Palestine Think Tank, Nakba 60, Imad Hajjaj

The following was written by Edward Said on the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel.

In the United States, celebrations of Israel’s fifty years as a state have tried to project an image of the country that went out of fashion since the Palestinian Intifada (1987-92): a pioneering state, full of hope and promise for the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, a haven of enlightened liberalism in a sea of Arab fanaticism and reaction. On 15 April, for instance, CBS broadcast a two hour prime-time program from Hollywood hosted by Michael Douglas and Kevin Costner, featuring movie stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kathy Bates (who recited passages from Golda Meir minus, of course, her most celebrated remark that there were no Palestinians) and Winona Ryder.

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In the United States, celebrations of Israel’s fifty years as a state have tried to project an image of the country that went out of fashion since the Palestinian Intifada (1987-92): a pioneering state, full of hope and promise for the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, a haven of enlightened liberalism in a sea of Arab fanaticism and reaction. On 15 April, for instance, CBS broadcast a two hour prime-time program from Hollywood hosted by Michael Douglas and Kevin Costner, featuring movie stars such as Arnol Schwarzenegger, Kathy Bates (who recited passages from Golda Meir minus, of course, her most celebrated remark that there were no Palestinians) and Winona Ryder. None of these luminaries are particularly known for their Middle Eastern expertise or enthusiasm, although all of them in one way or another praised Israel’s greatness and enduring achievements. There was even time for a cameo appearance by President Bill Clinton, who provided perhaps the least edifying, most atavistic note of the evening by complimenting Israel, “a small oasis,” for “making a once barren desert bloom,” and for ” building a thriving democracy in hostile terrain.”

Ironically enough, no such encomia were intoned on Israeli television, which has been broadcasting a 22-part series, Tkuma, on the country’s history. This series has a decidedly more complicated content. Episodes on the l948 War, for instance, made use of archival sources unearthed by the new historians (Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Schlaim, Tom Segev, et al) to demonstrate that the indigenous Palestinians were forcibly expelled, their villages destroyed, their land taken, their society eradicated. It was as if Israeli audiences had no need of all the palliatives provided for diasporic and international viewers, who still needed to be told that Israel was a cause for uncomplicated rejoicing and not, as it has been for Palestinians, the cause of a protracted, and still continuing dispossession of the country’s indigenous people.

That the American celebration simply omitted any mention of the Palestinians indicated also how remorselessly an ideological mind-set can hold on, despite the facts, despite years of news and headlines, despite an extraordinary, if ultimately unsuccessful, effort to keep effacing Palestinians from the picture of Israel’s untroubled sublimity. If they’re not mentioned, therefore they don’t exist. Even after fifty years of living the Palestinian exile I still find myself astonished at the lengths to which official Israel and its supporters will go to suppress the fact that a half century has gone by without Israeli restitution, recognition, or acknowledgment of Palestinian human rights and without, as the facts undoubtedly show, connecting that suspension of rights to Israel’s official policies. Even when there is a vague buried awareness of the facts, as is the case with a front page New York Times story on April 23 by one Ethan Bronner, the Palestinian Nakba is characterized as a semi-fictional event (dutful inverted commas around the word “catastrophe” for instance) caused by no one in particular. When Bronner quotes an uprooted Palestinian who describes his miseries, the man’s testimony is qualified by “for most Israelis, the idea of Mr Shikaki staking claim to victimhood is chilling,” a reaction made plausible as Bronner blithely leapfrogs over the man’s uprooting and systematic deprivations and immediately tells us how his “rage” (for years the approved word for dealing with Palestinian history) has impelled his sons into joining Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Ergo, Palestinians are violent terrorists, whereas Israel can go on being a “vibrant and democratic regional superpower established on the ashes of Nazi genocide.” But not on the ashes of Palestine, an obliteration that lingers on in measures taken by Israel to block Palestinian rights, domestically as well as in territories occupied in l967.

