The Corner Report

By ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ

TUCSON HIGH SCHOOL: As I prepare to speak to an innovative class here about Indigenous philosophies, the students begin their class in the following manner:

In Lak Ech – Tu eres mi otro yo – You are my other self. I am you and you are me. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I hate you, I hate myself. If I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.

Students here, part of Tucson Unified School District’s highly successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) K-12 program (the largest in the nation), are taught this and other Indigenous concepts, including other ways of measuring time (Aztec & Maya calendars). Not coincidentally, academically, MAS students – many of who were doing poorly prior to entering this program – consistently outperform their peers, and it is virtually a college-bound factory.

State capitol, Phoenix, Arizona: 518 years after Columbus initiated the theft of a continent, Arizona’s state superintendent of schools, Tom Horne has just declared, via the passage of HB 2281, that Indigenous peoples and Indigenous knowledge are [still] outside of Western Civilization.

In his relentless campaign against Ethnic Studies, the would-be governor has just engineered the passage of a new draconian state law that seeks to ban the teaching of ethnic studies [by withdrawing its funding]. This is the same state that recently passed the racial profiling SB 1070 law; the primary targets would be Mexicans and Central Americans with Indigenous features, suspected of being “illegal aliens.”

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Pulse

Cartographic violence

By M. Shahid Alam

He who knows himself and others
Here will also see,
That the East and West, like brothers,
Parted ne’er shall be.
--Goethe[1]

In no other major civilization do self-regard, self-congratulation and denigration of the ‘Other’ run as deep, nor have these tendencies infected as many aspects of their thinking, laws, and policy, as they have in Western Europe and its overseas extensions.[2] These tendencies reached their apogee during the nineteenth century, retreated briefly after World War II, but have been staging a come back since the end of the Cold War.

For several decades now, critics have studied these Western tendencies under the rubric of Eurocentrism, a complex of ideas, attitudes, and policies, which treat Europe — when it is convenient — as a geographical, racial and cultural unity, but places Western Europe and its overseas extensions at the center of world history since 1000 CE.[3]

Unlike the garden variety of ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism emerged as an ideological project — shaped by Europe’s intellectual elites — in the service of Europe’s rising expansionist states, starting in the sixteenth century. It makes sweeping claims of European superiority in all spheres of civilization. In this worldview, only Europeans have created history over the past three thousand years, beginning with the ancient Greeks. In various accounts, this centrality is ascribed to race, culture, religion and geography.

The central organizing principle of Eurocentrism is the division of the world into unequal moieties: us and them, self and the Other. All those qualities that Western thinkers believe are emblems or sources of superiority are securely placed in the ‘us’ category; and their opposites are pinned on ‘them.’ The arrogance of this dichotomy is breathtaking.

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Blair said the intelligence convinced him it was necessary to stop Saddam Hussein [EPA]

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, has told an inquiry into the Iraq war that he has "no regrets" about removing Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president, from power.

After facing six hours of questions on Friday, Blair said he felt "responsibility not regret", prompting angry shouts from the public gallery at the conference centre in London where the inquiry is taking place.

"I think he was a monster, I believe he threatened not just the region but the world ... and I do genuinely believe that the world is safer," Blair said.

Blair had earlier said that the pre-war intelligence convinced him it was necessary to stop Saddam Hussein, the then-Iraqi president, from developing weapons of mass destruction.

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Dr. Azizi Duweik, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council

By Khalid Amayreh

Recent statements by Palestinian Islamic leader Professor Aziz Duweik about the possibility of amending or even abandoning some clauses in Hamas’s charter have elicited a plethora of reactions in occupied Palestine and abroad. Some hostile groups have been quick to conclude that Hamas is now willing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. Moreover, PA propaganda organs have deliberately twisted Duweik’s remarks, claiming that Hamas is finally following the footsteps of the PLO.

Well, the truth is that none of this is true since sidestepping or even abandoning the so-called “Hamas charter” should never be confused with the Islamic liberation movement’s principled stance on the Zionist entity.

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By TOVAH LAZAROFF

The settlements blocs of Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion are an indisputable part of Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

Netanyahu: Blocs are integral part of Israel.

