I HOPE THIS MAKES YOU SICK

HOMELESS, THANKS TO ISAREL


Are people still angry? Are you still outraged? Yeah, here I come to ruin your Sunday World Cup Final party. As you go out into your kitchen, and pull open the fridge door for a nice cold drink, remember this:

But lets have a dose of reality by remembering that 24,145 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel. How many Israeli homes have Palestinians demolished? Answer=Zero!

Now let's look at this in the context of other Israeli aggression, shall we? Like the endless bombings in Gaza, more homes destroyed, along with Hospitals, schools and places of worship. Not to mention all those dead civilians and children. How about all the businesses that have had to close, thanks to the evil rogue state? How about all the people who have died needlessly because they can't get out for medical treatment that could easily save their lives? What about the children being born sick due to the chemicals Israel showered down upon the entire population? What about the disfigured and burnt people, or those now confined to life in a wheelchair because their legs are missing, thanks to Israel.

This is one big massive ethnic cleansing project, be it removal of homes, death or disfigurement. It's all meant to take land off of Palestinians and reduce their population. Ethnic cleansing by removal or murder. Remember these statistics below, never forget, never stop caring, never stop fighting for justice, never stop working for a free free Palestine!!

link 0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 24,145 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967.

In addition to the homes demolished by Israel, thousands of Palestinian homes have been destroyed or significantly damaged by Israeli bombing and shelling. On the flip side, while Palestinians have not demolished any Israeli homes, there is one known case of a Palestinian destroying an Israeli home in an explosion.

“Any humanitarian looking at the sheer number of innocent civilians who have lost their homes can only condemn Israel’s house demolition policy as a hugely disproportionate military response by an occupation army... It is a policy that creates only hardship and bitterness, and in the end can only undermine hope for future reconciliation and peace.”

– Peter Hansen, Commissioner General of UNRWA

Statistics Source: The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions estimates that 24,145 houses have been demolished in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since 1967 (as of July 4, 2009). (Read ICAHD's latest analysis of demolished homes (pdf format).

Summary of Israel’s Home Demolition Policy
B’Tselem
Excerpts from “Through No Fault of Their Own,”
Nov 15, 2004.
(Read the Synopsis and Full Report.)

Watch B’Tselem Video on Home Demolitions

“During the course of the al-Aqsa intifada, which began in September 2000, Israel has implemented a policy of mass demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories. In that period, Israel has destroyed some 4,170 Palestinian homes.

“The IDF carries out three types of house demolitions. Most are carried out in the framework of what Israel calls ‘clearing operations,’ which are intended to meet what Israel defines as ‘military needs.’ These operations take place primarily in the Gaza Strip: along the Egyptian border, which passes through Rafah and its refugee camps; around settlements and army posts; alongside roads used by settlers and IDF forces; and in the northern part of the Gaza Strip [...]

“The second type of demolition are administrative demolitions of houses built without a permit. These demolitions take place in Area C in the West Bank, where Israel retains authority over planning and building even after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and in East Jerusalem. [...]

“The third kind of house demolitions are those intended to punish the relatives and neighbors of Palestinians who carried out or are suspected of involvement in attacks against Israeli civilians or soldiers. These punitive demolitions are intended for the homes in which these suspects lived. However, in many cases, adjacent homes are also destroyed.”

PREPARE TO BE TARGETED BY ISRAEL

Here it comes folks, another Israeli add campaign, this one costs 10 million. And here's the hasbara propaganda line ""There's a Little Bit of Israel in All of Us." Feeling sick yet?

link Bodden Partners, a NY-based full-service advertising and communications company, (who has worked for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism for 20 years now) has launched its new $10 million advertising campaign for the Israel Ministry of Tourism titled "There's a Little Bit of Israel in All of Us."

The campaign includes television, print (magazine and newspaper), radio, interactive, and mobile. It will also invite visitors to Israel to contribute their stories and pictures on a web site set up by the Ministry for that purpose. The ads will run in the New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Toronto metropolitan areas. South American markets will start in the second half of 2010

The agency did extensive research to better understand what sophisticated travelers from North America are looking for, and to appeal to their sense of adventure, culture and faith, regardless of religion. "All of us can find something deep inside our soul that connects us to Israel.

The previous Bodden campaign for Israel helped the country welcome 700,000 tourists last year from North America. Their goal is 1 million travelers by the end of 2011

RACIST TRAFFIC LIGHTS

Only in Israel could they extend racism to traffic lights.
And you thought you'd seen it all?

BUSTED, ISRAEL IS APARTHEID STATE

Jonathan Cook breaks it all down, another brilliant report. This is long but a must read:"Israel is neither a liberal democracy nor even a 'Jewish and democratic state'... It is an apartheid state, not only in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, but also inside Israel proper.""The meaning of a Jewish State"

Jonathan Cook analyses the pillars that prop up Israeli apartheid in pre- and post-1967 Palestine, from the unique and racist nature of Israeli citizenship law, to Jewish control of land, to defining Israeli Arabs as a security threat.

In a talk delivered to the fifth Bilin international conference for Palestinian popular resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bilin on 21 April, he argues that the fight against Israeli apartheid wherever it is found – in Jaffa or Jerusalem, in Nazareth or Nablus, in Beersheva or Bilin – is integral to the struggle for justice for the Palestinians.

Israel’s apologists are very exercised about the idea that Israel has been singled out for special scrutiny and criticism. I wish to argue, however, that in most discussions of Israel it actually gets off extremely lightly: that many features of the Israeli polity would be considered exceptional or extraordinary in any other democratic state.

That is not surprising because, as I will argue, Israel is neither a liberal democracy nor even a “Jewish and democratic state”, as its supporters claim. It is an apartheid state, not only in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, but also inside Israel proper. Today, in the occupied territories, the apartheid nature of Israeli rule is irrefutable – if little mentioned by Western politicians or the media. But inside Israel itself, it is largely veiled and hidden. My purpose today is to try to remove the veil a little.

I say “a little”, because I would need far more than the time allotted to me to do justice to this topic. There are, for example, some 30 laws that explicitly discriminate between Jews and non-Jews – another way of referring to the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinian and supposedly enjoy full citizenship. There are also many other Israeli laws and administrative practices that lead to an outcome of ethnic-based segregation even if they do not make such discrimination explicit.

So instead of trying to rush through all these aspects of Israeli apartheid, let me concentrate instead on a few revealing features, issues I have reported on recently.

Israeli citizenship
First, let us examine the nature of Israeli citizenship.

"There are ... two legal systems of citizenship in Israel, differentiating between the rights of citizens based on whether they are Jews or Palestinians. That, in itself, meets the definition of apartheid, as set out by the United Nations in 1973..."

A few weeks ago I met Uzi Ornan, an 86-year-old professor from the Technion university in Haifa, who has one of the few ID cards in Israel stating a nationality of “Hebrew”. For most other Israelis, their cards and personal records state their nationality as “Jewish” or “Arab”. For immigrants whose Jewishness is accepted by the state but questioned by the rabbinical authorities, some 130 other classifications of nationality have been approved, mostly relating to a person’s religion or country of origin. The only nationality you will not find on the list is “Israeli”. That is precisely why Professor Ornan and two dozen others are fighting through the courts: they want to be registered as “Israelis”. It is a hugely important fight – and for that reason alone they are certain to lose. Why?

Far more is at stake than an ethnic or national label. Israel excludes a nationality of “Israeli” to ensure that, in fulfilment of its self-definition as a “Jewish state”, it is able to assign superior rights of citizenship to the collective “nation” of Jews around the globe than to the body of actual citizens in its territory, which includes many Palestinians. In practice it does this by creating two main classes of citizenship: a Jewish citizenship for “Jewish nationals” and an Arab citizenship for “Arab nationals”. Both nationalities were effectively invented by Israel and have no meaning outside Israel.

This differentiation in citizenship is recognized in Israeli law: the Law of Return, for Jews, makes immigration all but automatic for any Jew around the world who wishes it; and the Citizenship Law, for non-Jews, determines on any entirely separate basis the rights of the country’s Palestinian minority to citizenship. Even more importantly, the latter law abolishes the rights of the Palestinian citizens’ relatives, who were expelled by force in 1948, to return to their homes and land. There are, in other words, two legal systems of citizenship in Israel, differentiating between the rights of citizens based on whether they are Jews or Palestinians.