Take land and citizenship for instance. Approximately 750,000 Palestinians were expelled in 1948: they are now more than 4 million. Left behind were 120,000 (now one million) who subsequently became Israelis, a minority constituting about 18 per cent of the state’s population, but not fully-fledged citizens in anything more than name. In addition there are now some 2.5 million Palestinians without sovereignty on the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is the only state in the world which is not the state of its ctual citizens, but of the whole Jewish people who consequently have rights that non-Jews do not. Without a constitution, Israel is governed by Basic Laws of which one in particular, the Law of Return, makes it possible for any Jew anywhere to emigrate to Israel and become a citizen, at the same time that native-born Palestinians do not have the same right. 93 per cent of the land of the state is characterised as Jewish land, meaning that no non-Jew is allowed to lease, sell or buy it. Before 1948, the Jewsh community in Palestine owned a little over 6 per cent of the land. A recent case in which a Palestinian Israeli, Adel Kaadan, wished to buy land but was refused because he was a non-Jew has become something of a cause célèbre in Israel, and has even made it to the Supreme Court which is supposed to but would prefer not to rule on it. Kaadan’s lawyer has said that “as a Jew in Israel, I think that if a Jew somewhere else in the world was prohibited from buying state land, public land, ownedby the federal government, because they’re Jews, I believe there would have been an outcry in Israel.” (New York Times, 1 March, l998). This anomaly about Israeli democracy, not well known and rarely cited, is compounded by the fact that, as I said above Israel’s land in the first place was owned by Palestinians expelled in l948; since their forced exodus their property was legally turned into Jewish land by The Absentees’ Property Law, the Law of the State’s Property, and the Land Ordinance (the Acquisition of Land for Public Purposes). Now only Jewish citizens have access to that land, a fact that does not corroborate The Economist’s extraordinarily sweeping statement on “Israel at 50″ (25 April-1 May l99 that since the state’s founding Palestinians “have enjoyed full political rights.

What makes it specially galling for Palestinians is that they have been forced to watch the transformation of their own homeland into a Western state, one of whose express purposes is to provide for Jews and not for non-Jews. Between l948 and l966 Palestinian Israelis were ruled by military ordinance. After that, as the state regularised its policies on education, legal practice, religion, social, economic and political participation, a regime evolved to keep the Palestinian minority disadvantaged, segrgated and constantly discriminated against. There is an eye-opening account of this shabby history which is rarely cited and, when it is, elided or explained away by the euphemism (familiar from South African apartheid) that “they” have their own system: it is the Report of March l998 entitled “Legal Violations of Arab Minority Rights in Israel,” published by Adalah (the Arabic word for justice), an Arab-Jewish organization within Israel. Especially telling is the section on the “discriminatory approach ofIsraeli courts”, routinely praised by supporters of Israel for their impartiality and fairness. In fact, the report notes that the courts having delivered progressive and decent-minded decisions on the rights of women, homosexuals, the disabled, etc. have “since l948 dismissed all cases dealing with equal rights for Arab citizens, and have never included a declamatory statement in decisions regarding the protection of Arab group rights.” This is borne out by a survey of criminal and civil cases in which Arabs get no help from the courts and are far more likely to be indicted than Jews in similar circumstances.

It is only in the past year or two that investigations of Israel’s political makeup, hitherto assumed to be socialist, egalitarian, pioneering, forward-looking, have turned up a rather unattractive picture. Zeev Sternhell’s book The Founding Myths of Israel (Princeton l99 is the work of an Israeli historian of twentieth century right-wing European mass-movements who finds a disturbing congruence between those movements and Israel’s own brand of what Sternhell rightly calls “nationalist socialism”. Farfrom being socialist, Israel’s founders and subsequently the polity they established were profoundly anti-socialist, bent almost entirely upon “conquest of the land” and the creation of “self-realisation” and a new sense of organic peoplehood that moved steadily to the right during the pre-l948 years. “Neither the Zionist movement abroad,” Sternhell says, “nor the pioneers who were beginning to settle the country could frame a policy toward the Palestinian national movement. The real reason for this was not a lack of understanding of the problem but a clear recognition of the insurmountable contradiction between the basic objectives of the two sides.” (p.43). After l948, policy towards the Palestinians clearly envisioned that community’s disappearance or its political nullity, since it was clear that the contradiction between the two sides would always remain insurmountable. Israel, in short, could not become a secular liberal state, despite the efforts of two generations of publicists to make it so.

After l967 the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza produced a military and civil regime for Palestinians whose aim was Palestinian submission and Israeli dominance, an extension of the model on which Israel proper functioned. Settlements were established in the late summer of l967 (and Jerusalem annexed) not by right-wing parties but by the Labour Party, a member, interestingly enough, of the Socialist International. The promulgation of literally hundreds of “occupiers’ laws” directly contravened not oly the tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but the Geneva Conventions as well. These violations ran the gamut from administrative detention, to mass land expropriations, house demolition, forced movement of populations, torture, uprooting of trees, assassination, book banning, closure of schools and universities. Always, however, the illegal settlements were being expanded as more and more Arab land was ethnically cleansed so that Jewish populations from Russia, Ethiopia, Canada and the United States, among other places, could be accommodated.