He spoke in Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, where he planted a tree in honor of the upcoming Tu B'Shvat holiday.

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“We indigenous people say we are not poor, we are impoverished because our access to our land and territories and resources have been curtailed very drastically by states and also corporations, and therefore we’ve become poor. We should not be materially poor, but we are also saying that we are very rich in culture and also in knowledge in terms of how to address the issues of natural resources management.” -- Ms. Vicki Tauli-Corpuz, chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

By Gale Courey Toensing
Indian country today

NEW YORK – The world’s 370 million indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately high rates of poverty, health problems, crime, unemployment, human rights abuses, and their cultural, and in some cases, physical survival are threatened with extinction, according to the first ever United Nations report on the issues.

“State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples” stresses that land rights, self-determination, and the principles of free, prior and informed consent are necessary for the survival of the world’s indigenous peoples both in developed and developing countries.

The report includes a number of alarming statistics:

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UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd

December 10, 2009

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM -- Israeli police ordered outgoing UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd to leave an East Jerusalem home on Thursday during her last official visit as the head of the relief agency.

Ma’an’s reporter on the scene said AbuZayd left after police gave her five minutes to evacuate the premises of the house of the Al-Kurd family, as a Palestinian woman yelled, "We want our homes and our lands. We have no alternative."

Amidst Israeli police and soldiers, AbuZayd visited Palestinians recently evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem on International Human Rights Day. She spoke of Jerusalem as a “City of Dispossession.”

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Arundhati Roy is an unusual Indian woman.

Listening to Grasshoppers; Field Notes on Democracy, Arundhati Roy, Hamish Hamilton, Penguin, India 2009, 240 pages, 499 rupees.

By Trond Øverland

Arundhati Roy is an unusual Indian woman. Instead of acting the graceful upholder of traditional values, she goes on challenging the hard core of establishment thinking. Roy is India's leading commentator on such evils as militaristic imperialist capitalism, Hindu-supported genocide of Muslims, and dam disasters. In her latest book, Listening to Grasshoppers; Field Notes on Democracy, she hammers at perhaps the most central of all contemporary sacred pillars, i.e. that of democracy, which in her words “have metastasized into something dangerous”.

Grasshoppers is a collection of essays on such recent events as the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai, the 2006 visit to India by “the war criminal” U.S. President George W. Bush, the 2002 Gujarat carnage (between 2000-4000 Muslims slaughtered), the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament by "so-called" Pakistan-based terrorists, and the growing inequality in India (“the old society has curdled and separated into a thin layer of thick cream – and a lot of water …”).

A radical analysis of democracy runs through the book’s fiery chapters, like a river running from its mountainous source towards the ocean. Roy’s conclusion is disquieting: she is forced by the rationale of her facts and arguments to approve of violence as a means of people’s resistance to injustice. She observes with understanding that many of the poor are “crossing over … to another side; the side of armed struggle.”

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The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit?

By Arundhati Roy, Tomdispatch.com. Posted September 30, 2009.

While we're still arguing about whether there's life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By "democracy" I don't mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.

So, is there life after democracy?

Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance, and end with a somewhat prickly, combative defense of democracy. It's flawed, we say. It isn't perfect, but it's better than everything else that's on offer. Inevitably, someone in the room will say: "Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia... is that what you would prefer?"

Whether democracy should be the utopia that all "developing" societies aspire to is a separate question altogether. (I think it should. The early, idealistic phase can be quite heady.) The question about life after democracy is addressed to those of us who already live in democracies, or in countries that pretend to be democracies. It isn't meant to suggest that we lapse into older, discredited models of totalitarian or authoritarian governance. It's meant to suggest that the system of representative democracy -- too much representation, too little democracy -- needs some structural adjustment.

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Opium, famine and banks all played their part in this country's plundering of the globe. Now it's over, we find it hard to accept

By George Monbiot

Why now? It's not as if this is the first time Britain's representatives have been caught out. The history of governments in all countries is the history of scandal, as those who rise to the top are generally the most ambitious, ruthless and unscrupulous people politics can produce. Pushing their own interests to the limit, they teeter perennially on the brink of disgrace, except when they fly clean over the edge. So why does the current ballyhoo threaten to destroy not only the government but also our antediluvian political system?

