Monthly Archives: June 2010

Helen Thomas and the right of return

Posted on by

The furor over Helen Thomas’ remarks reminded me of  this lecture Amira Hass gave in New York two years ago, in which she eloquently described the intersection of Israel’s Law of Return and the Palestinian right of return.

In the talk Hass tells an anecdote about a French activist who asked her if she ever thought of “returning” to Sarajevo, the place her Holocaust survivor mother left before moving to Israel. She said it bothered her because, as a Jew born in Israel, she had never known another country.

But the French woman’s confusion reflects a tension inside Jewish life: between the desire for Jewish concrete return after the Holocaust–returning to communities in Europe that no longer existed–and the abstract Zionist “return” to a place most Jews had never been, Palestine.

What was unfortunate about Helen Thomas’ comment is that, while many Israeli Jews are dual citizens, or otherwise have one foot in another country, many do not. It makes no sense to ask Amira Hass and Israelis like her to “go back” to a Europe that they do not know.

Palestinians have a very different experience of being refugees, and Hass says Palestinians sometimes transposed that experience onto the Jews. At first she couldn’t understand when Palestinians insisted “on giving me imagined roots into places and languages and landscapes that are totally foreign to me … that are not mine, that are fata morgana, that are a phantom.” All in Europe, of course.

However, she notes in her talk, in Palestinian society, this question of belonging has a different meaning. When you ask a Palestinian of refugee lineage, “where are you from?” they will tell you the name of the exact village or city in Mandate Palestine from which their parents or grandparents were forced in 1947 or ‘48.

So while many Jews wrestled with a dilemma between concrete and abstract return, for Palestinians, the right of return is wholly a concrete concept.

What Hass recognizes and I also believe is that Jewish “refugee-ness” is intimately bound up with the history (past and present) of Palestinian dispossession.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYRNYJ5sGBk]

Egypt cracks down on anti-police brutality protests

Posted on by

A big shout-out to Tabula Gaza and 3arabawy.

New York – Two Egyptian police agents beat a teenager to death in Alexandria on Tuesday, setting off a wave of protests by human rights advocates.

According to bloggers and journalists in the crowd in Cairo, Egypt’s security forces responded to those demonstrations on Sunday with a new round of arrests an beatings.

Police arrested 11 people as stopped protesters from reaching the Ministry of the Interior in central Cairo, witnesses told the German news agency DPA. Police blocked all streets leading to the building. Bloggers reporting from Cairo said the number of arrests could be as high as 60.

Egyptian blogger 3arabawy posted this video online showing a scene of chaos as police encircled demonstrators. He also reported demonstrators chanting calls for revolution and for beheading President Hosni Mubarak.

“We thought they would just interrogate him or ask him questions. But they took him as he struggled with his hands behind his back and banged his head against the marble table inside here,” Mosbah said in an interview conducted by a journalist from the liberal opposition al-Ghad newspaper.

Mosbah said he told the police to take it outside and they hauled Said into the doorway of a nearby building. He did not emerge alive, said the cafe owner.

A fact-finding mission by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, confirmed the cafe owner’s account.

“They dragged him to the adjacent building and banged his head against an iron door, the steps of the staircase and walls of the building,” the Cairo-based organization said in a statement Sunday.

“Two doctors happened to be there and tried in vain to revive him but (the police) continued beating him,” the statement said, adding that Said was well regarded by his friends.

The Cairo protest also comes a day after the Egyptian government barred hundreds of activists from entering the Gaza Strip. Egypt’s complicity in the Israeli-led blockade of Gaza has also been a source of anger for the Egyptian public, who overwhelmingly sympathize with Palestinians.

An earlier video of the Cairo demonstration showed a lively crowd facing off with riot police.

Barak cancels France visit fearing arrest

Posted on by

New York – Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak cancelled a planned visit to France on Sunday after pro-Palestinian activists threatened to have him arrested over last month’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid convoy, The Associated Press reported.

According to the report Barak was to dedicate a new Israeli booth at the Eurosatory arms fair in Paris, which opens this week. But his office announced Sunday that he would stay home while Israel forms a committee to investigate the flotilla attack, which left nine Turkish passengers dead, including a US citizen.