That, in itself, meets the definition of apartheid, as set out by the United Nations in 1973: “Any legislative measures or other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups.” The clause includes the following rights: “the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression”.

Such separation of citizenship is absolutely essential to the maintenance of Israel as a Jewish state. Were all citizens to be defined uniformly as Israelis, were there to be only one law regarding citizenship, then very dramatic consequences would follow. The most significant would be that the Law of Return would either cease to apply to Jews or apply equally to Palestinian citizens, allowing them to bring their exiled relatives to Israel – the much-feared Right of Return. In either a longer or shorter period, Israel’s Jewish majority would be eroded and Israel would become a binational state, probably with a Palestinian majority.

There would be many other predictable consequences of equal citizenship. Would the Jewish settlers, for example, be able to maintain their privileged status in the West Bank if Palestinians in Jenin or Hebron had relatives inside Israel with the same rights as Jews? Would the Israeli army continue to be able to function as an occupation army in a properly democratic state? And would the courts in a state of equal citizens be able to continue turning a blind eye to the brutalities of the occupation? In all these cases, it seems extremely unlikely that the status quo could be maintained.

In other words, the whole edifice of Israel’s apartheid rule inside Israel supports and upholds its apartheid rule in the occupied territories. They stand or fall together.

Land control
Next, let us look at the matter of land control.

"Jewish and Palestinian citizens in Israel ... live in entirely separate physical worlds. They live apart in segregated communities, separated not through choice but by legally enforceable rules and procedures."

Last month I met an exceptional Israeli Jewish couple, the Zakais. They are exceptional chiefly because they have developed a deep friendship with a Palestinian couple inside Israel. Although I have reported on Israel and Palestine for many years, I cannot recall ever before meeting an Israeli Jew who had a Palestinian friend in quite the way the Zakais do.

True, there are many Israeli Jews who claim an “Arab” or “Palestinian” friend in the sense that they joke with the guy whose hummus shop they frequent or who fixes their car. There are also Israeli Jews – and they are an extremely important group – who stand with Palestinians in political battles such as those here in Bilin or in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem. At these places, Israelis and Palestinians have, against the odds, managed to forge genuine friendships that are vital if Israel’s apartheid rule is to be defeated.

But the Zakais’ relationship with their Bedouin friends, the Tarabins, is not that kind of friendship. It is not based on, or shaped by, a political struggle, one that is itself framed by Israel’s occupation; it is not a self-conscious friendship; and it has no larger goal than the relationship itself. It is a friendship – or at least it appeared that way to me – of genuine equals. A friendship of complete intimacy. When I visited the Zakais, I realized what an incredibly unusual sight that is in Israel.

The reason for the very separate cultural and emotional worlds of Jewish and Palestinian citizens in Israel is not difficult to fathom: they live in entirely separate physical worlds. They live apart in segregated communities, separated not through choice but by legally enforceable rules and procedures. Even in the so-called handful of mixed cities, Jews and Palestinians usually live apart, in distinct and clearly defined neighbourhoods. And so it was not entirely surprising that the very issue that brought me to the Zakais was the question of whether a Palestinian citizen is entitled to live in a Jewish community.


The Zakais want to rent to their friends, the Tarabins, their home in the agricultural village of Nevatim in the Negev – currently an exclusively Jewish community. The Tarabins face a serious housing problem in their own neighbouring Bedouin community. But what the Zakais have discovered is that there are overwhelming social and legal obstacles to Palestinians moving out of the ghettoes in which they are supposed to live. Not only is Nevatim’s elected leadership deeply opposed to the Bedouin family entering their community, but so also are the Israeli courts.

Nevatim is not exceptional. There are more than 700 similar rural communities – mostly kibbutzim and moshavim – that bar non-Jews from living there. They control most of the inhabitable territory of Israel, land that once belonged to Palestinians: either refugees from the 1948 war, or Palestinian citizens who have had their lands confiscated under special laws.

Today, after these confiscations, at least 93 per cent of Israel is nationalized – that is, it is held in trust not for Israel’s citizens but for world Jewry. (Here, once again, we should note one of those important consequences of the differentiated citizenship we have just considered.)

Access to most of this nationalized land is controlled by vetting committees, overseen by quasi-governmental but entirely unaccountable Zionist organizations like the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund. Their role is to ensure that such communities remain off-limits to Palestinian citizens, precisely as the Zakais and Tarabins have discovered in the case of Nevatim. The officials there have insisted that the Palestinian family has no right even to rent, let alone buy, property in a “Jewish community”. That position has been effectively upheld by Israel’s highest court, which has agreed that the family must submit to a vetting committee whose very purpose is to exclude them.

Again, the 1973 UN Convention on the “crime of apartheid” is instructive: it includes measures “designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups … [and] the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof”.

If Jewish and Palestinian citizens have been kept apart so effectively – and a separate education system and severe limits on interconfessional marriage reinforce this emotional and physical segregation – how did the Zakais and Tarabins become such close friends?

Their case is an interesting example of serendipity, as I discovered when I met them. Weisman Zakai is the child of Iraqi Jewish parents who immigrated to the Jewish state in its early years. When he and Ahmed Tarabin met as boys in the 1960s, hanging out in the markets of the poor neighbouring city of Beersheva, far from the centre of the country, they found that what they had in common trumped the formal divisions that were supposed to keep them apart and fearful. Both speak fluent Arabic, both were raised in an Arab culture, both are excluded from Jewish Ashkenazi society, and both share a passion for cars.

In their case, Israel’s apartheid system failed in its job of keeping them physically and emotionally apart. It failed to make them afraid of, and hostile to, each other. But as the Zakais have learnt to their cost, in refusing to live according to the rules of Israel’s apartheid system, the system has rejected them. The Zakais are denied the chance to rent to their friends, and now live as pariahs in the community of Nevatim.

”Security”
Finally, let us consider the concept of “security” inside Israel.

"The most educated, respectable and wealthy Palestinian citizen will always fare worse at the airport security check than the most disreputable Jewish citizen, or the one who espouses extremist opinions or even the Jewish citizen with a criminal record."

As I have said, the apartheid nature of relations between Jewish and Palestinian citizens is veiled in the legal, social and political spheres. It does not mirror the “petty apartheid” that was a feature of the South African brand: the separate toilets, park benches and buses. But in one instance it is explicit in this petty way – and this is when Jews and Palestinians enter and leave the country through the border crossings and through Ben Gurion international airport. Here the façade is removed and the different status of citizenship enjoyed by Jews and Palestinians is fully on show.

That lesson was learnt by two middle-aged Palestinian brothers I interviewed this month. Residents of a village near Nazareth, they had been life-long supporters of the Labour Party and proudly showed me a fading picture of them hosting a lunch for Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s. But at our meeting they were angry and bitter, vowing they would never vote for a Zionist party again.

Their rude awakening had come three years ago when they travelled to the US on a business trip with a group of Jewish insurance agents. On the flight back, they arrived at New York’s JFK airport to see their Jewish colleagues pass through El Al’s security checks in minutes. They, meanwhile, spent two hours being interrogated and having their bags minutely inspected.

When they were finally let through, they were assigned a female guard whose job was to keep them under constant surveillance – in front of hundreds of fellow passengers – till they boarded the plane. When one brother went to the bathroom without first seeking permission, the guard berated him in public and her boss threatened to prevent him from boarding the plane unless he apologized. This month the court finally awarded the brothers 8,000 US dollars compensation for what it called their “abusive and unnecessary” treatment.

Two things about this case should be noted. The first is that the El Al security team admitted in court that neither brother was deemed a security risk of any sort. The only grounds for the special treatment they received was their national and ethnic belonging. It was transparently a case of racial profiling.

The second thing to note is that their experience is nothing out of the ordinary for Palestinian citizens travelling to and from Israel. Similar, and far worse, incidents occur every day during such security procedures. What was exceptional in this case was that the brothers pursued a time-consuming and costly legal action against El Al.