The past 15 years have produced the cash-for-questions racket, the Hinduja and Ecclestone affairs, the lies and fabrications that led to the invasion of Iraq, the forced abandonment of the BAE corruption probe, the cash-for-honours caper and the cash-for-amendments scandal. By comparison to the outright subversion of the functions of government in some of these cases, the is small beer. Any one of them should have prompted the sweeping political reforms we are now debating. But they didn't.

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Huda As-Shaer, the wife of Hamas leader
Nasser As-Shaer, holds his portrait in their
house in Nablus [Ma'anImages]

NABLUS – Israeli forces seized Hamas leaders across the West Bank early on Thursday in an apparent attempt to pressure the group in negotiations over the release of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

High-ranking Hamas sources told Ma’an that Israeli forces stormed the houses of Hamas leaders in Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron and Bethlehem.

The outgoing Israeli cabinet decided on Tuesday to increase pressure on Hamas after indirect negotiations toward a prisoner swap stalled. Israel blamed Hamas for not compromising in the talks, while Hamas said Israel had made unacceptable demands to deport some prisoners, rather than releasing them to their homes.

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By Linda S. Heard
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Israelis go to the polls next Tuesday (fEB. 10) to choose a new leader. Ahead is Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing hard-liner who has little time for the two-state solution, was vehemently against Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and, who, for years, has been banging the drums of war against Iran. This silver-tongued, ruthless individual is highly dangerous. Choosing him is tantamount to choosing war. What are they thinking?

Successive Israeli governments have proved over and over again that they’re not interested in relinquishing land for peace. Instead, “peace process” has become nothing more than a carrot held up as balm for Palestinian discontent and to appease the international community. Israelis have lived in a state of conflict for so long it has become the norm. For most, the status quo is safe and familiar.

Peace would hurtle them into unknown territory. Peace would mean Israel could no longer paint itself as the eternal victim. Peace would erode the emotion felt by its international supporters. Peace would pressure Israel to abide by international laws and conventions and would remove cover for its nuclear weapons program. In short, if peace were ever to reign, tiny Israel would no longer be in the spotlight; no longer of importance on the world stage. Over the decades, Israel has become addicted to its drug of choice: raw military power that shapes its identity, allows it to be a law unto itself and punch above its weight.

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The Israeli navy has captured and diverted a ship from Lebanon carrying more than 60 tonnes of aid to the Gaza Strip.

Al Jazeera's correspondent aboard the Al-Ikhwa (The Brotherhood) ship said the navy first opened fire, then five Israeli soldiers boarded the ship, beating and threatening the passengers.

"They are pointing guns against us - they are kicking us and beating us. They are threatening our lives," Al Jazeera's Salam Khoder said.

Communications with the ship broke off shortly thereafter.

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'Can there now be any doubt who the real terrorists are?'

By Stuart Littlewood – London

The patience of all decent men must surely be exhausted.

Today’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza, with at least 230 reported killed in raids on “Hamas terror operatives” (as the Israeli military put it), amounted to “a mass execution”, said Hamas.

Can there now be any doubt who the real terrorists are?

The killing spree couldn’t have happened without the tacit approval of America, Britain and the EU. The political pea-brains that direct the pro-Israel western alliance were partying, gorging themselves on Christmas fare or binge-shopping while this massacre of hungry women and children and their despairing menfolk in Gaza was being planned and executed.

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'Lebanon's Prime Minister described the Israeli attacks as a criminal operation.'

By Dan Lieberman

The tepid response of world leaders to Israel’s ferocious attack on a defenseless Gaza conveys a helpless feeling to all world citizens – brutality rules and we are all vulnerable to attack. EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, commented that “the EU is very concerned by the events in Gaza.” French President Nicolas Sarkozy was quoted as saying he "strongly condemns the irresponsible provocations which led to this situation as well as the disproportionate use of force."

