or not at all. We are punks and students and parents and janitors and Rabbis and freedom fighters. We are your children, your nieces and nephews, your grandchildren. We embrace diaspora, even when it causes us a great deal of pain. We are the rubble of tangled fear, the deliverance of values. We are human. We are born perfect. We assimilate, or we do not. We are not apathetic. We know and name persecution when we see it. Occupation has constricted our throats and fattened our tongues. We are feeding each other new words. We have family, we build family, we are family. We re-negotiate. We atone. We re-draw the map every single day. We travel between worlds. This is not our birthright, it is our necessity.

II. We remember slavery in Egypt, and we remember hiding our celebrations and ritual. We remember brave, desperate resistance. We honor a legacy of radical intellectuals and refugees. We remember the labor movement. We remember the camps. We remember when we aged too quickly. We remember that we are still young, and powerful. We remember being branded as counter-revolutionaries in one state and hunted during the red scare of another. We remember our ancestors' suffering and our own. Our stories are older than any brutal war. We remember those who cannot afford to take time to heal. We remember how to build our homes, and our holiness, out of time and thin air, and so do not need other people's land to do so. We remember solidarity as a means of survival and an act of affirmation, and we are proud.

III. We refuse to have our histories distorted or erased, or appropriated by a corporate war machine. We will not call this liberation. We refuse to knowingly oppress others, and we refuse to oppress each other. We refuse to be whitewashed. We will not carry the legacy of terror. We refuse to allow our identities to be cut, cleaned, packaged nicely, and sold back to us. We won't be won over by free vacations and scholarship money. We won't buy the logic that slaughter means safety. We will not quietly witness the violation of human rights in Palestine. We refuse to become the mother who did not scream when King Solomon resolved to split her baby in two. We are better than this. We have ancestors to honor. We have allies to honor. We have ourselves to honor.

IV. We commit ourselves to peace. We will stand up with honest bodies, to offer honest bread. We will stand up with our words, our pens, our songs, our paintbrushes, our open hands. We commit to re-envisioning "homeland," to make room for justice. We will stand in the way of colonization and displacement. We will take this to the courts and to the streets. We will learn. We will teach this in the schools and in our homes. We will stand with you, if you choose to stand with our allies. We will grieve the lies we've swallowed. We commit to equality, solidarity, and integrity. We will soothe the deepest tangles of our roots and stretch our strong arms to the sky. We demand daylight for our stories, for all stories. We seek breathing room and dignity for all people. We are committed to the struggle. We are the struggle. We will become mentors, elders, and radical listeners for the next generation. It is our sacred obligation. We will not stop. We exist. We are young Jews, and we get to decide what that means. (Note: See their video at www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jyp-3ulZmQI)

Disgruntled wants to know: On this video, Corey Feldman drops a bomb on Hollywood. (http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/feldman-corey-pedophilia-celebrity-hollywood-14277801).. According to Feldman, whose career as an actor began when he was a toddler, the child abuse scandal at Penn State pales in comparison to what transpires in Hollywood. Children are prey. Among movie moguls, pedophilia is epidemic! It is par for the course. Yet, amazingly, no journalist is investigating it. Our media's silence is deafening. Their silence says something distasteful about those who control the industry and the incredible absence of morals and ethics in this country. So, in some ways, it is difficult to heavily criticize the students' initial wave of unconditional support for the parties that participated in the Penn State pedophile cover-up. After all, the US is a star-struck and "what is good for me" society. For example, one case of abuse was allegedly witnessed by a grad student that is now an assistant coach. Do you think his failure to stop the crime, and instead run home to tell dad, was all about getting a "chip in the game?"

Disgruntled says: Recently, former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani blamed President Obama's "class warfare" for Occupy Wall Street and called on occupiers to occupy a job. He said it as if there are thousands of jobs out there that the unemployed can simply go and get. Giuliani is a member of the 1% that is either ignorant of the state of the US economy or is one of those people who believes the country needs illegal immigrants to do jobs "Americans won't do." Well, here's a news story for Giuliani and his ilk. Tyson Foods' Warren County, Mississippi plant, which has a workforce of 500, recently took applications for 24 positions. The applications were collected at a WIN Job Center. When the doors opened, more than 100 people were already in line. Within two hours of opening, the office had received more than a thousand applications for 24 jobs. These jobs, which "involve straightening products on conveyor belts and handling 10- to 40-pound product cases at the plant," pay $8.60 per hour. Despite what individuals like Giuliani think, people want to work; their expectations of finding gainful employment have been dumb-downed so low that there are no jobs Americans will not do.