Two groups, the International Civil Campaign for the Protection of the Palestinian People (CCIPPP) and the Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians (CBSP) announced earlier in June that they would seek legal proceedings against Barak.

In December, Israel’s former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni cancelled a planned trip to London after a warrant was issued for her arrest for alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s 2008-2009 attack on Gaza.

Above:  Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak arrives at the Pentagon Oct. 16, 2007. [US Department of Defense, Via Wikimedia Commons]

Ralph Nader: Reinstate Helen Thomas

Posted on by

New York – Former Presidential candidate Ralph Nader launched a scathing critique of US media and politicians for what he said was hypocrisy over the sudden retirement of senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas after she made remarks critical of Israel that were considered offensive to Jews.

Thomas was caught on video in May saying that Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine” and Jews should go “back to Germany” and Poland.

In an interview with The Real News, Nader said American pundits had gotten away with much worse comments about Muslims and Arabs. “antisemitism against arabs is rife in politics today,” he said.

“How about Ann Coulter? she didn’t lose a 30,000 dollar speech? She didn’t lose her column, and she said horific things about going over there and slaughtering Muslims, if they can’t be converted to christianity, she added.”

But with Thomas, Nader said: “One mistake like that, which she appologized for, and they terminated her collumn, they terminated her carrear, they’re going to replace her in the White House press corps.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z_dcD5ebPQ&feature=player_embedded]

(h/t Palestine Video)

‘They bled to death’: New footage of flotilla raid

Posted on by

Washington – New video footage was released on Thursday of Israel’s deadly raid last week on the Turkish-owned ship Mavi Marmara, which was carrying aid to the Gaza Strip.

New York-based filmmaker Iara Lee was on the ship during the attack, and she managed to smuggle some of her footage out after Israel detained the 700 people who were on the Gaza-bound flotilla of six ships. Israel confiscated nearly all other video and photo equipment from the ships and has been editing it and releasing it to the public to support its own account of the raid.

Nine Turkish civilians, including one with US citizenship, were shot to death during the raid, which took place before dawn on May 31st.

Lee’s footage shows chaotic scenes of passengers scrambling to carry injured passengers below deck. Medics are shown in the video treating the wounded, including one man who appears unconscious or dead, blood soaking the front of his shirt.

Some of Lee’s footage was shown on Democracy Now. More is to be released at a news conference at the United Nations in New York on Thursday.

The footage also appears to contradict Israel’s claim’s that passengers on the ships intended to kill Israeli soldiers. In one scene, a woman’s voice comes a loudspeaker saying: “All the passengers are sitting down. We have no guns here. We are civilians taking care of injured people. Don’t use violence. We are civilians taking care of injured people. We need help for the people.”

Commenting on this, Lee told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman: “The megaphone kept saying ‘we are civilians; don’t use violence; we have extremely injured people; we need medical help.’ … but we were ignored, and a lot of people who were injured ended up bleeding to death.”

During the interview it was noted that among those who died, several were shot at close range, including the American citizen, Furkan Dogan, who according to a report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, was shot five times from less than 45 centimeters away.

Lee also said that in her view, the soldiers who boarded the ship intended to kill. ”They came with live ammunition, and minutes afterwards we had the megaphone in every room in the ship saying ‘stay quiet and calm, they are using live ammunition, there is no way we can resist, they are taking over the ship. … On the other boats they used rubber bullets and tear gas they didn’t kill anyone, but on our boat they came to kill.”

She also said that more could be learned about what happened during the raid if Israel returned the confiscated recordings. “We could reconstruct the events if we were given our footage back, which the IDF used in a manipulative fasion by putting it on the IDF youtube channel. This is a complete violation of respect for media.”

State Department forced to answer: Why not talk to Hamas?

Posted on by

Washington – President Barack Obama’s pledge on Wednesday to help lift Israel’s closure of the Gaza Strip in the wake of last week’s raid on the Gaza aid flotilla is bringing attention to the US and Israeli-led boycott of Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 and currently controls Gaza.

How, critics are asking, can policy toward Gaza be changed without changing the official approach toward Hamas? The group has repeatedly said it would accept a long-term truce with Israel on the 1967 borders, but it rejects US demands that it renounce violence.