Are world leaders totally ignorant of the events leading to the massive destruction of Palestinian life? Are they unaware of Israel’s provocations and shrewd manipulation of the facts which allowed them to seem innocent and carry out a diabolical plan to destroy the Palestinians? The facts are:

For two years Israel has illegally blockaded Gaza. The densest area of the world, which contains 1.5 million people, has received less than a quarter of the volume of imported supplies they received in December 2005 and has not been permitted to export many goods. A totally paralyzed economy has tried to exist with reduced fuel supplies, electrical outages and a lack of spare parts, all of which has caused hunger and severe psychological damage. Include impacts on sewage treatment, waste collection, water supplies and medical facilities.

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[Ma'anImages]

BETHLEHEM – Israeli military bulldozers destroyed houses in two West Bank communities on Wednesday and Thursday, leaving approximately 130 Palestinians homeless, United Nations (UN) sources told Ma’an.

In the village of Umm Al-Kher, south of the city of Hebron, Israeli bulldozers, accompanied by some 60 soldiers destroyed Palestinian homes near the Karmel settlement. Workers employed by the Israeli military removed the furniture from the structures before the demolitions. As a result, 95 people were left homeless, including a woman who had recently given birth.

The UN sources added that the Red Cross and UNRWA (the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees) have provided the Palestinians in Umm Al-Kher with tents and other forms of assistance.

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A UN report says the Israeli separation wall is an example of Tel Aviv's abuse of international humanitarian law [GALLO/GETTY]

By Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's Senior Political Analyst, in Washington

Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, recently delivered his report to the General Assembly.

He cited continued "abuse of international humanitarian law" associated with the "separation wall", "children fatalities due to Israeli use of excessive force" to quell nonviolent demonstrations, and abuses at border crossings.

Despite the details and warnings in the report, Israel's policy of incarceration, targeted assassinations, and near starvation of millions of Palestinians has gone unabated for too long under the eyes of the international community.

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By Saed Bannoura

A report published by the United Nations this week revealed that in spite of Israeli vows to ease restrictions on movement in the West Bank, the Israeli army increased the number of roadblocks and search points.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that the Israeli army installed 19 news barriers since April this year, increasing the number of roadblock to 630, 93 of which are used for a full search.

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Eid 2008-09-29

Once again, the holy month of Ramadan comes to end. Once more people are preparing for Al-Eid, the Feast of Breaking the fast. Once more, people think how they can celebrate this Eid.

Once more, we ask the same questions: How many checkpoints and roads will be open so that Palestinians can be able to circulate freely from place to place to visit their family members, relatives and friends? How many will be able to enjoy a vacation time in a green space or on a sea shore, or outside the country? How many people will be able to fly over the illegal separation wall to visit the holy places in Alquds-Jerusalem, or their friends or relatives? How many will be able to imagine how their families are living on the other shattered side of Palestine, whether they are in the West Bank or imprisoned in Gaza? How many people will be able to celebrate this feast in their family? How many Palestinian prisoners will be in the Israeli prisons during these days? How many people will be able to go to visit their relatives with a gift in their hands?

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"The world watches yet nothing is being done" -- the late Amer Abdelhadi, Nablus journalist

RAMALLAH – In the eight years since the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifadah Israel has destroyed Palestine’s infrastructure and killed 5,389 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

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Black Agenda Report

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

"The Israelis at the airport acted like Jim Crow segregationists of old."

When Zionism is legitimately called racist, the howls of protest are predictable and immediate. Critics of Israel are vilified by charges of anti-Semitism and disparaged or ignored by the press. The American media include criticism of Israel among the many subjects that are taken off the table and disappeared from the list of permitted subjects of discourse.

Dancer Abdur-Rahim Jackson of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Photo by Andrew Eccles.

Yet there are times when Israel's racism becomes obvious in a way that cannot be ignored. Recently the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performed in Israel as part of an international tour. When one of the dancers, Abdur-Rahim Jackson, went through security at Jerusalem's Ben Gurion airport he was taken aside by Israeli security where he was asked to dance, not once but twice.

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Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum

GAZA - Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said Thursday that the recent Kadima election is Israel’s first step in “the next state” of “aggressions against the Palestinian people.”

He also predicted that Israel would continue “isolating [Palestinians] and ignoring their cause.”

Commenting specifically on Wednesday’s election in Israel, Barhoum said that candidates all supported “establishing an extremist Jewish state.

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By Grant F. Smith

According to the Jerusalem Post, the US Department of Treasury’s new Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) unit is going after the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines.

