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Shame on A World Where Sharon is A Free Man
(Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, July 24, 2002)
Those who dare to see the complete picture, without distortion and dishonesty, know as a fact that Sharon is a madman, a fanatical fascist who has developed a unique style of racism, so unique to Zionism, so unique to him. . . . until the world gathers its courage to tell Sharon: �enough is enough,� and �you have no business occupying, assassinating and starving Palestinians,� until that happens, Palestinians are destined to collect and bury their dead, alone with desperate chants for revenge and others for freedom. . . . Hasn�t Sharon killed enough? Will his endless list of Palestinians to kill and places to bomb ever run out? Isn�t a 52-year-long career in murder plenty to satisfy the man�s thirst for Palestinian blood? How many more massacres would Sharon need to check out from his list before he dies, or quits politics for good? . . . But haven�t the Israelis tried everything yet? They massacred, bombarded, besieged, imprisoned Palestinians for over five decades, and cultivated nothing but more hatred and resistance. Why are they then dragging such a bad and failing policy forever? Is it just killing for the sake of killing? . . . Now, only naives would fail to see what would happen in coming weeks. Palestinians are beyond angry, beyond betrayed and feel that the only method of dealing with the Israeli murderous campaign and occupation is to strike back at the Israelis, not only soldiers, not only militant settlers. . . . We have failed them, and we have lost our right to criticize them. . . . Palestinians are left on their own, fending for their refugee camps against invading tanks and F16s. . . . Shame on a world in which Sharon is a free man. Shame on a world that tolerates such cruelty against a tormented nation. Shame on every one of us who knew the truth and said nothing.

posted by LoZo 5:14 PM

 

Situation in territories 'humanitarian disaster' - U.S. ambassador
(Aluf Benn, Ha'aretz, July 26, 2002)
U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer on Thursday called on Israel to further ease restrictions on the Palestinians and to increase their freedom of movement within the Palestinian-controlled areas, saying that efforts must be made "to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the territories." . . . Some 21 percent of the children under the age of 5 in the territories are suffering from severe malnutrition, compared to 2.5 percent in 2000, and 45 percent of Palestinian children are suffering from anemia. . . . Facing heavy U.S. pressure to ease conditions for the Palestinians and relieve the dire humanitarian conditions in the territories, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has agreed to drop his demand for the setting up of a monitoring body to oversee the allocation of tax revenues Israel has unfrozen and handed over to the Palestinian Authority. . . . The administration did not make do with bluntly telling the three that "we've heard promises, we now want action," but also sent the message via American Jewish contacts and other back channels to Sharon.

posted by LoZo 5:01 PM

 

Bush Joins International condemnation for Israeli attack
(Mark Oliver, The Guardian, July 23, 2002)
The US president, George Bush, has joined Britain, the EU, the UN and Arab nations in condemning Israel's missile attack against the leader of Hamas, as the death toll from the strikes rose to at least 15. . . . The Foreign Office said the attack was "unacceptable" and "counterproductive". Tony Blair's official spokesman called for an end to the "cycle of violence which has scarred the region". . . . UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, condemned Israel for not taking measures to avoid civilian causalities. . . . by firing a powerful missile into a heavily populated residential neighborhood in the middle of the night, civilian casualties were a certainty . . . "This is a war crime that is aimed at destroying all efforts to return stability to the region," the Palestinian information minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said. "We warned the Israeli government against attacking civilians. The Israeli government is playing with fire." . . . "This was a deliberate attack on the site, knowing that innocents would be lost in the consequences of the attack," [Bush's spokesman] said.

posted by LoZo 4:39 PM

 

