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a FUNdraiser EVENT:DAVID ROVICS, Raffle, Art Auction, and Belly Dancers! |
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Written by Peter Miller
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Tuesday, 06 July 2010 |
a FUNdraiser EVENT:
July 6th, 2010 6:00-8:00pm
MISSISSIPPI PIZZA PUB
3552 N. Mississippi Ave.
featuring the musical stylings of
DAVID ROVICS, Raffle, Art Auction, and Belly Dancers! Help send a Portland student activist
to the West Bank with ICAHD
(Israeli Committee Against Housing
Demolitions) to rebuild a Palestinian
home that was destroyed
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The ‘Times’ finally covers settler funding in the US, but there is still much to tell |
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Written by Adam Horowitz
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Tuesday, 06 July 2010 |
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[See original for more links to information]
The New York Times has finally covered a story that has been sitting under its nose for years - the tax-exempt fund raising Israeli settlers are doing in the U.S. In an expansive article in today's paper, three reporters combine to tell a familiar story of how nonprofit organizations are raising money in the US to help build settlements and in some cases arm settlers themselves.
I say the story has been right until the Times's nose because so much of this story is a New York story. As we have been reporting on here for the past year and a half, the Central Fund of Israel, located in a fabric store on 36th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan just 6 blocks from the Times headquarters, has been one of the most important players in this story. The Times gives them their due, and even quotes their president Hadassah Marcus who explained, "We’re trying to build a land. . .All we’re doing is going back to our home.”
The article is huge, and the Times should be commended for running it.
Still the article obfuscates the story in some places. My biggest issue is that it totally ignores the widespread support these institutions enjoy in the Jewish community. The article says "donors to settlement charities represent a broad mix of Americans," but then focuses on the more religious or ideological ones. As we have shown the apparent Central Fund donor list includes James Tisch, the CEO of Loews; Michael Milken, the banker/philanthropist; and Alan C. (Ace) Greenberg, the former CEO of Bear Stearns (the whole list is here). To me this is an interesting story.
And it's not just about big names. The story says, "The settlements are a sensitive issue among American Jews themselves. Some major Jewish philanthropies, like the Jewish Federations of North America, generally do not support building activities in the West Bank." This is not true. A reader writes us:
I know this to be untrue, first by virtue of the JFNA's funneling American Jewish money to the Jewish Agency, which openly supports settlements. But some Federations sanction settlements directly, too: the SF Federation's endowment fund allows donations to settler groups.
The list of organizations that the San Francisco Federation's approved charities is here. Among the many settler organization it includes are the American Friends of Ariel (a large settlement in the northern West Bank), American Friends of Bat Ayin Yeshiva (located in the Gush Etzion settlement), and, not surprisingly, the Central Fund of Israel.
The Times makes it out that the American Jewish community is wringing its hands over this practice while the radicals raise the money. This is not the case. While I agree that the majority of American Jews might not support the settlements, the majority of the leadership of the American Jewish community does. The settlements have been a project of the American Jewish community as much as they have been Israel's project. The leaders of the community need to be called to account. |
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mondoweiss.net/2010/07/the-times-finally-covers-settler-funding-in-the-us-but-there-is-still-much-to-tell.htm
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Senator Pressures NRC to Clear NUMEC President of Illegal Uranium Diversions to Israel - IRmep |
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Written by IRmep Press Release
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Tuesday, 06 July 2010 |
Press Release
Senator Pressures NRC to Clear NUMEC President of Illegal Uranium Diversions to Israel - IRmep
07.06.10, 7:46 AM ET
BusinessWire - The office of Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania attempted to obtain a statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission according to documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act. On August 27, 2009, Arlen Specter wrote to Rebecca Schmidt asking that the NRC "issue a formal public statement confirming that he [constituent Zalman Shapiro] was not involved in any activities related to the diversion of uranium to Israel."
http://www.IRmep.org/08272009specter_numec.pdf
Zalman Shapiro was formerly president of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation at Apollo, PA. According to a secret GAO report "Nuclear Diversion in the US?" partially declassified on May 6, 2010 NUMEC received over 22 tons of uranium-235, the key material used to fabricate nuclear weapons.