TFI targeted the company and 18 affiliates for their alleged effort to "facilitate the transport of cargo for UN Designated proliferators.” TFI further charges it “falsifies documents and uses deceptive schemes to shroud its involvement in illicit commerce.” Later in the same article, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) trumpets this as yet another victory in its drive to confront the Islamic Republic of Iran: “AIPAC strongly supports these steps which are part of a coordinated effort by the United States and the international community to ratchet up the pressure on Iran and convince it to suspend its illicit nuclear activities. These steps send an important signal that America continues to lead the effort to confront and stop Iran’s nuclear pursuit.”

But is America actually in the driver’s seat of this destabilizing brinksmanship? History suggests that it is not.

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The reflections of Palestinian youths are seen in a blood-stained puddle following Israeli shelling of the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun in November 2006. Photograph: Abid Katib/Getty Images

Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel laureate, said today there was a "possibility" Israel had committed a war crime when its artillery shells killed 18 Palestinians from a single family in Gaza two years ago.

Tutu said the Israeli artillery shelling which hit the Athamna family house showed "a disproportionate and reckless disregard for Palestinian civilian life".

The archbishop presented his comments in a final report to the UN human rights council, which had sent him to Gaza to investigate the killings in Beit Hanoun in November 2006. Israel did not grant the archbishop or his team a visa for 18 months, so they only entered Gaza in May this year on a rare crossing from Egypt.

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By JONATHAN COOK

JAFFA - The ground floor of Zaki Khimayl’s home is a cafe where patrons can drink mint tea or fresh juice as they smoke on a water pipe. Located by Jaffa’s beach, a stone’s throw from Tel Aviv, the business should be thriving.

Mr Khimayl, however, like hundreds of other families in the Arab neighbourhoods of Ajami and Jabaliya, is up to his eyes in debt and trapped in a world of bureaucratic regulations apparently designed with only one end in mind: his eviction from Jaffa.

Sitting on the cafe’s balcony, Mr Khimayl, 59, said he feels besieged. Bulldozers are tearing up the land by the beach for redevelopment and luxury apartments are springing up all around his dilapidated two-storey home.

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An Israeli historian suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East

By Schlomo Sand

Every Israeli knows that he or she is the direct and exclusive descendant of a Jewish people which has existed since it received the Torah (1) in Sinai. According to this myth, the Jews escaped from Egypt and settled in the Promised Land, where they built the glorious kingdom of David and Solomon, which subsequently split into the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. They experienced two exiles: after the destruction of the first temple, in the 6th century BC, and of the second temple, in 70 AD.

Two thousand years of wandering brought the Jews to Yemen, Morocco, Spain, Germany, Poland and deep into Russia. But, the story goes, they always managed to preserve blood links between their scattered communities. Their uniqueness was never compromised.

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Filling storage containers at local wells

BETHLEHEM – A coalition of Palestinian and international NGOs issued a statement on Friday calling the water shortage across the West Bank a “humanitarian crisis” and said they were “gravely concerned.”

The coalition said that there was a reduction in water supplies from rainfall averaging 45% across the West Bank, which has left 200 communities not served by the municipal water sources at a loss. There is not enough water for cooking, cleaning, agricultural irrigation, or basic food-producing plant watering.

Even in cities and villages connected to water mains, reduction in supply means frequent cut offs for homes and offices. It is common in many areas to not have water for a week, and others only receive water once in a fortnight.

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Oslo has entered its final, tragic-comic stage. The onus now is to ensure Olmert's planned dénouement does not become a reality, writes Mustafa Barghouti*

Anyone who followed the Annapolis talks won't be surprised by the features of Olmert's current project. It seeks to set in stone the two- pronged strategy Israel has been pursuing since Oslo: to divide and procrastinate final status issues until they are made redundant by time and de facto realities, and to invoke security as a pretext for refusing to abide by commitments. Any mention of security refers exclusively to Israel's security, the idea being to formalise the peculiar principle that holds that those under occupation are responsible for ensuring the security of their occupiers.

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GAZA, Palestine -- Two siege-breaking boatloads of international human rights advocates will leave the Gaza Strip on Thursday afternoon, bringing with them seven Palestinians who have been unable to leave due to the Israeli blockade.