They did so, I suspect, because they felt so badly betrayed. They had made the mistake of believing the hasbara (propaganda) from Israeli politicians of all stripes who declare that Palestinian citizens can enjoy equal status with Jewish citizens if they are loyal to the state. They assumed that by being Zionists they could become first-class citizens. In accepting this conclusion, they had misunderstood the apartheid reality inherent in a Jewish state.

The most educated, respectable and wealthy Palestinian citizen will always fare worse at the airport security check than the most disreputable Jewish citizen, or the one who espouses extremist opinions or even the Jewish citizen with a criminal record.

Israel’s apartheid system is there to maintain Jewish privilege in a Jewish state. And at the point where that privilege is felt most viscerally by ordinary Jews to be vulnerable, in the life and death experience of flying thousands of feet above the ground, Palestinian citizens must be shown their status as outsider, as the enemy, whoever they are and whatever they have, or have not, done.

"The veiled apartheid facing Palestinians inside Israel is the blueprint for a veiled – and more legitimate – kind of apartheid being planned for Palestinians in the occupied territories, at least those who are allowed to remain in their Bantustans."

Apartheid rule, as I have argued, applies to Palestinians in both Israel and the occupied territories. But is not apartheid in the territories much worse than it is inside Israel? Should we not concern ourselves more with the big apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza than this weaker apartheid? Such an argument demonstrates a dangerous misconception about the indivisible nature of Israel’s apartheid towards Palestinians and about its goals.

Certainly, it is true that apartheid in the territories is much more aggressive than it is inside Israel. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the apartheid under occupation is much less closely supervised by the Israeli civilian courts than it is in Israel. You can, to put it bluntly, get away with much more here. The second, and more significant, reason, however, is that the Israeli system of apartheid in the occupied territories is forced to be more aggressive and cruel – and that is because the battle is not yet won here. The fight of the occupying power to steal your resources – your land, water and labour – is in progress but the outcome is still to be decided. Israel is facing the considerable pressures of time and a fading international legitimacy as it works to take your possessions from you. Every day you resist makes that task a little harder.

In Israel, by contrast, apartheid rule is entrenched – it achieved its victory decades ago. Palestinian citizens have third or fourth class citizenship; they have had almost all of their land taken from them; they are allowed to live only in their ghettoes; their education system is controlled by the security services; they can work in few jobs other than those Jews do not want; they have the vote but cannot participate in government or effect any political change; and so on.

Doubtless, a related fate is envisioned for you too. The veiled apartheid facing Palestinians inside Israel is the blueprint for a veiled – and more legitimate – kind of apartheid being planned for Palestinians in the occupied territories, at least those who are allowed to remain in their Bantustans. And for this very reason, exposing and defeating the apartheid inside Israel is vital to the success of resisting the apartheid that has taken root here.

That is why we must fight Israeli apartheid wherever it is found – in Jaffa or Jerusalem, in Nazareth or Nablus, in Beersheva or Bilin. It is the only struggle that can bring justice to the Palestinians.

IS THE PENNY DROPPING?

Despite the never ending intransigence of Israel, I am noticing a tiny nano whiff of change in the winds. The words “Road Map” and “Two State Solution” are appearing more and more. Could it be that “some” of the Zionists are now realising that the end of the so called “Jewish” state is neigh unless something is done soon?

All the pushing by Obama, or anyone else for that matter, won’t by itself bring about any massive change. For too many years now the Israeli government has allowed any and all evil idealism to spread within its society, just so long as the ultimate goal was the continued colonization and spread of Israel. After generations of this, it won‘t be easy rolling the illegal hate filled apartheid tide backwards. This is Israeli problem. Even if an Israeli prime Minister decided the best option for Israel’s continued existence as a “Jewish” state was to make peace with Palestinians and give them a state, he would not be capable of doing so. This is the way the Israeli government is set up, no one can push through an agenda without all the much more nasty little fringe elements on board. It’s the powerful evil rump that rules the roost. And this is a direct result of past Israeli governments for allowing it to spin out of control, in order to make gains at the time, without having any foresight for the future conundrum it was creating.

It is only when the Israeli public get on board that we will see any real change. I immediately think of the political situation here in Ireland, when the Republican Movement and the IRA decided strategically to move towards a ceasefire and enter into politics as a way to contune the struggle. For such a sea change to work, you must always bring along your support base. This takes time and hard ground work; it also takes a phenomenal amount of meeting your supporters in order to explain the strategy so that it can be seen as part of the overall struggle, not an abandonment of Republican ideals. And yes, there were failures, more than one ceasefire forced to end due to British intransigence. But ultimately this eventually changed due to strong political work and a united strategy by well educated Republicans.

Israel has not even remotely begun this road, although I do believe even some hardcore Zionists are waking up to the fact that unless a new direction is somehow begun, the state of Israel as we know it will ultimately end, it will either become a fully fledged and world wide recognised Apartheid state, or it will no longer be a “Jewish” state. And not having a “Jewish” state is more fearful to Israelis than all the threats Obama could ever throw their way, even if he had the Chutzpah to!

So when I read things like this:

link Remembering and looking to future. On Sunday, the eve of Memorial Day, Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke at a ceremony at Tel Aviv University. "We are committed to working for the State's security, without compromise, while demonstrating responsibility, courage, and political wisdom in the struggle to achieve the desired peace, in the frame of an inclusive regional agreement in line with the Road Map and the concept of 'two states for two peoples'."

It is what immediately springs to mind. Although admittedly, the Irish problem may have been entrenched for 800 years. Israel faces a much worse problem than we did here. At least Irish Republicans saw Unionists as their “Irish Brothers” in any new united Ireland. Whereas in Israel this mindset does not exist because of their insistence on having a Jewish only state. And this will be what ultimately causes Israel to do some sort of deal. Which leaves the question that stared my post today, are we starting to see the drip, drip, drip now? Will this message begin to be pushed by the Israeli government? Will Israeli state controlled media now begin to push the line that in order to maintain their Jewish state they must begin to work in earnest for a solution?

I must include here, that obviously Israel will continue to attempt to steal as much as humanly possible, right up and until any deal would ever be struck. Because part of Israel’s strategy has always been to steal 75% and then give back 10-25% as proof they are nice people.

Should the time come when the Israeli society begins to back a solution out of fear of loosing their "Jewish" state, the world must ensure that the Palestinians get a fair deal, that all democratically elected Palestinian parties are represented at the table, and full sovereignty, without American intervention or troops on the ground.

The Trouble with Slaves

The land of stolen milk and honey, the desert in bloom, due to stolen water resources, the big shiny new buildings, the filled produce shops so that Israelis can eat until they burst. All of this labour intensive work comes at a price, a slave price. Whilst fat well fed Israelis refuse the hard labour jobs which they deem "below them" the Palestinians are forced to take what jobs they can get, in order to survive.

Unfortunately Israel has to pay them for their slave work, and now Israel complains about having to pay their slaves wages. More after this:

link Bank of Israel: Palestinian labor hurts Israeli workers. Growing employment of Palestinians in recent years good for PA, hurts unskilled Israeli labor, report says. The low wages earned by Palestinians working in Israel may undermine the salaries of unskilled Israeli workers, the Bank of Israel says.

The bank's report, which looked into Palestinian employment in Israel, showed a roughly 20% increase in the employment of Palestinians in Israel in the years 2002-2008.

Now, as if we needed MORE proof of Zionist racism, here's a good one from the comment secton below this article:

. So an unskilled palis makes 210 shekels day. And an Israeli with skills or not earning the minimum wage gets 165.60. Is there something wrong here?

Put a 1,000 shekel security tax on each pali that is employed. Also 100,000 shekel fine and six months in prison for each illegally employed pali or other foreigner.

jason white ,
afula,israel
(04.04.10)

These people are evil racist bigots, nuff said.......

HAPPY PASSOVER FROM GAZA

Came across this great report:Happy Passover from Gaza
By Sam Bahour

In 2010, Jews in Israel and around the world will celebrate Passover beginning on March 30th. Passover is the seven-day holiday of the Feast of Unleavened Bread commemorating the ancient Hebrews’ escape from enslavement in Egypt. (In Israel, March 30th is also Land Day: the day when Palestinians commemorate and protest the confiscation of their lands by the Israeli government; but that’s another story.)