Israel's top economic espionage case officer Rafael Eitan, who handled spy Jonathan Pollard in the 1980s, infiltrated NUMEC under false pretenses in 1968. According to Anthony Cordesman, "there is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material." CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden called NUMEC "an Israeli operation from the beginning." NUMEC's venture capital came from David Lowenthal, who had close ties to Israeli intelligence and David Ben-Gurion,who spearheaded Israel's nuclear weapons program.
A March, 2010 audit by two former NRC officials published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists confirmed not only that 337 kilograms of NUMEC highly enriched uranium are still unaccounted for but that all circumstantial evidence still points to diversion to Israel.
On November 2, 2009 the NRC denied Specter's request. http://www.irmep.org/ML092720878.pdf
Inquiries to the Senator's Pennsylvania office last week confirmed Specter is not seeking release of all remaining classified FBI and CIA files about NUMEC diversions. Full release is long overdue, according to Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. "For decades researchers sought declassification of all relevant CIA and FBI findings about US diversions to Israel's Dimona nuclear weapons plant. It is unfortunate that a sitting US Senator is pressuring NRC for statements it clearly is in no position to make while the full account of America's involuntary participation in Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program remains bottled up in classified CIA and FBI archives."
The Israel Lobby Archive, http://IRmep.org/ila is a unit of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington.
SOURCE: Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc.
Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc. Grant F. Smith, 202-342-7325
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www.forbes.com/feeds/businesswire/2010/07/06/businesswire142042372.html
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Israeli settlements cover 42 percent of West Bank |
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Written by AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer
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Tuesday, 06 July 2010 |
JERUSALEM - Jewish settlements control more than 42 percent of the West Bank, and much of that land was seized from Palestinian landowners in defiance of an Israeli Supreme Court ban, an Israeli human rights group said Tuesday.
The group's findings echo what other anti-settlement activists have claimed in the past: That settlements have taken over lands far beyond their immediate perimeters, sometimes from private Palestinians. Israel's settlements have been a much-criticized enterprise throughout the decades and a major obstacle to peacemaking with the Palestinians.
"The extensive geographic-spatial changes that Israel has made in the landscape of the West Bank undermine the negotiations that Israel has conducted for 18 years with the Palestinians and breach its international obligations," the B'Tselem group said in a summary of its report.
Settlers disputed the figures and said the report by the B'Tselem group was politically motivated. Israeli officials had no comment.
The report was based on official state documents, including military maps and a military settlement database, the B'Tselem said.
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news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100706/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians
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Read more...
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Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank |
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Written by JIM RUTENBERG, MIKE McINTIRE and ETHAN BRONNER, New York Times
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Tuesday, 06 July 2010 |
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HaYovel is one of many groups in the United States using tax-exempt
donations to help Jews establish permanence in the Israeli-occupied
territories — effectively obstructing the creation of a Palestinian
state, widely seen as a necessary condition for Middle East peace.
The
result is a surprising juxtaposition: As the American government seeks
to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a
Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain
the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them.
A
New York Times examination of public records in the United States and
Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more
than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. The money goes mostly
to schools, synagogues, recreation centers and the like, legitimate
expenditures under the tax law. But it has also paid for more legally
questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof
vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied
areas.
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www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/world/middleeast/06settle.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
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Read more...
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US questions its unwavering support for Israel |
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Written by Chris McGreal, The Guardian
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Monday, 05 July 2010 |
US questions its unwavering support for Israel
Consensus forming in Washington that Israeli government is abusing support with policies seen to be risking US lives
Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu Binyamin Netanyahu, left, arrives in Washington tomorrow to patch up relations with Barack Obama and the US administration. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
There are questions that rarely get asked in Washington. For years, the mantra that America's intimate alliance with Israel was as good for the US as it was the Jewish state went largely unchallenged by politicians aware of the cost of anything but unwavering support.