Among the Palestinians leaving is 10-year-old Saed Mosleh from Beit Hanoun who lost his leg due to Israeli shelling. Saed is leaving Gaza with his father to seek medical treatment.

“I can’t believe we’re finally able to leave for medical treatment,” said Khaled Mosleh, Saed’s father. “This is a miracle of God.”

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By Howard Lisnoff

For many years, now decades, I have been silent as a Jew about Israel’s relationship to, and treatment of, the Palestinian people and my place as an American Jew in that equation. Recently, I looked back at the Jews who I have known personally, as friends and acquaintances, and examined how their views about Palestinians and Israel have affected me and deepened my silence.

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Sheikh Raad Salah has previously been accused of 'inciting racism and violence'

Israeli security forces have raided the offices of the Islamic Movement and al-Aqsa institution in the northern Israeli town of Umm al-Fahm, accusing them of supporting the Palestinian Hamas movement.

Dozens of police officers and agents from the Shin Bet intelligence agency took part in the raid early on Sunday.

Documents, computers, and a safe with hundreds of thousands of dollars were confiscated in the operation which was ordered by the defence ministry, a police official said.

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Reuters

The boats are carrying 40 activists,
200 hearing aids and 5,000 balloons

Fri 22 Aug 2008, 7:16 GMT
By Michele Kambas

LARNACA, Cyprus (Reuters) - International activists departed from Cyprus by boat on Friday in an attempt to run an Israeli sea blockade on 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza.

The 44 activists sailed from the port of Larnaca in two wooden boats at 9:50 a.m. (7:50 a.m. British time). Hailing from 14 countries, they said they expected to reach the shores of Gaza, patrolled by the Israeli navy, on Saturday.

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By M. Shahid Alam

“Anti-Semitism has grown and continues to grow, and so do I.” -- Theodore Herzl [1]

As a self-defined movement for the national ‘liberation’ of European Jews, Zionism had an anomalous relationship with its perennial Other, the Gentile nations, from whom it wanted the Jews to secede and become a distinct nation under a Jewish state.

The Zionists did not define Europe’s Gentile nations as the adversary they would have to oppose, and against whom they would struggle, to secure the rights of Jews to emerge as a distinct nation.

On the contrary, the Zionists would harness the strength of their perennial Other – their adversary – to gain their nationalist objective. Unlike nationalists who secede from a state or empire by drawing new borders, the Zionists did not demand any European territory; they planned to establish their Jewish state outside the borders of Europe.

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By URI AVNERY

Ehud Olmert's resignation speech reached us on our way back from a demonstration.

We were protesting the death of Ahmad Moussa, aged 10, who was murdered during a demonstration against the Separation Fence at Na'ilin village - the fence that robs the village of most of its land in order to give it to the nearby settlement. A soldier aimed and shot the child with live ammunition at close range.

The protesters stood under the windows of the Minister of Defense's apartment in the luxurious Akirov Towers in Tel-Aviv and shouted: "Ehud Barak, Minister of Defense / How many children have you murdered so far?"

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The Codex Sinaiticus Bible

Alexi Mostrous

The story of the Codex Sinaiticus Bible, the oldest complete copy of the New Testament in existence, reads like a script from an Indiana Jones film.

Ever since a German explorer controversially removed it from an Egyptian monastery, four countries have fought for control over the ancient manuscript.

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Abir Aramin, 10, was killed by the Israeli Occupation Force January 16, 2007, in front of her school in Anata.

By Bassam Aramin

Translated from Arabic by Miriam Asnes

My son Arab is 14, just past the age that his Jewish Israeli peers are celebrating their bar mitzvahs. This ceremony in Jewish culture is a rite of passage that marks a boy’s entrance into the realities and responsibilities of adulthood. And last week, my son experienced something akin to the Palestinian bar-mitzvah.

It was a beautiful day on Friday the 12th of July when Arab went with his friends to the beach in Tiberias. He spent all of his time in the days leading up to the trip trying to convince me that I should let him go. At first I refused—he’s young to be traveling so far in a group without his parents. But then I remembered the regret I still feel about the death of my daughter Abir.