After the Oslo Accords were signed in September l993 conditions for Palestinians steadily worsened. It became impossible for Palestinians to travel freely between one place and another, Jerusalem was declared off limits, and massive building projects transformed the country’s geography. In everything, the distinction between Jew and non-Jew is scrupulously preserved. The most perspicacious analysis of the legal situation obtaining after Oslo is Raja Shehadeh’s in his book From Occupation to Interim Accods: Israel and the Palestinian Territories (Kluwer, 1997), an important work that demonstrates the carefully preserved continuity between Israeli negotiating strategy during the Oslo process and its land occupation policy established in the Occupied Territories from the early 1970s. In addition Shehadeh demonstrates the tragic lack of preparation and understanding in the PLO’s strategy during the peace process, with the result that much of the sympathy gained internationally for the Palestinians against Isaeli settlement policy and its dismal human rights record was frittered away, unused and unexploited. “All the support and sympathy,” he says, “which it took years for Palestinians to rally, returned home, so to speak, with the mistaken belief that the struggle was over. The Palestinians, as much as the Israelis, helped in giving the false impression through, among other things, the highly publicised media image of the Arafat-Rabin handshake, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was resolved. No serious attempt was made to remind the world that one of the main causes of the conflict after 1967, the Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, remained intact. This is not to speak of the other basic unresolved questions of the return of refugees, compensation, and the issue of Jerusalem” (p.131).

Unquestionably the moral dilemma faced by anyone trying to come to terms with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a deep one. Israeli Jews are not white settlers of the stripe that colonised Algeria or South Africa, though similar methods have been used. They are correctly seen as victims of a long history of Western, largely Christian anti-Semitic persecution that culminated in the scarcely comprehensible horrors of the Nazi holocaust. To Palestinians, however, their role is that of victims of the victms. This is why Western liberals who openly espoused the anti-apartheid movement, or that of the Nicaraguan Sandanistas, or Bosnia, or East Timor, or American civil rights, or Armenian commemoration of the Turkish genocide, or many other political causes of that kind, have shied away from openly endorsing Palestinian self-determination. As for Israel’s nuclear policy, or its legally underwritten campaign of torture, or of using civilians as hostages, or of refusing to give Palestinians permits to build on their own land in the West Bank — the case is never made in the liberal public sphere, partly out of fear, partly out of guilt.

An even greater challenge is the difficulty of separating between Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish populations who are now inextricably linked in all sorts of ways, despite the immense chasm that divides them. Those of us who for years have argued for a Palestinian state have come to the realization that if such a “state” (the inverted commas here are definitely required) is going to appear out of the shambles of Oslo it will be weak, economically dependent on Israel, without real sovereignty or power. Abve all, as the present map of the West Bank amply shows, the Palestinian autonomy zones will be non-contiguous (they now account for only 3 per cent of the West Bank; Netanyahu’s government has balked at giving up an additional 13 per cent) and effectively divided into Bantustans controlled from the outside by Israel. The only reasonable course therefore is to recommend that Palestinians and their supporters renew the struggle against the fundamental principle that relegates “non-Jews” to subservience on te land of historical Palestine. This, it seems to me, is what is entailed by any principled campaign on behalf of justice for Palestinians, and certainly not the enfeebled separatism that movements like Peace Now have fitfully embraced and quickly abandoned. There can be no concept of human rights, no matter how elastic, that accommodates the strictures of Israeli state practice against “non-Jewish” Palestinians in favour of Jewish citizens. Only if the inherent contradiction is faced between what in effect is a theocratic and ethnic exclusivism on the one hand and genuine democracy on the other, can there be any hope for reconciliation and peace in Israel/Palestine. Fudging, waffling, looking the other way, avoiding the issue entirely, or accepting pabulum definitions of “peace” will bring Palestinians and, in the long run Israelis, nothing but hardship and insecurity.

While this week’s trip by President George W. Bush to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt was never conceived as a triumphant “victory lap” around the region, the swift rout of U.S.-backed forces by Lebanon’s Hezbollah Friday has provided yet another vivid illustration of the rapid decline in Washington’s influence in the Middle East during his tenure.