As I’m learning, the Passover holiday begins with the Seder, a traditional ceremonial meal. Its centerpiece is a special Seder plate containing six symbolic foods. Each has its own significance in the retelling of the story of the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt. The stack of three matzos, or unleavened bread, a kind of cracker made of plain white flour and water, has its own separate plate on the Seder table.

For each of the six traditional items on the Seder plate (as per Wikipedia and the Chabad website) —listed here by its Hebrew name—I note its traditional symbolic role and offer an additional, alternative interpretation. I hope my alternative can help Jews around the world, and especially in Israel, connect with a broader perspective on the meaning of Passover right here, right now, in the land that became the eventual endpoint of that ancient exodus.

Maror and Chazeret — Bitter herbs, symbolizing the bitterness and harshness of the slavery which the Jews endured in Egypt. Slavery: severe curtailment of one’s freedom. Today, one and a half million Palestinians in Gaza are tasting the bitterness of unfreedom, hermetically sealed in their encircled enclave with no end in sight. Sixty percent are under the age of 16. The Jewish citizens of Israel have hardened their hearts to this reality and they have expected the rest of the world’s Jews to do likewise. For how long will you wait for Palestinians to vanish?

Charoset — A coarse mixture of chopped nuts, apples or dates, and wine, meant to symbolize the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build the storehouses of Egypt. Today, Israel permits no mortar, or cement, or any other building materials, to enter Gaza. Let them sleep in tents! This, after last winter’s assault on Gaza, internationally documented war crimes (and possibly crimes against humanity), causing over 1,400 deaths in 22 days between December 2008 and January 2009– leaving scores homeless in the rubble. Is this the freedom Moses envisioned? The freedom to attack civilians with the tanks, planes and warships of the “Jewish” State? Doesn’t sound very Jewish to me. Not at all.

Karpas — A vegetable other than bitter herbs, dipped into salt water (which represents tears) to recall the pain felt by the Jewish slaves in Egypt. Tears! Pain! In your name, my Jewish friends, Israel continues its inhuman siege on Gaza. The folks there shed tears as salty as anyone’s; their pain is beyond description. Two of every three of today’s Gaza residents originally lost their homes in what is now Israel when the state was established. Six decades later, they find themselves living a nightmare, a kind of living death: their economy in ruins, their neighborhoods in ruins, their educational and health systems in ruins, even their sanitation systems in ruins. Israel refuses to allow reconstruction. What comes after stripping Gazans from their last remaining sense of sanity?

Z’roa — A roasted lamb shankbone (or a chicken wing, or chicken neck) symbolizes the paschal sacrifice offered originally on the eve of the exodus and later in the Temple in Jerusalem. Sacrifice! Do you insist on sacrificing the possibility of a sustainable future for modern Israel in the name of its founding myth – since discredited – that Palestine was “a land without people, for a people without a land”? A million of today’s Gazans are from the families that Israel expelled. Gazans have remained steadfast under conditions even the early Hebrews might have found intolerable in Egypt. Gazans, together with all Palestinians, are the people that Jews in Israel are destined to live with, today, tomorrow, and forever. The only uncertainty is how much more hate will be generated by military occupation and armed assault before a process of shared rehabilitation can begin.

Beitzah — A hard-boiled egg, symbolizing the main festival sacrifice that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and roasted and eaten as part of the meal on Seder night. The egg is a symbol of mourning. Eggs are the first thing served to mourners after a Jewish funeral. The egg on the Seder plate evokes the mourning over the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent inability to offer sacrifices there in honor of the Pesach holiday. Mourning! As Jews, you know a lot about mourning; consider the sixty-two years of mourning, consider every day of every one of those years, among the people–real people, with real names and real children—in Gaza and in squalid refugee camps all around Israel who can see their homeland with the naked eye, but are denied their basic human right of returning home. Sixty-two Passovers and counting. All I ask of you on this year’s holy day, as you contemplate the egg on the Seder plate, is to remember them, no more.

My Jewish sisters and brothers, you can continue to look away as Israel claims to speak and to act in your name. It kills and maims in your name. It dispossesses and occupies in your name. It talks peace and wages war in your name. If you turn a deaf ear to their mourning again this year, if you harden your heart again this year, if your voice is not raised this year in protest – then you are acquiescing in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of another people, in your name. If you cannot see Palestinians as fully human now, you will hear them trying to give voice to their humanity in your nightmares, year after year, until you can see and until you can hear.

It is written in the Talmud: We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. I urge you, while you commemorate the Hebrews’ ancient slavery and deliverance, to see yourselves finally as equals in this world: equal with your neighbors, neither their masters nor their slaves. I urge you to see yourself and your children in the image of every Palestinian mother, father and child in Gaza. Let this year be the year of your shared redemption!

Free Gaza now! End the occupation now! Happy Passover from Gaza!

STAND BACK~ETHNIC CLEANSING IN PROGRESS

According to the latest statistics on Israel’s population, it would appear they have a little more work to do before they succeed in ethnically cleansing all non-Jews from their midst.

link Israel's population is about 7,509,000 residents as of the end of 2009 according to figures published by the Central Bureau of Statistics. The figures show that 75.4% of the Israeli population is Jewish, 20.3% is Arab, and 4.3% is defined as "other"

Never mind, Israel is working hard in Jerusalem and the West Bank to expand and take total control of the entire region. And of course America and other countries are helping in this regard. Zionist state welcomes more:

link The final Nefesh B’Nefesh flight of the year 2009 landed in Ben Gurion International Airport The 210 capped off the approximately 3,800 new immigrants who arrived in Israel from North America in 2009 – an increase of approximately 17 percent over the previous year.

Now if they can just get rid of that pesky 20.3% of Arabs, and they’re working hard at this:

link Israel to build 700 new homes in East Jerusalem
Building will take place in three Jewish neighbourhoods all considered illegal settlements under international law

ISRAEL SHOULD READ WIKI

Ignored UN Security Council Resolution 780
~or~
Why Israel Should Read Wiki

wikiEthnic cleansing is a euphemism referring to the persecution through imprisonment, expulsion, or killing of members of an ethnic minority by a local majority to achieve ethnic homogeneity in majority-controlled territory.[1]

The term ethnic cleansing has been variously defined. In the words of Andrew Bell-Fialkoff:

[E]thnic cleansing [...] defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide. At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of a population from a given territory.[3]

The official United Nations definition of ethnic cleansing is "rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group"[4]

However, ethnic cleansing rarely aims at complete ethnic homogeneity. The common practice is the removal of stigmatized ethnic groups, and thus can be defined as "the forcible removal of an ethnically defined population from a given territory", occupying the middle part of a somewhat fuzzy continuum between nonviolent pressured ethnic emigration and genocide.[5]

A similar term with the same intent was used by the Nazi administration in Germany under Adolf Hitler.(Netanyahu) When an area under Nazi (Israeli) control had its entire Jewish (Palestinian) population removed, whether by driving the population out (To Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, rest of the world), by deportation to Concentration Camps (Israeli Jails and Refugee Camps), and/or murder, the area was declared judenrein, (lit. "Jew Clean"): "cleansed of Jews". (Judaization of Jerusalem=Palestinain Free Zone)(cf. racial hygiene).

Flash forward to the Judaization of Jerusalem in 2009, Ethnic cleansing is “In Progress” every day, house evictions, home demolitions, expulsion, murder, removal by force, it’s ALL in use today, by the “Jewish Only State” of Israel. More:

Ethnic cleansing as a military and political tactic
The purpose of ethnic cleansing is to remove the conditions for potential and actual opposition, (IN PROGRESS) whether political, guerrilla or military,(IN PROGRESS) by physically removing any potentially or actually hostile ethnic communities.(IN PROGRESS) Although it has sometimes been motivated by a doctrine that claim an ethnic group is literally "unclean" (Jews then, Palestinains now) more usually it has been a rational (if brutal) way of ensuring that total control can be asserted over an area.(BINGO!)