Rising Up From the Dust: Report from Gaza City
(Jennifer Loewenstein, Palestine Chronicle, July 23, 2002)
Heaps of concrete, broken pillars with wire sticking out, people's shoes, clothes, bedding, strewn haphazardly among the rubble, dust everywhere, a hole in the landscape where a two-story apartment was just yesterday . . . Can you begin to imagine what it must be like to be sleeping in your home one minute and half dead from a missile attack the next? I say "half dead" of course, because the dead don't have to reckon with beginning all over again, with the loss of loved ones, the loss of home and livelihood, the death of the past up to now, and the unfathomable uncertainty of the future. . . . No Army struck back at the F16s flying overhead last night. This is the continuation of the We Kill - You Die philosophy of war adhered to by the world and regional superpowers. Fifteen people died sleeping. Eight were children. Six belonged to the same family. They won't have names and faces in the US media. The children following me at the scene of the devastation assured me of this. "America thinks we are all terrorists" one young boy says. "So look at this," he says pointing to the ruins, "this is America's Peace." Another child has collected the pieces of a missile. "Made in America," he says looking at me for my reaction. It is sobering that the children of Palestine are so politically astute. . . . The man whose resistance movement Israel once nurtured and funded is now dead. His brother Fayiz confirmed it on the telephone to a fieldworker at the Mezan Center for Human Rights office early this morning. Shehadeh's wife and three of his daughters died with him. Another victory for Israelo-American Justice. Fair trials and Due Process are reserved for the White; democracy a privilege for the rich. Yes, and the academic and intellectual elites will write verbose articles defending Israel's policies. What do you suggest Israel do with such people???, they will ask, in all sincerety, wondering how anyone can stoop to defending the poverty-stricken, dispossessed multitudes without being suspect themselves. . . . How much longer can people be silent? When do we rise again together to stop the brutality?

posted by LoZo 3:59 PM

 

Video implicates army - Israel uses a tank to murder two children
(BBC News, July 5, 2002)
The BBC has obtained video footage which appears to show an incident in the West Bank city of Jenin two weeks ago in which two Palestinian children were killed by Israeli tank fire. . . . The Israeli army has apologised for causing the deaths of six-year-old Ahmad Abu Aziz and his 13-year-old brother Jamil, but said the tank crew opened fire to deter Palestinians breaking a curfew and approaching them.

[Hagerty comment: Using a tank to shoot children in the back is despicable. This is a war crime of the first magnitude and shows us just how cowardly the army of Israel truly is.]

The footage shows a tank firing the first of two shells, at close range, at a group of civilians who are running away. . . . The dead boys' father, Youssef Abu Aziz, told the BBC that they had gone outside to buy chocolate, thinking the Israeli curfew imposed on their city had been lifted.

posted by LoZo 2:11 PM

 

Isolated Powell disowns Arafat
(Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, July 2, 2002)
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, found himself even further on the margins of the US administration yesterday after the most humiliating reversal yet in his Middle East policy. Less than a month after emphasising that the US would continue to do business with the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, Mr Powell was forced on Sunday to renounce him. . . . Mr Powell has become the Shimon Peres of the US administration, prepared to be a fig leaf for rightwing policies in the hope that he can act as a brake on wilder excesses. . . . given recent history, there is no guarantee that what Mr Powell tells Mr Moller will be what Mr Powell will still be saying at the weekend or next week or next month. . . . Mr Powell admitted that even if the Palestinian leader won the election scheduled for January, the US may not do business with him. . . . Strained relations between the White House and the state department are common in any administration. But seldom in recent years have the two been so far apart.

posted by LoZo 1:39 PM

 

From: Jewish Peace News
To: JPN
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 9:04 PM
Subject: [JPN] Reports from the Front

[The following reports arrived today from Bay Area activists who are working as international human rights observers in conjuction with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine. The first is from filmmaker Smith Partick, who is staying at Ibdaa Cultural Center, in the besieged Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem. She reports on the efforts to treat children shot yesterday by the IDF with "rubber" (actually plastic-coated metal) bullets. The second is the transcript of a telephone interview with Penny Rosenwasser of A Jewish Voice for Peace and the Middle East Children's Alliance, who has been confronting Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. -AG]

[1] A Bullet Between Small Bones
By Smith Patrick
June 30, 2002

I am so different than I was this morning.

The curfew lifted for the second day in a row from 9am to 3pm. Such is the state of oppression that to be permitted outdoors within a few square kilometer area during daylight feels like freedom.

I remember saying that it feels like they might loosen things up, that maybe they will let us out a period each day. Others agreed.

I needed a little release. As doors closed once again in the late afternoon, I did not go visiting friends or photographing. I stayed in my room, in want of some quiet. I put my Walkman on and ignored the tanks as they rolled in front of the camp.

They will come again, I thought as I debated whether or not I should be videotaping or sound recording. I would love a day off. It is so stressful here.

I listened to a dance mix tape that I bought when I ran errands in Bethlehem. I bought several tapes for the kids. The sound of shooting broke through the dance beat. I watched smoke rise above the camp. Curfew as usual.

I turned to stretch, to dance, and to move. My body aches from confinement in small spaces without the distance to go-

As a turned back toward the window, I witnessed something I had not seen so closely before: I saw soldiers taking two blindfolded men into a tank.

Several soldiers ran back into the camp, guns pointed. I decided to watch from the top floor.