The events in Lebanon will no doubt cast a long shadow over Bush’s tour, which begins Tuesday. After all, it was only three years ago that he hailed the “Cedar Revolution” there as vindication of the kind of democratic transformation of the region that he insisted the invasion of Iraq was designed to launch.

Three years and a brief war between Israel and Hezbollah later, the Iranian- and Syrian-backed group appears more powerful and entrenched than ever, just as its Sunni Islamist ally in the Palestinian Territories (PT), Hamas, remains solidly in control of Gaza and grows in popularity in the West Bank in major part due to the apparent lack of progress in peace talks — formally initiated by Bush himself at Annapolis last November — between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government.

“The politics on the ground are absolutely miserable,” Jon Alterman, a Middle East specialist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here, told the New York Times Sunday. “It’s hard to remember a less auspicious time to pursue Arab-Israeli peacemaking than right now. U.S. power and influence are at low ebb in the region,” he added.

Bush will travel to Israel Tuesday to help it celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding and then fly on to Saudi Arabia, presumably to appeal — as he did in January when he last traveled to the region — for a major increase in oil production to bring some relief to U.S. (and Republican candidates), and then to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where he will address the World Economic Forum and meet with a collection of Sunni Arab leaders, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah.

Apart from Israel, to which Bush has been by far the most indulgent president in the Jewish state’s history, he is likely to get his warmest — if most anxious — reception when he meets with the assembled Sunni leaders, many of whom are as concerned about Shi’a Hezbollah’s show of force as is Israel.

Like Bush himself, not to mention Israel, they see Hezbollah’s victory as another in a series of advances by Iran in its effort to shift the balance of power in the Gulf and the wider region against Washington and its allies there. It is an impression that Bush, somewhat ironically, will be eager to reinforce, if only to revive the dying embers of his hopes for a de facto U.S.-Sunni Arab-Israeli coalition against Tehran, even without a viable Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

“To me, it’s the single biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, the Iranian regime,” he told an interviewer from Israel’s TV Channel 10, according to a partial transcript released Monday. “Their funding of Hezbollah — look what’s happening in Lebanon now, a young democracy trying to survive… (I)t’s in Israel interest that the Lebanese democracy survives. You need to be concerned about Iran, and you are concerned about Iran and so are we.”

Indeed, five years after the White House declared “Mission Accomplished” on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, virtually all analysts here agree that almost everything Bush has done in the region — from invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein and then rejecting an Iranian offer to negotiate a settlement on all outstanding issues; to pressing for the total isolation of Hamas after it won (U.S.-backed) democratic elections in the Palestinian Territories (PT) and egging on the Israelis in their attack on Lebanon and Hezbollah in 2006 — has undermined U.S. standing and influence, even as it enhanced Tehran’s.

Even in Iraq, recent U.S. attacks on Muqtada al Sadr’s “Mahdi Army”, particularly in Baghdad’s Sadr City, appear to have bolstered the government factions with the closest and most-longstanding ties to Iran — the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its Badr Organisation, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Da’wa party.

The fact that Tehran itself played a key role in brokering the truces between Sadr and the government in both Basra last month and in Sadr City last weekend underlines the degree to which Iran is effectively challenging Washington in what neo-conservative hawk Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) admits “is the only arena (in the region) where the administration is capable of moving effectively against Tehran.”

And while there is little evidence that Washington played any role in pushing the Lebanese cabinet to order the dismantling of Hezbollah’s communications network at Beirut’s airport — the act that provoked Friday’s offensive — its staunch support for the “March 14″ Coalition; its deployment of a U.S. naval destroyer off Lebanon’s coast as the political crisis in Beirut intensified in March; its supply of some 400 million dollars in military aid and training to the Lebanese army and security forces (which stayed out of the fighting); and its covert backing (with Saudi Arabia and Jordan) of Sunni militias, in some cases disguised as private-security firms, intended to counter Hezbollah no doubt contributed to a grave miscalculation by the government.

“These Sunni militiamen proved a complete failure, and America’s proxies in Lebanon barely put up a fight despite their strident anti-Shiite rhetoric,” noted Nir Rosen, a regional expert at the New America Foundation who described Hezbollah’s offensive as “the death throes of the Bush plan for the ‘New Middle East’.”