The Quartet of international peace brokers, which includes the US, UN, Russia, and EU, officially refuses to speak with Hamas, which the US brands a terrorist organization. Of the four, only Russia has contact with the group. Russian President Dimitry Medvedev even met with top Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Damascus in May.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also increasingly under pressure to form a unity government with Hamas. Abbas, speaking at the Bookings Institution in Washington Thursday, reiterated that he is reaching out to Hamas. A spokesman for Abbas also gave details of this outreach in an interview with Palestine Note on Wednesday.

Also Thursday Fatah official Nabil Sha’ath was quoted by Ma’an News Agency saying he thinks the US is changing its policy toward Hamas, but did not provide details.

A journalist took the State Department to task over this issue at a press briefing Wednesday, after Abbas’ meeting with Obama:

QUESTION: Well, but digging down in the detail of addressing the issue of the blockade, there – our correspondents on the ground are seeing the fact that no raw materials are being let in, no factories are working, no exports are being let out, no jobs. I mean, there’s a long list of things that just aren’t happening.

Yet there is a UN release that came out today that talked about what was – you know, that laid out a bunch of statistics about how humanitarian aid was heading into Gaza and so forth. Yet you had all these things that are essentially not working, so – which raises the question of what real purpose Abbas is serving by being here, given the realities of the governance on the ground and speaking to how the blockade is really going to be lifted if he really doesn’t have the voice, the unified voice of everybody who is in Gaza, namely Hamas.

And that begs – which begs the question, the additional question of if you’re going to try to address trying to alleviate the unsustainable situation that you speak of at the podium, and the President has as well and the Secretary – aren’t you going to have to eventually, really, to abate the unsustainability, bring Hamas to the table?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, we have offered Hamas a spot at the table many, many times if Hamas will agree to very straightforward conditions – recognize Israel, recognize existing agreements, and give up violence against Israel and – those are not complex demands. So where does the responsibility lie for the fact that in the West Bank, you have stability, you have an economy that is growing.

And Jeff, you’re right. The situation in the – in Gaza, there is aid going in that sustains life but does not sustain a viable economy. We recognize that the current situation is unsustainable. We’re committed to try to expand the amount of assistance that goes into Gaza. The President talked to President Abbas about that today. We’ll have follow-up conversations while he is here. We’re talking to international partners and Israel about how to best do that. But at the same time, we continue to recognize that Israel has legitimate security concerns that have to be respected.

But here’s where – there are two stories here. There’s a compelling and urgent humanitarian crisis in Gaza. And there is a growing economy and a stable, relatively stable situation that is improving every day in the West Bank. What is the difference between those two? It’s not the difference of Palestinians live on the West Bank and the difference of Palestinians live in Gaza. It is the nature of the government that is currently ruling in the West Bank and was part of a unified government until Hamas changed the situation on the ground in Gaza.So let’s put the responsibility where it clearly lies. It is Hamas’s unwilling – I’m not done – it’s Hamas’s unwillingness to come to the table, to be a constructive force, to meet the international community or the Quartet’s clear, straightforward conditions and play a constructive role in the region. That opportunity is available to Hamas. But because Hamas chooses, rather than serving the needs of its people, to fire rockets at Israel, that’s the reason why you have the current situation in Gaza. That situation can change if Hamas is willing to change. But if Hamas is not willing to change, if it remains active as a terrorist organization, then there are consequences for that, too.

Abbas seems to know: The one-state solution is on the horizon

Posted on by

I interviewed Nabil Abu Rudeina, Mahmoud Abbas’ official spokesman on Wednesday in Washington. When I pressed him on the fact that negotiations with Israel don’t show any sign of succeeding, he invoked the one state solution. Abbas mentioned it again when he spoke at the Brookings Institution on Thursday.

Washington – The failure of peace talks could result in a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday.

“That’s what we are warning the Israelis and the Americans, that there is a golden opportunity right now, that peace can be achieved, otherwise there are a lot of scenarios, [such as] a one state solution, like South Africa,” Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said in an interview.

“Maybe one day this leadership will vanish,” he added. “Nobody knows what the coming generations will decide to do.”

“Who knows what the next generation will look like,” he said, “they might make Al-Qaeda look moderate.”