As I got to a prime lookout window, I saw a group of soldiers coming down a pathway directly toward the Ibdaa center. They had two more captives, both blindfolded.

As I peeked out a window, a soldier saw me. He pointed his gun right at me. I pulled inside.

I went to another floor and tried to look out again. He saw me again, and pointed his gun. I went to my room. During the last curfew, they shot into the center with 50 foreigners staying here.

With some final blasts, I knew they sent tear gas spraying everywhere to mark their departure. Like the kids in the camp, I am able to identify some types of shooting and bullets.

Three small kids brought handfuls of dirt to quell the waning tear gas canister in the middle of the road.

I looked out my window to see a mother carrying her small boy into the UN clinic next door.

The boy was 5 years old. He was lying on the doctor's table crying. There was a bloody circle the size of a quarter in his forearm, near the bend. He was shot.

Yassir is the UN ambulance driver for Dheisheh camp. "Yalla, Smith,' he said to me. Let's go.

I got into the ambulance with the mother and child and headed to the Beit Jala hospital.

When the doctor showed me the x-ray, I thought the image of the article lodged in the boy's bones was somehow enhanced in size to help them see it better. I thought that an object that large could not have gotten into this small boy. It looked as if half of a cork was in his elbow.

When the boy was on the operating table, two doctors worked on him and one assistant held his legs down. His mother held him and stroked his other arm and his face. He was pleading that they should stop.

After dressing the wound, one of the doctors dove into his open flesh with what looked like scissors, but with ends with which to grab.

It seemed to take so long. The child was screaming with all his might. I was crying as I videotaped the event. I could not bear to witness his pain.

At some point, one of them noticed I was crying and reached back to put his hand on my shoulder.

They could not get the bullet out without difficulty.

I could see the doctor re-angling and probing the instrument deeper and deeper. It seemed impossible that so much of the metal could disappear into the boy's arm.

Finally, accompanied by the child's wild, fevered scream, out popped the bullet.

The `bullet' was the size and shape of � of a wine cork. This is the `rubber bullet' the Israelis deem `safe' to use.

I realized that the x-ray did not lie. The bullet is impossibly big. It is sharp on the edges. I thought of the speed with which it must have traveled to get so deep under his skin, and to lodge into his bones.

The operation was not over.

The child's wailing subsided until he learned that his arm must be sewn back up. With the first stitch, his screaming began again. He begged his mother to let the wound stay open.

The worse was over. The mother carried her son to a recovery area. I was told that he would stay overnight.

"Yalla, Smith.' Yassir called. "To Dheisheh."

Driving back a call came over the radio. Another bullet wound.

We went straight to the clinic where a slightly older boy, maybe 12, was lying on his stomach on the table. Family members watched from the hallway. He was quiet. I believe in shock. He was hit in both his lower leg and his upper back, where there was considerable swelling and a large bump. He was put onto a stretcher and put into the ambulance.

Back at the hospital, I walked alongside the stretcher. Once inside, Yassir called me to an area behind a closed curtain.

How to describe with honor to the injured the horror that I saw.

On the table lay a 16-year-old boy. His head was bandaged and bloody, his eyes swollen purple. Blood was coming from beneath the bandages and had puddled on the floor. He had many tubes already going into his body. He was still breathing.

I watched as four doctors worked quickly to hold together his shattered head. "His brains are outside," Yassir told me pointing to a large obtrusion under the blood soaked bandages. Someone was mopping the floor of blood as they kept rolling the bandages around him.

A news team arrived.

"Hallas," the head doctor said to all of us with cameras. `Enough.' I went outside the curtain and watched many doctors and assistants come and go with bandages, instruments, bottles, and towels.

"There is nothing they can do for this one," Yassir said as the doctors wheeled him into the operating room and closed the door.

Over the radio came another call and we headed back to Dheisheh.

Rather than take the straight main road between Dheisheh camp and the hospital, just a few miles apart, we took back roads to avoid confrontation with the tanks.

Entering the camp is no easy feat. The streets are narrow, barely enough for a vehicle. People step to the side and jump into doorways when vehicles pass.

We stopped at an intersection. Yassir received a call saying that the soldiers had entered the front of the camp. We waited for a clearance signal.

Three middle-aged women came to Yassir. One was crying, the other two shouted. He said something to them and they left, comforting the one who was crying.

"It's the boy's mother," he said, gesturing to his head to imply which boy. "She wants to go to the hospital to see him, but I don't think she should. What good will it do to see him? He is dead. I received the call that he is dead."