But swirling in the background when Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, arrives in Washington tomorrow to patch up relations with the White House will be a question rarely voiced until recently: is Israel ‑ or, at the very least, its current government ‑ endangering US security and American troops?
Netanyahu would prefer to be seen as an indispensable ally in confronting Islamist terror. But his insistence on building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, which is causing a deep rift with Washington, is seen as evidence of a lack of serious interest in the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. That in turn is seen as fuelling hostility towards the US in other parts of the Middle East and beyond, because America is perceived as Israel's shield.
In recent months Barack Obama has said that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a "vital national security interest of the United States". His vice-president, Joe Biden, has confronted Netanyahu in private and told the Israeli leader that Israel's policies are endangering US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior figures in the American military, including General David Petraeus who has commanded US forces in both wars, have identified Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian land as an obstacle to resolving those conflicts.
More recently, Israel's assault on ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade has compromised relations with Turkey, an important American strategic ally.
A former director of intelligence assessment for the US defence secretary, last month caused waves with a paper called Israel as a Strategic Liability? In it, Anthony Cordesman, who has written extensively on the Middle East, noted a shift in thinking at the White House, the US state department and, perhaps crucially, the Pentagon over the impact of Washington's long-unquestioning support for Israeli policies even those that have undermined the prospects for peace with the Palestinians.
He wrote that the US will not abandon Israel because it has a moral commitment to ensure the continued survival of the Jewish state. "At the same time, the depth of America's moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset. It does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbours.
"It is time Israel realised that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it test the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews."
Cordesman told the Guardian that the Netanyahu government has maintained a "pattern of conduct" that has pushed the balance toward Israel being more of a liability than an asset.
"This Israeli government pushed the margin too far," he said. "Gaza was one case in point, the issue of construction in Jerusalem, the lack of willingness to react in ways that serve Israel's interests as well as ours in moving forward to at least pursue a peace process more actively."
It was a point made forcefully by Biden to Netanyahu in March after the Israelis humiliated the American during a visit to Jerusalem by announcing the construction of 1,600 more Jewish homes in the city's occupied east.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that at a meeting between the two men, Biden angrily accused Israel's prime minister of jeopardising US soldiers by continuing to tighten the Jewish state's grip on Jerusalem.
"This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace," Biden told Netanyahu.
Obama's chief political adviser, David Axelrod, said the settlement construction plans "seemed calculated to undermine" efforts to get fresh peace talks off the ground and that "it is important for our own security that we move forward and resolve this very difficult issue".
Netanyahu sought to head off the issue when he spoke to pro-Israeli lobbyists in Washington earlier this year. "For decades, Israel served as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Today it is helping America stem the tide of militant Islam. Israel shares with America everything we know about fighting a new kind of enemy," he said. "We share intelligence. We co-operate in countless other ways that I am not at liberty to divulge. This co-operation is important for Israel and is helping save American lives."
But that argument is less persuasive to the Americans now. Last month, Israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, said the Jewish state had suffered a "tectonic rift" with America. "There is no crisis in Israel-US relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs," he told Israeli diplomats in Jerusalem. "Relations are in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart."
Oren said that assessments of Israeli policy at the White House have moved away from the historic and ideological underpinnings of earlier administrations in favour of a cold calculation.
Cordesman said it is too early to tell whether Netanyahu has fully grasped that while there will be no change in the fundamental security guarantees the US gives Israel, "the days of the blank cheque are over".
He added: "I think it is clear there is more thought on how to deal with Gaza, how to deal with the underlying humanitarian issues, less creating kinds of pressures which frankly, from the viewpoint of an outside observer, have tended to push Hamas not toward an accommodation but toward a harder line while creating of all things an extremist challenge to Hamas. But until you see the end result, some comments and some token actions don't tell you there's been a significant shift."