Abu Rudeina accompanied Abbas to Washington for his meeting with President Barack Obama, which focused on Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, and on indirect Palestinian-Israeli talks toward a two-state peace deal.

Indirect negotiations, or proximity talks, between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began in May after more than a year of Obama administration efforts to bring the two sides together.

In the previous round of peace talks, Abbas negotiated directly with Israel’s then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for over a year without reaching an agreement. Talks were broken off in December 2008 when Israel launched a war in the Gaza Strip that left some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

Abu Rudeina confirmed that during Wednesday’s meeting at the White House Abbas came under pressure from the Obama administration to move on to direct negotiations.

Abbas had previously demanded a total halt to Israeli West Bank settlement construction as a precondition for direct talks. Abu Rudeina said that instead of a settlement freeze, the principle precondition needed for such talks is “progress” on the two issues at the top of the negotiating docket: borders and security.

He did not specify what would constitute progress. He added that the Arab League will review the status of the talks in September, at which time a decision will be made whether to move forward.

Gaza

Abbas’ meeting with Obama comes at a moment of renewed attention on the Gaza Strip following Israel’s deadly raid on a convoy of aid ships attempting to break Israel’s blockade of the territory.

Abbas’ Palestinian Authority does not control Gaza. After Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006, it formed a unity government with Abbas’ Fatah movement. In 2007 Hamas violently took full control of Gaza, fearing a US-backed coup. Following the takeover, Abbas dissolved the unity government, leaving the West Bank and Gaza administratively and politically split.

It was also following the Hamas takeover that Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza’s borders and coastline, triggering an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Abu Rudeina brushed off concerns about whether Gaza would be included in a potential peace deal with Israel, saying that the talks are still Abbas’ responsibility as PLO chairman. He also said that any peace deal would be put up for a referendum that would include Gaza.

Hamas meeting

Abu Rudeina also confirmed that Abbas met last week with a former minister in the 2006 Hamas-led government in a renewed effort to reach a power-sharing deal.

He said that Abbas met in Amman, Jordan with Jamal Al-Koudary, a well-regarded Gazan political independent who was a member of the Hamas administration led by Ismail Haniyeh.

During the meeting, the spokesman said, “We offered them [Hamas] a formula. If they accept it, everything will go in the right direction. It’s based on the Egyptian paper.”

Abu Rudeina was referring to an Egyptian unity plan that Abbas accepted in 2009, but Hamas balked at the document, saying it wanted revisions to the document.

He said that Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza-bound aid convoy last week had created a new climate conducive to reconciliation. “It’s a golden opportunity right now. The issue of the flotilla created a new atmosphere that they [Hamas] should take advantage of.”

But, he said he doubted Hamas would accept the offer. “They have to consult with Iran with Syria with the Muslim brotherhoods. I don’t think they are ready or willing to take any further step for the time being,”

Hamas has reportedly said it wasn’t consulted before Khoudary left Gaza for the meeting with Abbas.

Al-Khoudary was to bring Abbas’ offer to the Hamas leadership in Damascus and then consult with leaders in Gaza, where he was scheduled to return today, Abu Rudeina said.

“If they sign it [Abbas’ new offer] in Cairo, all their remarks will be taken into consideration during our mutual meetings while implementing the agreement,” Abu Rudeina said.

Abu Rudeina also rejected the notion that the US had a role in vetoing proposals for Palestinian unity.

“This has nothing to do with this issue,” he said. “When we signed the Egyptian paper, the Americans told us if we sign this paper Congress will boycott the Authority and will stop their aid to us. [Abbas] said to them ‘we will sign it. We cannot accept this kind of thinking.”

He also said that Abbas signed onto the 2007 Mecca Agreement that established the unity government over US objections.

Above: President Barack Obama and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority talk following their statement to the press in the Oval Office, June 9, 2010. [Photo: Pete Souza, courtesy White House]


Flotilla passengers deny ‘terrorist’ charges

Posted on by

Washington – On Sunday the Israeli military named five passengers on the Gaza aid flotilla it said to Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations.

The five were all on board the Mavi Marmara, the passenger ship where Israeli commandos killed nine people during a dawn raid last week. After the raid, they were detained and then released along with approximately 700 other people from the six ships in the flotilla.