Disgruntled feels: Responsibility! Former President Bill Clinton has written a new-- "Back to Work." In it, he offers advice on how to end the economic crisis and criticizes President Obama. Clinton failed to give his administration credit for laying the groundwork for the financial crisis that precipitated the economic crisis. Under Clinton, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan encouraged homeowners to use their homes as ATMs, a move he facilitated with low interest rates that led to a wave of home refinancing. Simultaneously, Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, led the fight to deregulate with repeal of Glass-Stegall, removing any separation between commercial banking and investment. After devaluing the dollar, enabling Wall Street to gamble with commercial deposits, wiping out public wealth with a housing bubble, Clinton bought into the Republicans' Contract with America, which shredded the social safety net. Rather than giving advice, Clinton, Greenspan and Rubin should be asking the nation for forgiveness and taking their share of responsibility for the current economic mess.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.commondreams.org...Freedom Waves: I Write to You From Cell 9 of the Apartheid State of Israel...by Abby Zimet...Despite Israeli claims that their (illegal) takeover of the Canadian and Irish Freedom Waves Gaza flotilla was benign, reports surfacing from activists tell a harsher story - high pressure hoses blasted, guns pointed, windows smashed, activists tasered, bruised, shackled and handcuffed, and held in jail without due process. In response, Anonymous threatened to shut down Israeli government web sites for "justifying war, murder, illegal interception, and pirate-like activities under an illegal cover of defense." A day later, several sites mysteriously went down. "We do not tolerate this kind of repeated offensive behavior against unarmed civilians. We along with 127 countries recognize Palestine as a state for people of Palestine and such acts by you and your military are acts of war against another sovereign nation."

Email www.bloomberg.com...Israel Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Kill 10 in Worst Fighting in Two Months...By Saud Abu Ramadan and Jonathan Ferziger...Israeli aircraft struck the Gaza Strip and killed at least 10 Palestinians, and one Israeli died in a Palestinian rocket attack, in the worst round of violence between the two sides in more than two months. The latest strike today came hours after the Islamic Jihad movement, which had been firing rockets and mortars into Israel, accepted an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. The death toll in Gaza was the highest since August, when more than two dozen Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes following a terrorist attack near the resort city of Eilat. The violence came less than three weeks after Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, a soldier held by Gazan militants for more than five years.

Email www.dailymail.com...On October 27, 2011, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, from New York, admitted to brokering illegal kidney transplants for desperate New Jersey-based customers in exchange for payments of $120,000 or more. He also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy count for brokering an illegal kidney sale. Anthropologist and organ trade expert Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who described Israel as a 'pariah' in the organ transplant world, has said donors were desperately poor immigrants from eastern European countries. The 60-year-old was arrested two years ago following a huge investigation into corruption in New Jersey. Rosenbaum faces a maximum five-year prison sentence on each count, plus a fine of up to $250,000. He also agreed to forfeit $420,000 in property that came from the kidney sales. He is a member of the Orthodox Jewish community in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, where he had told neighbors he was in the construction business.

Email www.prisonplanet.com...Pro-Israeli Lobby Group Made BBC, Sky News 'Change Narrative' On Stories...By Paul Joseph Watson...Ahead of a widely-expected Israeli-led attack on Iran, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, an elitist pro-Israeli lobbying firm, has been caught "briefing" the British mainstream media on how to present news items relating to Israel, bragging in a leaked email of how BBC and Sky News editors "changed their narrative" on stories after meeting with BICOM representatives. The revelations came to light as a result of the fallout from the Liam Fox scandal. British Defense Secretary Fox was forced to resign last month after details emerged of Fox's relationship with Adam Werritty, a front man for the now defunct Atlantic Bridge Research and Education Scheme, a lobbying group that posed as a charitable "think tank" which was designed to promote neo-conservative thinking amongst foreign policy hawks in the US and UK. BICOM is bankrolled by billionaire Chaim "Poju" Zabludowicz, ranked 18th on a list of the wealthiest people in the UK. The organization has contributed to all three main political parties in the UK.