“Now it is clear that Beirut is firmly in the hands of Hezbollah, and nothing the Americans can do will dislodge or weaken this popular movement, just as they cannot weaken the Sadrists in Iraq or Hamas in Gaza,” he said.

Still, some observers believe Hezbollah’s victory may yet serve the administration’s ends, if only by reminding the Sunni leaders with whom Bush meets later in the week that, in Gerecht’s words again, “Tehran is on a roll”, and they need the U.S. and even Israel to contain it and roll back its influence.

Indeed, some analysts believe the weekend’s events may add to the gradually growing clamour by hawks in and outside the administration to take military action — if only, for now, limited strikes on weapons factories and training sites inside Iran allegedly used by the Revolutionary Guard to train “terrorists” in Iraq, Lebanon, and the PT — to “put Iran in its place”.

“The next couple of days may be critical,” said one former senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer with expertise on the region, who added that any decision to “strike will actually motivated by an irresistible urge, stemming from pure frustration over continuing American impotence throughout the region, just to ‘do something’…even though the actual positive gain in this case would be minimal, while the downside risks are enormous.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy, and particularly the neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

What’s the BBC’s ‘Birthday’ present to Israel? A stream of propaganda following a story thats Israeli driven. Not content with 3 other, Israeli directed, Storyville documentaries (watch here), a birthday radio show (featuring 4 Israelis with one token Israeli Arab and zero Palestinians) and birthday articles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc) the BBC has gone a step further and commissioned this 60 minute film. By Jeremy Bowan, it details the founding of the State of Israel. To be fair to the BBC, the events surrounding the founding of the State of Israel are immensely interesting and have had important repercussions in the world at large. However it’s instructive that this documentary is called ‘The Birth of Israel’ and not for example ‘The Nakba’ - we get an idea of the focus from the start. In fact we might ask where all the Nakba articles (1?), audio and films are? Is it sufficient that it just happens to get a small mention in amongst all this ‘birthday’ nonsense?

Although this film is good in many places, covering the massacre of Deir Yassin for example, overall it fails to place the responsibility of the conflict firmly in the hands of the Israelis and Europeans. It fails to present the Palestinians as the victims of Zionist colonialism which was approved of by the Europeans because of guilt from the Holocaust and because 60 years ago the idea of colonialism, ‘civilised’ Europeans settling land that native ‘barbarians’ are wasting, was still acceptable. Time and again Israelis under interview blame the conflict on the Palestinians for not accepting the 1947 UN partition plan, where the UN carved up the land of Palestine and gave much of it to the colonialists. In the 21st century we should by now understand that the UN had no right to give away another mans home, the Zionists were incorrect in thinking they could colonise another peoples country and that resistance to this dispossession was legitimate. What nation would accept its land being given away to immigrants by the UN? Especially with such a bad deal: Israelis owning 10% of the land but getting 50% while only accounting for only 33% of the total population.

Counting the number of Israelis interviewed we find there were 11 with 10 Palestinians representatives. The number of times they appeared differs more: Israelis appearing 30 times and Palestinians 22. In a 60 minute film this approximately translates to about 8 minutes (15%) more air time. Personally I don’t believe balance is about giving both sides equal time - I follow Robert Fisks example of giving more time to the victims no matter who they are. In the ‘birth’ of Israel the victims were the Palestinian natives: 700,000 of whom were ethnically cleansed and many men, women and children were brutally massacred. This crime has continued as although under international law refugees have a Right of Return this has been denied. And Palestinians that remain in Israel and the Occupied Territories live in Apartheid conditions. Therefore its significant that they are not given priority.

The other big issue I have with the film is its failure to convey the true nature of a Two State solution. Israeli colonialism has continued with the illegal gaining of territory through military force in 1967. It is by now clear the continued Israeli rejection of peace for expansion and settlement of the Occupied Territories has led to a situation where a Two State solution is now unworkable. Only a One State solution where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights and share the land will provide any meaningful resolution to the regions problems. The idea of a predominatly Jewish State is non-inclusive and racist, it can only be maintained through further ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

Witness Statement from speaker at demonstration

The following from the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign for more see Peoples Geography.

London protest calls for Free Palestine

Thousands marched through London, sixty years after the Palestinian Nakba, to demand an end to the siege on Gaza, an end to Israeli occupation, and for the right of return of refugees.