Israel guilty of Crimes Against Humanity:

There is no formal legal definition of ethnic cleansing.[23] However, ethnic cleansing in the broad sense - the forcible deportation of a population - is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of the International Criminal Court (ICC)

The UN Commission of Experts (established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780) held that the practices associated with ethnic cleansing "constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes. Furthermore ... such acts could also fall within the meaning of the Genocide Convention." The UN General Assembly condemned "ethnic cleansing" and racial hatred in a 1992 resolution.[26]

SOME EXAMPLES LISTED IN WIKI ARE:

1. The Palestinian exodus, in which the substantial majority of Arab Palestinians (approximately 700,000) in the areas of British Mandate of Palestine that became part of Israel fled or were forced to leave in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

2. The creation of the apartheid system in South Africa, which began in 1948 but reached full flower in the 1960s and 1970s, involved some ethnic cleansing, including the separation of blacks, Coloureds, and whites into separate residential areas and private spheres. The government created Bantustans, which involved forced removals of non-white populations to reserved lands.[71][72] The governing minority forced relocation of the majority to different areas, as well as restricting their movement

3. After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and Act of Settlement in 1652, the whole post-war Cromwellian settlement of Ireland has been characterised by historians such as Mark Levene and Alan Axelrod as ethnic cleansing, in that it sought to remove Irish Catholics from the eastern part of the country, others such as the historical writer Tim Pat Coogan have describe the actions of Cromwell and his subordinates as genocide.[30]

Israel should read wiki, and the world should enforce UN Security Council Resolution 708……….now!

BABIES PUT AT RISK BY ZIONIST OCCUPYING FORCE

More racist and Apartheid activities directed at Palestinians by Racist Zionist cockroaches. This time it’s directed at babies and toddlers of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem. Given that the Illegal Racist Rogue State of Israel is the occupying force in East Jerusalem, under International Law, that makes them personally responsible for those they imprison and occupy. This, a little factoid that the ZOA like to ignore, along with hundreds of other International Laws and UN resolutions:

link OCCUPIED Jerusalem Mayor RACIST ZIONIST Nir Barkat on Thursday rejected municipal recommendations and cut funding for a toddler health-care center in OCCUPIED East Jerusalem, while approving aid to a similar center in a APARTHEID RACIST ZIONIST neighborhood.

The funds would have gone to opening a branch of the "Drop of Milk" (Tipat Halav) program, which provides prenatal and toddler health-care services in Silwan, an Arab neighborhood in OCCUPIED East Jerusalem.

Last year, authorities from the Jerusalem municipal offices recommended to the mayor to open the aid center in Silwan, which would service around 100,000 residents.

Authorities also recommended opening a similar center in a Jewish neighborhood that is home to around 7,000 residents.

During discussions on the 2010 budget, RACIST ZIONIST APARTHEID DIRECTOR Barkat decided to cut the aid that would open the center in Silwan while simultaneously approving the aid to open the same center in a Jewish neighborhood - a move that outraged residents of Silwan. (NOTE the difference in population, 100,00 to 7,000 yet the smaller number of ZIONIST RACISTS get the program, GOT APARTHEID?)

"I don't understand why there is a 'Drop of Milk' center in the mayor's neighborhood while there is none in ours?" asked Silwan resident Fakhri Abu Diab. "Why does he deserve one and we don't? Are my children different from his children?

Soon, Hamas will open a 'Drop of Milk' center and we will go there," Abu Diab added. (YEAH and soon I hope)

PRISONER OF HOPE

Facing the news on Palestine each day can make even the most jovial Irish person melancholy at times. So if yur looking for the usual banter and craic, it's not here today. Instead a somber rant on Zionists, religion, and the world:

I was raised in a Christian family, like all good Irish. My views on religion have changed immensely as I’ve grown older. During the troubles in Ireland, even the non religious Catholics embraced the Catholic religion and went to mass, more so as a statement of defiance than anything else. Our religion was under attack, and that drew more of us in to protect it and defend it, this works in all other religions as well. When people of a certain faith believe their faith is under attack the religious become more religious, and even the non-believers will defend it to the core. Ireland or the Middle East, same deal.

I wouldn’t say I’m anything these days, no affiliation with any organised religion, not after the horrors I’ve seen in this world that revolve around “so called” religious people and their “various religions.” I now have my own family, and although none of us are “religious” in the real sense of the word, we instead try to live lives that help other people. This is our families “religion.” But, when I was younger religion and the world itself, had a different meaning altogether. Remember when you were only small, and your parents protected you from knowing of the evil in the world. You’d look at picture books of the people around the world, their different cultures. They always appeared so happy in the books, no troubles at all, everyone was free to live their lives despite their cultural and religious differences. Still, if you listened late at night you could hear the hushed talk of the adults, and you knew all was not as it seemed. That this world was not truly the place you thought it was. This is the beginning of innocence lost. Of coming to terms with the very sad fact that most of those people in the picture books in fact hated each other. If for no other stupid reason than a difference in religion. God wars, just like at home in Ireland the 800 years of Protestant vs. Catholic. Sadly, the world was just like us, filed with hatred for those who are “different.”

As you grow you soon see that there is always an aggressor and a victim, rarely are the two sides pitted against each other equal in strength and military ability. You begin to realise that as some groups of people gain power, they easily toss aside any memories of when they themselves were once the victim. And in a bizarre twist of fate, become the aggressor themselves. This is an awful side effect of power, but not every group of people have this desire. However, those who have made the transition from victim to aggressor believe with all their being, that should their own victims ever become equal, or gain any real power, that they will do to them what they have done. This is their guilty conscience at work along with racist fears and paranoia. It was the same in Ireland. Protestants believed that the cruelty they had towards us would be turned against them once we became equal. But, the REAL truth is that people just want to be equal and treated fairly, and once they get equality then they just get on with building their country and living their lives. They don’t want to then create another situation where they have to keep fighting the same foe for all of eternity. That is not human nature. They only want to live like everyone else. It really is that simple! Only the aggressors cannot get over their irrational fear that their victims will seek a horrible revenge. To that paranoid thought, I’d refer to what happened here and in South Africa for evidence that people just want to move on from conflict and live in peace equally.

And this got me to thinking about Israel and its behaviour and moreover, those who support Israel’s behaviour. How difficult it must be for Jews both in Israel and outside of Israel to read the news online each day. The continued bashing of Israel’s actions, the criticism, the anger, the outrage, that Jews feel hated. I get that. No one wants to be hated, even hard core Zionists at “some level” surely have feelings, even if they never speak of them. It’s human nature to want to be loved and accepted. But in order to RECIEVE love and acceptance from the world, you must first exhibit love and acceptance OF the world. This is where Israel and Zionists get it so very wrong.

Instead, Israel spends billions on bribing politicians in every country, creating hasbara programs, armies of online bloggers, talking heads on TV, attempting to change laws pertaining to our civil rights and free speech, attempting to censor bloggers, papers and TV stations, and a whole host of other propaganda techniques in a failing effort to win support and “change” people’s minds. And with each of these very “forceful” attempts, it only works against them, in spades. Because with each of these attempts yet another person is converted into the anti-Zionist/Israel camp. Yet another person becomes aware of the evil policies that stem from a sectarian religious fanatical state that acts with impunity and worse, endangers the world for the rest of us peons.

So, to Israel and those who support blindly its racist and illegal actions, I say this; what happened to Judaism? What happened to those who became free from the Nazis? Did they go out into the world and fight to change it, so that the horrors of the Nazi’s would never happen again to them OR anyone else?? That was the mistake. We don’t want to hate you; we’re just sick and tired of what you continue to do each day in the name of your new and improved Zionist religion. We hate the fact that you have become what you once fought against, the very evil you despised. We are in “utter awe” that you cannot see what you are doing, that you are so blinded by your hatred. And most of all, we are in “awe” of what you are doing to your own selves, your own history, your own legacy in this world. What will history say about you and your actions against your fellow Semites? Do you even care? Probably not, but you should. This Zionist mentality will destroy you and be your downfall. It’s already happening, bit by bit. I know you tell yourselves that after you finish your illegal actions of ethnic cleansing in the region, when you are done taking what land you want from others, when your best friend America helps to get you off from War Crimes charges and the Goldstone Report. When time passes and the world is not as focused on Palestine as it is now. That you will get away with what you have done and are doing, you think things will change for you. That people will forget. Again, you only need look to your very own history for the answer. Has the world forgotten about Hitler and the Holocaust? The same will stand true for your own actions against Palestine, you are writing new passages in history each day, and those passages will not reflect kindly on Jews or Israel. Israel and its blind supporters should think about that for longer than a few minutes.

