Category: News

WALTHAM, Mass. (AP) – Venturing into the lion's den, Jimmy Carter headed Tuesday to Brandeis University, a historically Jewish college, to confront the furor over his new book on the Middle East, which has been attacked as slanted against Israel.

The uproar has been going on for several months and recently prompted 14 members of an advisory board at the former president's international-affairs think tank, the Carter Center, to resign in protest over the book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.''
{josquote}Closing our eyes to injustice is not a Jewish value{/josquote}
A tightly controlled discussion was planned, with 15 questions selected in advance. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz had also hoped to debate Carter but was told he would not be allowed inside.

Metal barricades were erected along the road leading to the athletic center, where Carter was to speak, and people entering the place had to go through a metal detector.
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Uri Avnery’s Column

[Uri talks about the recent ruling, now delayed, that would have forbade Israeli drivers from giving a ride to Palestinian passengers.  Uri also talks about the use of the word Apartheid as attached to Israel and the dangers of applying the South African model to the Israel / Palestine situation]

Mahatma Gandhi would have loved it. Nelson Mandela would have saluted. Martin Luther King would have been the most excited – it would have reminded him of the old days.

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Those seemingly minor inconveniences that make life hellish

DURING 2006, according to B’tselem, an Israeli human-rights group, Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, almost half of them innocent bystanders, among them 141 children. In the same period, Palestinians killed 17 Israeli civilians and six soldiers. It is such figures, as well as events like shellings, house demolitions, arrest raids and land expropriations, that make the headlines in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What rarely get into the media but make up the staple of Palestinian daily conversation are the countless little restrictions that slow down most people’s lives, strangle the economy and provide constant fuel for extremists.

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Although Israel withdrew from Gaza more than a year ago, its control over the lives of Palestinians there is in some ways even tighter than before, a new report by an Israeli human rights organisation says.

In the days after Israeli troops and settlers pulled out of the territory, the then Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon addressed the United Nations.

He declared “the end of Israeli control over and responsibility for the Gaza Strip”.

But a study by Gisha challenges that claim. The organisation says it aims to “protect the fundamental rights of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories by imposing human rights law as a limitation on the behaviour of Israel’s military”.

“Israel continues to control Gaza through an ‘invisible hand’,” the organisation says, in a detailed, 100-page report.

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Today Iraq remains under occupation, and the gulf between those who profess to rule and those who are ruled is filled with blood. The government is beholden to the occupation forces that are responsible for a humanitarian catastrophe and a political impasse. While defenceless citizens are killed at will, the government carries on with its business of protecting itself, collecting oil revenues, dispensing favours, justifying the occupation, and presiding over collapsing security, economic wellbeing, essential services and public administration. Above all, the rule of law has all but disappeared, replaced by sectarian demarcations under a parliamentary facade. Sectarianism promoted by the occupation is tearing apart civil society, local communities and public institutions, and it is placing people at the mercy of self appointed communal leaders, without any legal protection.
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Palestinians are forbidden to travel in cars with Israelis.
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{mosimage}Imagine, if you will, a modern apartheid state with first, second and eleventh class citizens, all required to carry identification specifying their ethnic origin. First class citizens are obliged to serve in the armed forces, kept on ready reserve status until in their forties, and accorded an impressive array of housing, medical, social security, educational and related benefits denied all others.

Second class citizens are exempted from military service and from a number of the benefits accorded citizens of the first class. They are issued identity documents and license plates that allow them to be profiled by police at a distance. Second class citizens may not own land in much of the country and marriages between them and first class citizens are not recognized by the state. Second class citizens are sometimes arrested without trial and police torture, while frowned upon and occasionally apologized for, commonly occurs.

Citizens of the eleventh class, really not citizens at all, have no rights citizens of the first class or their government are bound to respect. Their residence is forbidden in nearly nine-tenths of the country, all of which they used to own.
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Friday's "One Land, Many Voices" interview with Phyllis Bennis is available at: www.pdxjustice.org Just scroll down to the KBOO programs and download or stream the mp3 file. – Will

 An investigative report to be aired on Italian television Wednesday raises the possibility that Israel has used an experimental weapon in the Gaza Strip in recent months, causing especially serious physical injuries, such as amputated limbs and severe burns.

The weapon is similar to one developed by the U.S. military, known as DIME, which causes a powerful and lethal blast, but only within a relatively small radius.

The Italian report is based on the eyewitness accounts of medical doctors in the Strip, as well as tests carried out in an Italian laboratory. The investigative team is the same one that exposed, several months ago, the use by U.S. forces in Iraq of phosphorous bombs, against Iraqi rebels in Faluja.

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Attached is a long piece I wrote which is really more of a background paper than an article. I believe we are making progress in getting the public worldwide to understand that the blame for perpetuating and worsening the conflict lies with Israel. Attempts to blame the Palestinians, etc. are starting to sound hollow. Still, people need for this to be said and, even more so, for a case to be made as to why Israel is the stumbling block for a just peace. It is my hope that if we can pinpoint the sources of Israeli opposition to a just a genuine peace with the Palestinians, if we can begin to hold Israel accountable for its policies and its actions, then we can move the struggle one step forward.

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