The demonstration, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, British Muslim Initiative and the Palestinian Forum in Britain, was supported by trade unions UNISON, Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Unite the Union, Communication Workers Union, GMB, TSSA, RMT, Fire Brigades Union, and the National Union of Miners, who joined organisations such as the Association of Palestinian Community UK, Amos Trust, Friends of Al Aqsa UK, Palestinian Return Centre, War on Want, Jewish Socialist Group, Pax Christi, Stop the War Coalition, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Britain Palestine Twinning Network, ICAHDUK, Friends of Lebanon, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, and Midlands Palestinian Community Association.

Dr Mustafa Barghouti, elected Palestinian Legislative Council member, told the rally of the situation of Apartheid existing in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: “Israeli citizens make 30 times what Palestinians do, settlers take 48 times the water of Palestinians, Palestinians are denied entry to Jerusalem…” He said that the ‘peace process’ of Annapolis was an illusion: “Since then Israeli attacks have tripled and even more checkpoints have been set up.” He stressed the importance of re-establishing Palestinian unity and accused western governments of hypocrisy, in undermining democracy in Palestine, but supporting an Apartheid state.

Speakers also included Richard Burden MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Palestine, who reminded people of the ongoing plight of the refugees from 1948, especially those in Gaza: “Gaza is dotted with masses of cesspits of raw sewage, as deadly as any bomb or missile.” Like many speakers, he called for the lifting of the siege of Gaza and withdrawal from all the Occupied Territories: “The peace process cannot work while people are imprisoned in their own land.” Both he and Caroline Lucas stressed Israel cannot continue to enjoy a privileged trading relationship with Europe while it persists in violating international law.

Referring to the founding of Israel, Tony Benn said: “Nothing that happened in the WWII can justify Israel’s seizure of Palestinian land.” He found room some optimism: “Wherever you go you find people understand increasingly what is happening to the Palestinian people. There will never be peace in the Middle East till the Palestinians are treated decently.”

Manuel Hassassian, the General Delegate to the UK said: “Our problem is not a humanitarian problem, it is a political problem, which must have a political solution.” He also said: “The right of return is a sacred right for the Palestinians. Jerusalem is our capital, and we will never compromise on Jerusalem.”

Respect MP George Galloway reminded the crowd of Britain’s historic responsibility for the tragedy inflicted on the Palestinian people, from the time of Balfour onwards, and remembered the “thousands upon thousands of martyrs” created over decades; he also demanded the release of Marwan Barghouti and other political prisoners, and declared: “If there is no justice in Palestine there can be no peace in Palestine, and peace in Palestine is the key to peace throughout the Middle East.”

Video messages came from a PLC member from Gaza, Dr Jamal Al-Khoudary, and from Ismail Haniyeh.

more videos | photos | English Report

Over 4000 people demonstrated against the Turin book-fair’s “celebration” of Israeli writers. The fair has come under a great deal of pressure from progressive authors around the world who have publically boycotted the book-fair, while others have come under pressure from their readers to cancel their participation. SPSC mailing list

The following is an excellent find by Idrees of The Fanonite.

A decent documentary from the best television news channel out there — Al Jazeera International. However, it is mostly an Israeli perspective featuring Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Uri Avnery, Shulamit Aloni et al.

(thanks Shahbaz)

A special series examining the origins, violent creation, and modern-day reality of the state of Israel through the stories of individual Israelis.

Episode two, Conflict, looks at how the still small Jewish population succeeded in defeating a far larger Palestinian population and asks if a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing was employed.

The following from th Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

East Renfrewshire Council’s shameful support for ethnic cleansing.
Honour saved by protest in support of human rights for all.

Those who attended the ‘celebration’ of Israeli ethnic cleansing met a vigorous protest.

Banners told the truth about about Israeli crime.
Hundreds of Palestinian flags - big & small - festooned the area.

Some Zionists were apoplectic at having to go to their event under large Palestinian flags.

The great majority of local people opposed the pro-Israeli event and were very willing to
sign protest letters to their Councillors. Support for the Zionists was virtually zero.

Protest banners stretched along the busy main road outside the foul celebration.

The Council bent under pressure and refused to allow the Israeli ‘Butchers Apron’ to run up
the Council flagpole, but Liberal Democrat Provost Mackie skulked in to show support.

Israel turns 60. Israelis Celebrate but Palestinians demonstrate. Will the refugees be allowed to return home?

Answer to this question and more on Link TV ’s Mosaic intelligence report presented by Jamal Dajani.

For more info, go to http://www.linktv.org/mosaic