There were five injuries worthy of hospital attention from Dheisheh camp today. There will be one funeral tomorrow.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
[2] UPDATE FROM PENNY ROSENWASSER
As reported by Seth Schneider
July 1, 2002


Penny joined up a few days ago with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and is now part of a 10-person affinity group. (The affinity group calls itself Ohana, which means "leave no one behind" in Hawaiian. The affinity group is over 1/2 Jewish and 1/2 queer, they range in age from 23 to 61, and come from the U.S. and other countries.) Penny arrived Saturday, June 29 (?) in Ramallah, spent time in Al-Amri refugee camp, and is trying to head to Gaza. Details follow below.

GETTING TO RAMALLAH
It took Penny 3 hours to get to Ramallah. She didn't realize that her U.S. passport would allow her to go through the final checkpoint. So instead, she went with the Palestinians in a detour to avoid the checkpoint. They went up and down the mountains over very scary and sketchy backroads -- some of which seemed like no more than widened goat trails. She wasn't the only one who was scared by the drive, the Palestinian women in the van were scared too! The army had been shooting and they had to run up and down the mountain to get to the road before the army came back -- as the army had been blocking the road. She really felt what it was like to be a Palestinian in this case. (They were rushing to get to Ramallah because the curfew resumed at 2:00 PM. As it turned out, they made it with only a half hour to spare.

SITUATION IN RAMALLAH
Ramallah has been under curfew with tanks everywhere. When the curfew is lifted, everyone runs outside and the downtown is totally jammed. ISM members have been intentionally breaking curfew, saying that the law they follow is international law, so they have been able to move around much more than Ramallah residents. She's only seen a limited number of areas now but was told that a lot of the destruction has been cleaned up or is not visible as it is inside of the buildings. They have been stopped several times by
soldiers because of the curfew.

They are staying at the hospital in Ramallah at which people were buried in back several months ago during "Operation Defensive Shield". Soldiers would go through the ambulances near the hospital and try to search them, on the grounds of looking for some Palestinians who are wanted. Each night Penny and her group would take turns standing watch in case of a need to alert each other to an escalating situation by soldiers. While standing watch in the middle of the night, Penny spoke with several Palestinians. She told them about the work that Jewish groups in the U.S. have been doing, which these men hadn't heard about.

They also visited a rehabilitation center -- the only one in Palestine for people with spinal cord injuries. They saw men there who had been injured in Jenin, as well other cities. Some are permanently paralyzed, some are recovering, some are as young as 13. One man at the hospital, age 23, was helping his friend who was injured in the street. They brought him to the car, and they were shot by soldiers when they were in the car, this man was shot in the head and paralyzed. Another boy, 13-year old Husan, was hit from very far away by soldiers and paralyzed by a bullet to the spinal cord. Penny asked Husan what message he would like to send to the U.S. He said that although the Israelis say they're not targeting civilians, that this is not true -- given his own experience. Another man, who was farming his land in Nablus, was shot in the leg by settlers, who also uprooted 240 of his trees. He has been recovering there in the hospital for over 7 months.

AL-AMRI REFUGEE CAMP
Their plans to go to Gaza were delayed by a day when their driver was stopped by soldiers and with backroads closed and patrolled by soldiers. Help was needed in the Al-Amri Refugee Camp, where people were being arrested in the streets. When they arrived, the army had already arrested 100's of Palestinian boys and men, some of whom looked as young as 13. They saw them being held in fields under tents with their hands cuffed. ISM'ers kept a presence there and then went back to the camp and tried to intervene whenever they saw the soldiers trying to go into houses. One of the group's members saw soldiers using a Palestinian as a human shield and was able to stop that. Four Palestinians were arrested and then released at the camp (none of her group's members, though). The soldiers shot over the head of one of the members of Penny's group. Soldiers also accidentally pushed an 18.5-month old child down three flights of stairs, who is now in the hospital. Penny saw soldiers with sledgehammers, but doesn't know if they tried to break through people's homes. They did see one home with the door broken down.

Penny's group talked with the soldiers about refusing to serve and one of the soldiers -- in response to being told that "You should think about what you're doing" -- said "I think about it all the time. I don't like scaring women and children. Please don't go back in there -- there are stupid people doing stupid things [referring to soldiers]." Penny reports that it was all very intense and that her group was breaking curfew the whole time they were there.