Simply return to the 67 borders and live in peace. This is even Hamas position, not to mention the majority of the worlds position. All the world wants from Israel and Jews is “humanity” because with humanity comes all the rest; an end to the occupation, the siege, the ethnic cleansing, the illegal settlements, the hatred. With humanity, comes respect, equality, and love for others. Israel should join us in humanity and instead of killing their neighbours, embrace them, whilst the door is still open and the welcome mat out. Experience what it feels like to wake up and not be hated, but instead be respected for changing ways, for seeing the light. Maybe I wrote this because somewhere in my non-believer soul, I thought of that little child I once was, years ago, when I saw the pictures of people around the world in that book, and marvelled at their unique differences, when I thought the world was a decent accepting place. So, I’ll end with this; A few days ago Desmond Tutu was on television, he was speaking about “hope” and he said something that struck me. He said that he was a “Prisoner of Hope.” So, that is what I shall try to be, that will be my “religion.” I am, a prisoner of hope.

Happy Holidays to all………..

RACIST POLICIES OF ISRAEL EXPOSED AGAIN

From our friends at SilverLining. We see yet more examples of the racist policies of Israel. Apartheid anyone? More examples after this:

Tue, 08 Dec 2009, Press TV
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to build a wall on the border with Egypt to prevent African migrants from changing Israel’s racial balance.

Netanyahu believes building a wall along the southern borders with Egypt is an “unavoidable and strategic” measure, which Tel Aviv must take to ensure that thousands of migrants do not cross over from Africa, Israel’s Maariv daily reported Tuesday.

According to Maariv, the prime minister sees the migration of Africans as a problem that may escalate in the coming years and disrupt the demographic balance of southern Israel.

There can be no other words or description for this. It is pure racism in it's most vile form. Sadly for the State of Israel, this is nothing new as reported in Haaretz more examples of racism and bigotry. Blacks, Arabs, Gays, Russians, Ethiopians, Single Parent families, the Disabled, all discriminated against:

linkBasic rights in Israel are increasingly conditioned on the identity and gender of those who seek to realize them, according to the annual report which the Association for Civil Rights in Israel is releasing Sunday. The report describes a reality in which Arabs receive education, work and maybe citizenship only if they serve in the army or perform national service.

Similarly, those who seek to live in some communities will be allowed their right to housing only if they fit a description which excludes Arabs, Sephardim, Russians, Ethiopians, religious or disabled people, as well as single-sex and single-parent families, according to the report.

Crackdowns on protest against Operation Cast Lead earlier this year was described in the report as "a trend of infringement on the freedom of speech of individuals and organizations which passed criticism on the government and the authorities." The report says that during Operation Cast Lead, the police "limited freedom of expression with the backing of the attorney general, dispersed many legal demonstrations and withheld permits from others for illegitimate reasons that pertain to the political content of the demonstrations."

The clause on anti-war protests also said that hundreds of demonstrators were arrested and called to be investigated. In some instances, attorneys from the State Prosecutor's Office warned in requests for arrest extensions that if defendants are released, they "might continue to express their opinions and demoralize the public."

In addressing treatment of foreign workers and asylum-seekers, the report listed what it defined as "racist" statements by Interior Ministry workers in connection with the activity of the Oz immigration unit. This included Interior Minister Eli Yishai's warning that foreign workers will "bring a multitude of diseases with them," and statements by a senior ministry officials who, in wishing the Oz officers good luck, quoted a saying which urges for the "eradication of evil from our midst."

You cannot defend the indefensible; Israel is a racist Apartheid state.

ISRAEL'S VERSION OF "ONE STATE SOLUTION"

“Fear Not” oh you Palestinians and non-Jews, because Israel needs you. Not all Palestinians and non-Jews are to be ethnically cleansed from within the evil rogue state. There will be a place for you in Israel, you will serve a purpose. Your “new” purpose will be to replace them all when their religion forbids them to work, and you will work for them in any capacity they see fit. Welcome to the “One State Solution” Israeli style. There is a term for this, it’s called Apartheid Slavery:

Intel to employ only non-Jews at Jerusalem plant on Shabbat. Intel will not employ Jewish workers on Saturday shifts in its Jerusalem plant, the chip-maker has suggested in a new compromise proposal. The move comes after large crowds of ultra-Orthodox protesters attacked the plant on Saturday, in protest of it continuing operations on Shabbat. The plant, in the Har Hotzvim industrial area in Jerusalem, employs some 150 workers.

all Jewish workers who were employed on Saturdays will be replaced by non-Jewish ones that day. source

RACIST ZIONIST SETTLERS BLOCK FIREFIGHTERS

Just another day in Bizarro Land, Israel the "only democracy in the region" allows it's cockroach infesting illegal settlers to endanger the lives of innocent people:

Israeli settlers residing in illegal outposts in the heart of Hebron obstructed the work of Palestinian fire fighters on Wednesday night, as crews attempted to access a burning building owned by a Palestinian family.

Firefighter Jamal Qawasmeh said the station received a call regarding a fire in the Bani Dar neighborhood in the old city of Hebron. "We coordinated with the Israeli side so the servicemen and our vehicle could access the area," he explained. Despite the coordination, however, “a group of settlers attacked fire fighting personnel" and blocked the access of the vehicle to the street where the fire was.

"After more than half an hour the soldiers at the scene intervened to keep the settlers away from the fire fighting vehicle” and allowed it to pass, he said. Qawasmeh said it was not the first time fire fighters have been unable to reach homes and emergencies in the Old City. Between the road blocks, barriers and metal detectors, he said, access to some areas was impossible even without angry settlers barring the way. source

EXPOSE ISRAEL AND WIN A PRIZE!!

Israeli Apartheid Video Contest

Came across this contest being run by ITSAPARTHEID.ORG. The contest is open to all people anywhere, just get your creative juices flowing and make a video that illustrates the Apartheid Zionist Rogue State. I would imagine this would be a very easy task as Israel gives the world so many examples to choose from. So you’ll be spoilt for choice! You could pick from all the lovely Illegal settler activity, such as the burning of Olive trees, the armed terrorizing, just to name a few. Or perhaps you might like to choose the continued repeal of Religious freedom for Muslims who want to pray at Al Aqsa. And, staying in East Jerusalem, there are numerous house evictions you may choose, illustrating the increasing numbers of homeless sitting on the street outside their stolen home as the Zionists re-paint the walls inside. Yes, you too could be the next Steven Spielberg, only not Zionist;-) with lines like this one "Ahmed, phone home...." his reply: "I can't our home is gone" So, get your video camera out and get going. Here are the details:

As part of the colonial conflict in Palestine, Israel has instituted a policy of apartheid that separates Palestinians from Israelis and Palestinians from each other, creating an oppressive and racially discriminatory system. It denies basic Palestinian rights to land, education, movement and housing while devastating the economy, trying to undermine civil society and forcing continuous displacement upon the majority of Palestinians.

Put your ideas and convictions on film! itISapartheid in partnership with Stop the wall announce the first international Israeli Apartheid Video Contest You are invited to submit short [less than 5 minute] videos on the theme of “Israeli Apartheid.”

Videos should reflect the nature, realities and/or consequences of the apartheid policy in Israel and the occupied areas.

Content:
Videos must be created specifically for this contest in any style: live-action, animated, stop-action, etc., and be no more than five minutes. They may not include copyrighted material. “For more information on apartheid and to join the campaign, go to www.itisapartheid.org" must appear at the beginning and end of the video.

Deadline:
Videos must be received no later than March 9, 2010.

Judging:
First hand witnesses of apartheid, cinematographers and representatives of sponsoring groups will judge videos.

Prizes:
Prizes will be awarded for the five top-rated videos:
First Prize: $750
Second Prize: $500
Three “Honorable mention” prizes: $100 each

Use of the Videos:
All videos will remain the property of the maker, but itISapartheid retains the right to use, disseminate and/or display them in any way it deems appropriate.

Application
Videos must be accompanied by a statement from the maker including her/his name, contact information and any companies, organizations and/or agencies with which s/he is associated.

Competitors must also include a statement acknowledging acceptance of the terms of use. Email us for more information.