The Israeli military said they were “known to be involved in terrorist activity.”

This claim is unravelling under media scrutiny, as the people named in the statement deny the charges, and the Israeli military refuses to produce any evidence.

Robert Mackey, writing in The New York Times’ “The Lede” blog, pointed out that Israel’s press release itself contained factual errors. He also interviewed one of the accused passengers, Fatima Mohammadi, who called the accusation “incredibly comical.” Mackey reports:

Fatima Mohammadi, an American lawyer from Chicago, and Ken O’Keefe, a former American marine, were both on a list of “Active Terror Operatives,” posted on the official blog of the Israel Defense Forces on Sunday. The I.D.F. statement, which named five passengers on board the Mavi Marmara “known to be involved in terrorist activity,” included factual errors about both Ms. Mohammadi and Mr. O’Keefe.

The Israeli statement misspelled Ms. Mohammadi’s first and last names, calling her “Fatimah Mahmadi”; said she is “an active member of the organization ‘Viva Palestine’ ” — she is a former employee of Viva Palestina; and called her “a United States resident of Iranian origin.” She is an American citizen who was born in Tehran in 1979 and moved — with her American mother and Iranian father — to Boise, Idaho, after the Iranian revolution that year.

In an e-mail interview on Tuesday, Ms. Mohammadi — whose Facebook page lists “Rabble Rousing” under “Activities” — told The Lede that the Israeli authorities made no such claims to her while she was in their custody, “though they were very interested in the fact that I was born in Iran.” She added:

I saw the statement on Sunday afternoon after I arrived in the U.S. and I was shocked. On one hand, it’s incredibly comical because it’s so illegitimate and unfounded, but on the other hand, I am angered that they would attempt to discredit humanitarian aid workers in such a fear-based manner.

The Israeli statement also claimed that Ms. Mohammadi “attempted to smuggle forbidden electronic components into the Gaza Strip.” Ms. Mohammadi said:

I have no idea what they’re referring to as the only electronics I had in my possession or in my bag were personal items: a camera, a video camera, and my personal phones. All electronics, including laptops, were confiscated at our arrest while on board the ship and none have been returned. Any cameras that did make their way to Turkey were either smashed or, at the very least, stripped of their memory cards.

Meanwhile, Max Blumenthal reports that he pressed Israeli military officials to produce any evidence at all to support their claims, and they refused.

Much attention so far has focussed on one of the people named in the Israeli military statement, Ken O’Keefe, an ex-US Marine who renounced his American citizenship and once helped organize a campaign of human shields ahead of the US invasion of Iraq.

O’Keefe denied Israel’s accusations in an interview with Al Jazeera:

Ann Wright: Israel expected flotilla confrontation

Posted on by

New York – Israel could have expected a confrontation when it sent commandos to board the six ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip last week, former US diplomat Ann Wright told reporters on Tuesday.

“I think they anticipated and were prepared to kill innocent civilians,” Wright said on a conference call on Tuesday morning organized by the New York-based Institute for Middle East Understanding,

The Israeli government has blamed the passengers onboard one ship, the Turkish-owned passenger ship Mavi Marmara, for the violence during last Monday’s dawn raid. Israel’s military has even claimed that the commandos who seized the ship only wanted to talk to the passengers.

While Israel said it only resorted to lethal force when passengers attacked soldiers, those onboard the ship said that Israeli commandos were already shooting at the ship when they surrounded the ship with helicopters and Zodiac speed boats.

Wright, who is a retired US Army colonel, said Israel’s decision to raid the ships in the pre-dawn darkness was surprising.

“To me as a military officer, [the dawn raid] made little sense, you knew that you were going to have a confrontation,” she said. “The easier thing would have been to wait until daylight.”

Wright said Israeli planners ”certainly knew how many people were onboard the ship.” Since the Mavi Marmara was launched at a highly-publicized event in Turkey, “Everybody knew that there were at least 600 people onboard that ship.”

In stopping the ship from reaching Gaza, Wright said the Israeli military also could have used different tactics, for example simply blocking the slow-moving ship’s progress. The Mavi Marmara is a large vessel and was only moving at a speed of seven knots at the time of the raid. “They could have stopped it and said ‘you can wait here until your water and food runs out,’” she said.