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www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/05/us-israel-support
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Rights Group Files FOIA Requests Regarding Israel Attack on Flotilla Delivering Aid to Gaza |
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Written by Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
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Friday, 02 July 2010 |
Rights Group Files FOIA Requests Regarding Israel Attack on Flotilla Delivering Aid to Gaza
Questions Asked Regarding U.S. Knowledge of, and Response
to, Attack that Killed One U.S. Citizen, Others Injured and Detained
http://
CONTACT:
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July 1, 2010, Washington, D.C. –
Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed eight
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the United States
government’s knowledge of, and actions in relation to, the May 31, 2010
attack by Israel on a flotilla of six vessels in international waters
seeking to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, and U.S. policy towards the
blockade of Gaza, which has entered its fourth year. The FOIA requests
were made to a number of U.S. departments and agencies, including the
Coast Guard, the Department of State, the Navy and the U.S. European
Command.
“One U.S. citizen was killed, others were injured, detained and
had their property taken, and a U.S.-registered vessel seized by Israel
during its attack in international waters last month,” said CCR
attorney Katherine Gallagher. “Serious questions remain
unanswered about the U.S. response to the attack, its actions and
policies, particularly in the context of the blockade of Gaza,
internationally condemned as illegal and unjust. Citizens need to know
their government will protect their rights under U.S. and international
law vis-à-vis a foreign government, including Israel—the biggest
recipient of U.S. aid over the last fifty years.”
Specifically, the FOIA requests seek information on what, if any,
communications were made between the U.S. government and Israel prior to
and after the attack; what, if any, information the U.S. shared before
or after with Israel about any of the U.S. citizens abroad; what was
done to secure the release of detained citizens; and what is being done
to return property seized from U.S. citizens and other passengers and to
ensure that such property, which includes evidence for any
investigations into the attack, is not tampered with or destroyed. A
FOIA request was also made regarding communications with other countries
and with organizations such as NATO in relation to the attack on the
flotilla and the delivery of humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Finally, a
request was made for information about U.S. policy towards Israel’s
blockade of Gaza, which has been found to be a form of “collective
punishment” by various representatives of the United Nations.
Fourteen U.S. citizens were part of the flotilla, five of whom were
on the U.S.-registered vessel Challenger I and one of whom was killed
on the Mavi Marmara. U.S. citizens were injured, and their property,
including computers, video and photographic equipment which contain
potential evidence for investigations, was seized and appropriated by
Israel and has not been returned. CCR issued a statement with other
rights groups last month demanding that the U.S. insist that Israel
release seized property forthwith. The Center for
Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the
rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who
represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit
legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law
as a positive force for social change.
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ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/rights-group-files-foia-requests-regarding-israel-attack-flotilla-delivering-aid-gaza
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Israelis, Internationals Take Action Against Silwan Demolitions |
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Written by Michael Carpenter. Photography by Rebecca Fudala
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Friday, 02 July 2010 |
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Hundreds of Israelis joined Palestinians and international peace
activists in the streets of Silwan, East Jerusalem yesterday in protest
against the decision to destroy 22 Palestinian homes. The historic show
of support coincides with UN and US condemnation of the Municipality‘s
provocative scheme. Written by Michael Carpenter. Photography by Rebecca
Fudala. "The state of Israel has taken a bad path in the last several decades,
and we are here to say that not all Israelis support it." Said Shira
Wilkof, one of seven principle organisers of the Israeli-led protests in
Sheikh Jarrah. This week they lent their support to the people of
Silwan. Speaking just before the march began, she explained, "This is
going to be one of the biggest demonstrations in one of the most
sensitive and complex neighbourhoods where I would say some of the most
evil occupation is taking place. For me, this is an historic event,
because Israelis do not come to these areas, and today we expect between
four and five hundred." |
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www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1464
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