Penny says that she now has a lot of experience with confronting lots of soldiers and talking to them. Many of the soldiers were polite and relatively mild with her group. Penny is also happy to report that her group was successful in managing to stay put when the soldiers tried to get them to leave.

HUWAIDA FOR PRESIDENT
Penny reports that Adam Shapiro (an American, and one of the ISM organizers) is spending most of his time trying to run Huwaida (a Palestinian-American, an ISM organizer, and his wife) for president of Palestine! Penny and her group have been with Huwaida much of the time and she found Huwaida to be an excellent model of how to deal with confrontations with soldiers.

Neta Golan (an Israeli-Canadian and ISM organizer) is in Nablus, which is a strong center of international resistance. There was a march and rally in Nablus a day or two ago (during curfew) which resisted the curfew and was very successful. Huwaida is also focusing on resisting curfew and is trying to organize the same type of Nablus action in Ramallah.

Arla and Wendy (members of the Bay Area-based A Jewish Voice for Peace) will be at a West Bank village for the next two weeks working at a children's camp.

Penny reports that she had a conversation with a Palestinian friend of hers who was very critical of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. She was blown away by his criticism -- he talked for two hours about the details of the corruption. The only part of Bush's recent speech that her friend liked was in regard to the P.A.'s corruption!

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GREEN LINE
Prior to coming to Ramallah, Penny spent a few days on the other side of the Green Line, in Israel. She went to one demonstration in Jerusalem of Women in Black, with about 50 protestors and about 20 counter-protestors (called Women in Blue and White). Penny was disturbed that the police gave the counter-protestors half of the space, even though they had far fewer people. The Women in Blue had signs like "Bush is Satan" and promoting the transfer of Palestinians out of Palestine. Women in Blue have taken the hamsa (sp?) sign (the symbol that Women in Black's uses to call for an end of the Occupation) and their revised version says "Stop the Palestinians from occupying the Land of Israel". Their other signs had pictures of people killed by suicide bombs and one read, "We came to Israel to live, not to evacuate."

On a positive note, Terry Greenblat said that Palestinian and Israeli women are really building a joint women's peace movement. This has really been happening in the last four months, which has been the worst time for both peoples. These women are working to build a culture of reconciliation and peace. Penny also notes that Rela Mazali of New Profile will be doing a training session for potential refuseniks next week, which she plans to attend.
____________________________________________________________________

Jewish Peace News (JPN) is a service provided by A Jewish Voice for Peace. JPN's editors are Adam Gutride, Amichai Kronfeld, Sarah Anne Minkin, Judith Norman, Mitchell Plitnick, Lincoln Shlensky, and Alistair Welchman. The opinions expressed by the editors and presented in the articles sent to this list are solely those of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of A Jewish Voice for Peace.

A Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is a San Francisco Bay Area grassroots organization dedicated to the human, civil and economic rights of Jews, Palestinians, and all peoples in the Middle East.

For more information about JVP, please visit our web site at http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

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posted by LoZo 7:20 PM

 

US favourite refuses to stand against Arafat
(Ewen MacAskill 7 Seumas Milne, The Guardian, July 2, 2002)
Mohammed Dahlan, the man widely regarded as the US and Israel's preferred successor to Yasser Arafat, today accuses President Bush of demanding a "coup d'�tat" against the Palestinian leader and declares that he will not stand against Mr Arafat while he is under attack by Israel. . . . Writing in the Guardian, Mr Dahlan says one result of Mr Bush's intervention is that the latest polls show nine out of 10 Palestinians would vote for Mr Arafat. "As long as the Israelis are against Arafat, I'm with him - whatever reservations I have about some of the decisions that have been made." . . . Mr Dahlan's conclusion supports the European view that Mr Bush made a misjudgment in his speech last week by targeting Mr Arafat. The speech opened a rift between the US and European countries, including Britain, which have said they will continue to work with Mr Arafat. . . .
Before Mr Bush's speech, Mr Dahlan and others had been quietly preparing for the succession. But such moves now appear to have been scuppered. Mr Dahlan said: "While the chairman is under siege, it would be wrong to criticise him - that would only serve Israel and America. There is no question of changing the leadership in these circumstances. If they try to expel or kill him - and anything is possible in the era of Bush and Sharon - they will come to regret it bitterly. Bush is now effectively demanding a coup d'�tat against Arafat, because the American administration says even if he is re-elected in new elections, it will not deal with him." . . . Mr Bush found himself isolated on the Arafat issue last week at the G8 summit in Canada . The Arab world is also uniting behind Mr Arafat.

posted by LoZo 6:59 PM