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By Eva Bartlett

CAIRO: Ten days after setting out from Edinburgh, five days past their projected July 15 arrival, Scottish humanitarian Khalil Al Niss and his wife Linda Willis finally pulled up Sunday afternoon at the Gaza-Egypt Rafah crossing only to be denied entry to Gaza.

The Gazan side, just over 100 meters from the Egyptian gate and Israeli-constructed wall, is visible from where the couple’s van sits idle; doctors inside Gaza wait for the expected delivery of essential medical aid.

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Israel Planning a September/October Surprise?

By Ray McGovern

You say you expected more rhetoric than reality from Senators Obama and McCain yesterday in their speeches on Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, that’s certainly what you got.

What I find nonetheless amazing is how they, and the pundits, have taken such little notice of the dramatic change in the political landscape occasioned by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bombshell on July 7 — his insistence on a “timetable” for withdrawal of US troops before any accord is reached on their staying past the turn of the year.

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Uncle Sam wants you to die for Israel at the Daniel Pipes lecture in Berkeley on February 10, 2004.

By James Petras

“My strong preference here is to handle all this (US conflict with Iran) diplomatically with the other powers of government, ours and many others as opposed to any kind of strike occurring…From the US perspective, from the United States military perspective in particular, opening up a third front (Israeli and/or US act of war against Iran) would be extremely stressful to us” testimony of Admiral Michael Mulligan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. July 2, 2008.

“If Iran continues its nuclear arms program – we will attack it. The sanctions aren’t effective. There will be no choice but to attack Iran to halt the Iranian nuclear program.” Shaul Mofaz, Israeli Minister of Transportation in Yediot Ahronot , June 6, 2008.

“The present economic sanctions on Iran have exhausted themselves. Iranian businesspeople who would not be able to land anywhere in the world would pressure the regime.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking to US House Speaker, Senator Nancy Pelosi in favor of a unilateral, pre-emptive US naval blockade of Iran. (Haaretz May 21, 2008.)

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Holy Land lost
The simple things in life, like one's relation to a landscape, are what are being effaced by the Israeli occupation of Palestine, writes James Zogby*

By James Zogby

The very words "Holy Land" evoke powerful imagery. But the scenes that come to mind are rapidly disappearing from the landscape.

The occupation of the West Bank -- a military and political reality that dominates the lives of Palestinians -- has become concretised: with massive housing projects connected by ribbons of highways; a wall and barbed wire barrier winding its way from north to south, cutting through villages, encapsulating others; and hundreds of checkpoints -- all overtaking and transforming the once open terrain .

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Fifty years on, the 14 July revolution still evokes among Iraqis the virtues of patriotism and unity, writes Salah Hemeid

Praying in front of the statue of Abdul-Karim Qassem, Iraq's first prime minister after the 1958 revolution

By Salah Hemeid

Fifty years after the Iraqi army toppled the pro-West monarchy on 14 July 1958, Iraqis who live in their now terror-stricken nation are too preoccupied with survival to celebrate what many of them esteem as a revolution of national liberation against the colonial power of the time, Great Britain.

The episode is not forgotten, however. If there is a lesson to be drawn, especially by Iraq's new rulers, it is that winning public support and confidence cannot be substituted for dependency on foreign occupiers and their protection. On the other hand, the anniversary raises questions about how much US colonial officials know Iraq's history and the memory Iraqis still have of their former occupiers.

Two of the main goals of the 14 July revolution, which had deep roots in the Iraqi people's struggle, were liberating Iraq from foreign domination and restoring sovereignty over its vast oil wealth that was plundered by British, French and US monopolies.

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Iraq's most senior cleric voices opposition to a proposed security deal with the US, saying such a deal would threaten Iraq's sovereignty.

In a meeting with Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq Al-Rubaie on Tuesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani expressed his concerns over the security deal by calling it an excuse that will justify the presence of US forces in Iraq.

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Mohammed Omer won this year's Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism

Israel has denied allegations by a journalist from Gaza that he was injured by Israeli security personnel.

Mohammed Omer says he was detained for four hours as he crossed from Jordan into the occupied West Bank on 26 June.

Afterwards, Israeli officers summoned a Palestinian ambulance to take Mr Omer to hospital in the West Bank.