Co-Sponsors:
Badil, Code Pink, Friends of Sabeel North America, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, ICAHD USA,

Endorsers:
AJJP Boston, Boston Palestine Film Festival

HALLOWEEN COMES EARLY TO ISRAEL

Chock up another Israeli Racist Apartheid FAIL mission.

Civil rights groups in Israel expressed outrage at last week's announcement that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel’s Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs.

It is the first public admission that the Israeli police are using methods against the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens, adopted long ago in the West Bank and Gaza, where soldiers are regularly sent on missions disguised as Palestinians.

According to Israeli National Police Commissioner David Cohen, the unit was established two years ago after an assessment that there was “no intelligence infrastructure to deal with the Arab community.” In addition, he said, undercover agents had been operating in East Jerusalem for several years to track potential terrorists.

Israel’s Arab leaders denounced the move as confirmation that the Arab minority was still regarded by the police as “an enemy” – a criticism made by a state commission of inquiry after police shot dead 13 unarmed Arab demonstrators inside Israel and wounded hundreds more at the start of the second intifada in 2000.

In a letter of protest to Israeli officials this week, Adalah, a legal rights group, warned that the unit’s creation violated the constitutional rights of the Arab minority and risked introducing “racial profiling” into Israeli policing.

Awad Abdel Fattah, general secretary of the National Democratic Assembly party, whose activists are regularly interrogated by the police even though the party is represented in the national parliament, said there was strong evidence that undercover units had been operating in Arab communities for many years. (NOTED BY THE HUGE AMOUNT OF IDF DOGS ON THE STREETS)

“The question is, why are the police revealing this information now? I suspect it is designed to intimidate people, making them fear that they are being secretly watched so that they don’t participate in demonstrations or get involved in politics. It harms the democratic process.”

Secret agents disguised as Arabs – known in Hebrew as “mista’aravim” – were used before Israel’s founding. Jews, usually recruited from Arab countries, went undercover in neighboring states to collect intelligence.

Mr Abdel Fattah said there were widespread suspicions that mista’avarim officers had been operating for years at legal demonstrations held by Israel’s Arab citizens, including at the protests against Israel’s winter attack on Gaza. He said they were often disguised so that they could photograph demonstrators.

He said a woman activist from his party had been called in by the police for interrogation after a demonstration last year in the Arab town of Arrabeh. “The officer told her, ‘I know what you were saying because I was standing right next to you’. (Did you not notice me? That was me peeing on your leg and drinking water from the ditch)

read the rest HERE

More Trouble For Obama & Israel

"Gaza led to a regional war, the Al-Aqsa Mosque incident leads to a world war."


So, it's not like Obama does not already have enough problems caused and created by Israel. And of course the ones Obama created himself by not standing up to Israel or the Zionist Lobby in America, and recently forcing the PA to drop the Goldstone Report and thus perverting the course of Justice FOR Israel. Or the 3 billion annual "gift" to Israel from the American taxpayer each year that COULD be used for American Health care. Nope, now Israel's racist, Middle East domination plan will now alienate other moderate Arab countries who have close ties with the US. On the heels of the huge Egyptian media vote to boycott Israel we now have Turkey taking a stand. So America, kiss Turkey goodbye. Who will join the STOP ISRAEL campaign next? C'mon Jordan, c'mon, Syria, c'mon Lebanon, c'mon Egypt, join ranks now. Let the Great Arab nations return and make a stand for their religion and people:

Thousands of people called on Turkey to act against the destruction policy, protesting Israeli invasion of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Taksim Square.

Turkish civil society organizations and thousands of people on Monday protested Israeli invasion of Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Jewish provocations in Taksim Square, calling on Turkey to act against the destruction policy.

Started at 17 pm, people from different disticts of Istanbul attended the protest, as well as people from different cities.

Gathered in Taksim Square walked through Galatasaray High School on Istiklal Street, protesters shouted slogans in solidarity with Palestinians to condemn Israeli actions.

The group then burned the Israeli flags.

Authorities banned access to the compound to Muslim men under 50 and over as thousands of Jews gathered at the nearby Western Wall on Monday for prayers marking the week-long holiday of Sukkot.

The Palestinian Authority on Sunday urged the international community to "immediately intervene and bring the question of the Al-Aqsa mosque before the UN Security Council."

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the Muslims' first Qiblah [direction Muslims take during prayers] and the third holiest shrine after Al Ka'bah in Makkah and Prophet Muhammad's Mosque in Madinah, Saudi Arabia.

Its significance has been reinforced by the incident of Al Isra'a and Al Mi'raj — the night journey from Makkah to Al-Quds and the ascent to the Heavens by Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).

Sheikh Azam Al-Khatib, who heads the Islamic trust that manages the compound, said the current tension was caused by Jewish extremists who provoke the Muslim faithful and don't hide their ambition to kick the Muslims out to build a temple."
"Turkey's land"

A joint press statement on behalf of all NGOs was read by Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) Chairman Bulent Yildirim.

Yildirim said in his speech, "Gaza led to a regional war, the Al-Aqsa Mosque incident leads to a world war. Al-Aqsa Mosque must be protected for peace and happiness. Al-Aqsa Mosque does not bleong to only Palestinians, but to all Muslims. All Palestinians will try to overcome the Israeli police barricade, if necessary, to protect Al-Aqsa."

"20 thousand people entered from the Maghreb door and attacked Al- Aqsa, Palestinian youth inside the Mosque tried to prevent them."

"Over 60 Palestinians wounded in Jerusalem. One million Jews are called to attaced to Al- Aqsa by Zionist Israel. The decision to occupy Al-Aqsa until the end of 2009 has been made. The aim is conversion of Aqsa to a synagog."

"We call all sides in Turkey to support Al-Aqsa Mosque," the chairman said.

Yildirim said, "This is Turkey's territorial land, a land registered to Turkey. Turkey should respond to this attack as the same way it would respond to any attack on its own land."

"Organization of Islamic Conference should gather immediately and should take several decisions, including cutting all diplomatic relations with Israel, if necessary. Israel's attacks will be shaped according to the reaction from the world," he said.

After the speeches, the rally ended peacefully.

The second Palestinian intifada began there in September 2000 after an attempt by Ariel Sharon to enter the mosque, the right-wing politician who became Israeli prime minister the following year. source

Racist Zionist Dating Police "No Arabs Allowed"

Israel's vile anti-miscegenation squadsWhen the police lend support to vigilante groups hounding Jewish-Arab couples, what hope is there for coexistence?

Whilst the proliferation of ultra-orthodox "vigilante police" is a stain on Israeli society, their Taliban-esque actions can at least be contextualised as the inevitable consequence of religious fundamentalism gone wild. Such communities are dominated by leaders who refuse to accommodate any form of modernisation or freedom of thought into their archaic systems of governance, and the emergence of "modesty squads" is simply a manifestation of such primitive and patriarchal thinking.

Regardless of the reasons behind their appearance, the groups should not be tolerated by Israel's leaders, as they contravene the most basic human rights of the state's citizens. Israeli lawmakers have a duty to clamp down hard on the mobs' extrajudicial activities, in order to prevent a localised problem spreading from isolated religious strongholds into the rest of the country's towns and cities.

Yet the ultra-orthodox enforcers have good reason to challenge any efforts to rein in their sheriff's posses, given that the example set by several Israeli municipalities implies that what is sauce for the religious goose is sauce for the secular gander. While the local authorities in Petah Tikva, Kiryat Gat and elsewhere aren't sanctioning all-out violence against girls deemed behaving inappropriately, their modus operandi is no different in intent – and the targets of their self-righteous rage no more deserving of punishment – than the girls in Meah Shearim opting out of the ultra-restrictive dress code.

According to reports in the Israeli press:

A special team in the youth department of the Petah Tikva municipality will locate [Jewish] girls in the habit of meeting with men from minorities and will assist them … 'The problem of minority men is well-known,' said the chief of the youth department, Moshe Spektor. 'Our attempts to deal with this problem are real and sincere. The municipality is making an effort to examine the matter in co-operation with the police'.