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By Roger Owen*

In the vast -- and largely ideological -- literature produced by the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Britain's responsibility for the events of 1948 is not often directly discussed, neither polemically nor from a more academic point of view. It was thus something of a novelty to attend a whole conference devoted to the subject of "Palestine, Britain and Empire" at King's College, London, in mid-May. It was also a great pleasure to observe how much dispassionate, archive- based research is being conducted by young scholars whose commitment to old passions and the rehearsal of stale arguments is much less pressing than that of many of their older colleagues.

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By Richard W. Behan

Long accused of signature dishonesty, the Bush Administration now stands twice indicted, by Scott McClellan’s book and by two damning reports from Jay Rockefeller’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—the “Phase II” documents. These sources confirm beyond any doubt the Bush Administration, with propaganda and outright lies, deliberately misled the U.S. Congress into authorizing war.

That is the truth, but not the whole truth, and the backstory is no less appalling.

As much as seven months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Administration was deeply involved in planning and mobilizing for the invasion and military occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the activity was remotely related to Osama bin Laden or counterterrorism of any stripe.

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http://www.pchrgaza.org

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property by in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) 19 – 25 June 2008:

* 3 Palestinians killed by IOF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
* 2 of the victims were extra-judicially executed by IOF in Nablus.
* 18 Palestinians, including 5 children and 2 old men, were wounded by the IOF gunfire; 12 of them were wounded in Ne’lin village near Ramallah.
* IOF conducted 36 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
* IOF demolished 2 uninhabited houses and partially demolished 3 inhabited houses, in Qalqilya.
* IOF arrested 48 Palestinian civilians, including 14 children, in the West Bank. IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.
* IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property.
* IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property.
* An elderly Palestinian man was run down by an Israeli settler.
* Israeli settlers burned large areas of agricultural land in Bourin village, south of Nablus.
* Five Palestinian shepherds were injured by Israeli settlers in 2 separate attacks in Yatta village, south of Hebron.

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Conflicts between Palestinian factions are being allowed to overshadow the plight of Palestinians, says Ramzy Baroud*

A six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza was killed by Israeli fire on 12 June. "Medics say the girl was decapitated by a [tank] shell," Associated Press (AP) reported the next day. The Israeli military said the soldiers opened fire in retaliation against "militants launching rockets into Israel". AP dispassionately elaborated that, "Gaza militants fire rockets and mortars into Israel almost daily." The story of a few lines ended with another corroboration of the claims made by the Israeli military: "The shelling occurred near the border where militants fired 30 rockets into Israel on Tuesday."

"The future Palestinian state must be established according to Israel's security needs, including supervision of border crossings and the disarming of militants," reported Haaretz, referring to comments made by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. So much for sovereignty.

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Indian Country Today

The Schaghticoke Tribal Nation has filed three human rights complaints against state agencies after they refused last winter to stop the destruction of property on the tribe's 400-acre reservation in Kent, Conn., by an unauthorized non-Native man. The entire reservation is listed on the state's roster of archaeological sites.

By Gale Courey Toensing -- Today staff

HARTFORD, Conn. - After months of seeking state protection, the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation has filed complaints of human rights violations against three state agencies for refusing to help stop the desecration and destruction of tribal property.

The complaints were filed with the state's Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities in April and May. Two complaints were filed by STN Chief Richard Velky against state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's office and the Department of Environmental Protection. A third was filed by tribal council member Joseph Velky Jr., the chief's nephew, against the Connecticut State Police.

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More than 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes, lands, and villages by Zionist militias in 1948,

The Palestinian national struggle began among the Palestinian refugees, whose lives are the ongoing reality of the Nakba. No national strategy for resistance is possible without them at the centre, writes Azmi Bishara

Some have an almost religious faith that Israel will one day cease to exist. Others maintain that Israel will end if the Arabs optimise their conviction that it is an alien entity in the region, incapable of reaching a just peace because it seeks to dominate rather than to assimilate. Odder yet is the belief that peace is the key to Israel's inevitable destruction. Unless Israel can be delivered a major defeat just once, proponents of this belief hold, normalisation is the most powerful weapon against it, because it would then be torn apart by its internal contradictions.

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