Of course, the minority in question is the Arab community – rather than any of the Jewish minorities in Israel such as those hailing from Ethiopia, Russia or South America – since it is the spectre of intermarriage between Jews and gentiles which is the cause of such abject fear among diehard Israeli nationalists, both religious and secular alike. As reported in Ha'aretz, Kiryat Gat's state-sanctioned anti-miscegenation programme's sole aim is preventing Jewish girls from becoming romantically involved with Israeli Bedouin:

The programme enjoys the support of the municipality and the police, and is headed by Kiryat Gat's welfare representative, who goes to schools to warn girls of the "exploitative Arabs". The programme uses a video entitled "Sleeping with the Enemy," which features a local police officer and a woman from the Anti-Assimilation Department, a wing of the religious organisation Yad L'ahim, which works to prevent Jewish girls from dating Muslim men.

Many Jews in Israel and the diaspora frown upon the idea of their children marrying out of the flock, some even going as far as cutting their children out of their wills and mourning them as though they had died should they take a non-Jewish partner for a spouse. While this is by no means restricted to the Jewish faith, the idea of such proscriptions being incorporated at state level – whether against Jews, Muslims or any other category of "undesirables" – is racism reminiscent of the dark days of segregationist America and pre-enlightened European states.

This week, the Times carried an illustrative and disturbing feature on the Israeli phenomenon, demonstrating the unabashed bigotry of those behind the purity patrols:

[David's] group, which works with police, goes by several names, including Fire for Judaism, is composed of up to 45 men and funded by private donations. Members say they are fighting a 'growing epidemic' of Arab-Jewish dating and spend as many hours as they can on patrol.

Similar groups have formed across the country ... In Pisgat Ze'ev, the growing number of Arab-Jewish couples is seen as the result of more Jewish settlements in Arab east Jerusalem.

'The problem is always with Jewish girls dating Arab men. The Arab guy comes and buys them things, treats them well. They fall for it. They can't see what they are doing,' says David.

The article goes on to describe a car chase, which ensues after David spots a "problem couple" driving in a car full of Arab men. He follows them through winding mountain roads, before taking down the car's number plate and reporting the incident to police.

That the police would even deign to co-operate with such poisonous and prejudiced characters and their fantasies of racial purity is indicative of the malaise gripping certain sectors of Israeli society, both at street and state level.

Whatever the more blinkered supporters of Israel's sectarianism say, day after day more evidence piles up attesting to the shocking reality behind Israel's mask of being a tolerant, equitable and democratic "country of all its citizens". The likes of the modesty patrols and the anti-miscegenation squads belong in the furthest recesses of history, yet apparently the Israeli authorities are not only happy to tolerate their presence, but to actively support their work as well.

Were the shoe to be on the other foot, with Jews singled out for such base racial discrimination, the same people supporting such behaviour now against Arabs would rightly be up in arms and demanding justice in the name of the persecuted. But, of course, this is Israel, and therefore somehow "different" and "unique" – the standard retorts of those unable to defend Israeli crimes with any semblance of rational debate. And while they continue banging their drums to drown out any criticism of the Israeli state, at ground level the divisive and destructive behaviour continues, and another nail is driven into the coffin of coexistence in the Holy Land. source

SHOCKING~Israel Offers "Help" To Palestinians in East Jerusalem

Israel wants to help Palestinians in East Jerusalem and they have come up with a plan to demonstrate how “inclusive” they can be towards Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Dr. Menachem Klein is a senior lecturer in the political science department at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. And at a big meeting last night he outlined his proposal to “help” the Palestinians and to give them their capitol, should they ever get their own country back. What a guy, what a humanitarian, what a peace bringer………..

Dr. Menachem Klein has an idea for peace between Israel and Palestine: annex East Jerusalem to restore a Jewish majority and give the Palestinians their own capital.

Great Idea, let’s boot them out of their homes and land we stole, relocate them elsewhere as refugees, and give them some worthless little patch of land that Israel does NOT want for their shining new “capitol” this, my friends, is “Zionist Logic” at work. More:

His idea was part of last night's lecture, "The Future of Jerusalem and the Peace Process," that took place in the Kimmel Center. According to Klein, after acquiring East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War, Israel developed a vision of a "Jewish Jerusalem" that would include the new territory. This was consistent with the Zionist concept of a Jewish homeland with a Jewish majority. Klein explained that the fulfillment of the vision of a Jewish majority is jeopardized due to the rising Arab population in East Jerusalem.

Due to the “rising Arab population in East Jerusalem”??? What he really means is that Israel has not removed or killed enough of them yet. It’s their land, they live there, they legally own it, but that does not matter. What Israel wants, Israel steals, and it’s that simple. More:

To rectify that, he suggested that the area be connected.

Awe, look he’s being all inclusive now…bless)

"The city is physically united. However, it is demographically divided," Klein said.

(Because of Israel’s occupation of it!

Without the annexation, he said, "No peace can be achieved between Israel and Palestine."

Without booting them out by force, or in REAL terms Ethnically Cleansing the area, there cannot be peace. Why? Because e those silly stubborn Arabs don’t want to hand over their homes and land to Israel, so they can become refugees like the millions of other Palestinians, Imagine that! More Zionist logic:

He described the relocation of new settlements to East Jerusalem and the construction of a security wall around them. The effects are an increase in Jews and an isolation of Palestinian cities. Other effects include immobility for Palestinians because they do not possess all of the rights guaranteed to Israeli citizens.

Look at that, an omission of racism and apartheid conditions! and lastly the excuse why Israelis cannot leave East Jerusalem, again, using Zionist logic:

Using maps, Klein illustrated the geographic and demographic disadvantages that make the movement of settlements futile. His use of maps also portrayed the unfairness of Israel's attempts to cut off Palestinian cities.

Now, I loved that last line, the “unfairness to Palestinians” don’t you love all the gaping holes in Zionist logic? How it refuses to address or acknowledge the REALITY that Israel itself created the entire nightmare that is East Jerusalem by stealing it and occupying it and removing Palestinians and planting Jews on their land? Ah, but never mind, facts are never used in Zionist Logic, it’s against Zionist laws. Here's a novel thought, why doesn't Israel just return all the stolen land, relocate all the illegal squatters on Palestinian lands, stop occupying other countries, sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, adhere to UN resolutions, and then Israel can have peace, if it really wants it that is....... source

REPORT~Irish Man Lives With Evicted Palestinians

An Irishman who has been studing the horror Palestinians are subjected to by Israel in Jerusalem writes to a local paper to tell of what he has witnessed so far:

Derry man horrified by Palestinian evictions

A Derry man currently travelling through Israel has spoken of his horror at witnessing the eviction of Palestinian families from their homes.

Jonathon Crockett, from Rossnagalliagh has spent the past month in Jerusalem and Hebron, living amongst the Palestinian communities there.

Writing to the 'Journal' from East Jerusalem, the Derry man spoke of the "brutal occupation" under which Palestinians constantly live their lives.

"This occupation takes many forms, at many different levels. I have lived and slept on the streets of East Jerusalem with two Palestinian families who were evicted from their family homes of 57 years by the Israeli armed forces on August 2.

"Each family has three generations - from the grandfather to the children, and all of them lived in the family home together. This is the way Palestinians traditionally live. Together, both families number 50 people, and by all accounts seem a very decent, hard-working people. "The fact that they have refrained from using violence in response to this incredible injustice shows how dignified they are.

"Instead, they have deck chairs and mattresses set up across the street from their old house of more than 50 years, now occupied by a Jewish family.

Jonathon said the Palestinian families were in many ways, helpless to challenge the status quo.

"The families were issued an eviction notice in March this year. They protested and showed evidence of their ownership of the property but were eventually evicted by a huge military presence.

"Upon speaking with the Hanoon family head, who has sat on the pavement outside his family home for 22 days since eviction, he said 'I do not want rice or to stay in a hotel. I just want my house back and to live in peace.'"

The Derry man said he believed the international community to be complicit in causing the Palestinians suffering.

"Whilst this brutal occupation is visibly happening, our international governments are standing idly by. Of course, it is obvious that they have selfish interests sewn up in the creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

"There is oil here, there is also many countries who want to impose their influence on this part of the world.

"Hence, the western powers need a foothold or some kind of platform to compete for dominance in the Arab world.

"Unfortunately, the Palestinians as a nation and people, are the 'little ones' that will suffer because of this 'global power struggle", he said. source