Israeli peace movement news roundup

This is a video of a demonstration against the Gaza war in Beit Jala, Israel, on 17 November 2012.

From The Other Israel:

The blog of Adam Keller

“Nothing has changed apart from more killing and more hatred”

Occupation Magazine  November 20, 2012.

Another entire family killed in Israeli airstrike Monday evening
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC – Monday evening’s attack hit the home of Foad and Amna Hijazi and their two children Suhaib and Muhammad. They were all killed instantly.

Cutting the fence at Ramat, West Bank
Hamde Abu Rahma – Activestills.org – Palestinian youths cut a section of Israel`s separation fence in the West Bank village of Ramat near Ramallah to protest against Israel`s military action on the Gaza Strip

To military prison, instead of Gaza – Conscientious Objector Natan Blanc
Moriel Rothman – The Leftern Wall – Four days after my own release from military jail, Natan Blanc, 19 years old from Haifa, has declared his intention to refuse service in the IDF: “From their point of view, there is nothing wrong with our initiating a “Cast Lead 2″ operation every three or four years (and then 3, 4,5 and 6): we will talk of deterrence, we will kill some terrorist, we will lose some civilians on both sides, and we will prepare the ground for a new generation full of hatred on both sides.”

Gaza live report: Day 7
Ma`an – 14:31 Ahmad al-Dada killed in new airstrike on Gaza City, according to Gaza health official. 14:29 A BBC reporter uploads an audio recording of a rocket fired at Jerusalem from central Gaza. 14:24 Update: Israeli police say rocket fired at Jerusalem landed in open area, no injuries reported. 14:20 Palestinian students protest outside Hebrew University in Jerusalem in solidarity with Gaza.

Live Blog: Day 7 of Gaza operation
Haaretz – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are expected to arrive in Israel on Tuesday, where they will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday. More than 60 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israel on Tuesday morning. The Palestinians reported that five people were killed in the Strip on Tuesday morning.

Israeli forces kill Palestinian in Hebron clashes – second casualty in West Bank `Gaza solidarity` protests
Ma`an – Hamdi Mohammad Jawwad Al-Falah, 22, from Hebron was shot four times during clashes in the Bir al-Mahjar neighborhood in western Hebron. Earlier Monday, 28-year old Rushdi Mahmoud Hassan al-Tamimi died of his wounds after being hit by live fire in the stomach and thigh during a Gaza solidarity demonstration in Nabi Saleh, on Saturday.

Israel`s `right to self-defense` – a tremendous propaganda victory
Amira Hass – Haaretz – The foreign ministries in the West and in the United States knowingly collaborate with the mendacious representation of Israel as victim. On November 8, two days before the attack on the holiest of holies – soldiers in a military jeep – they could have read about IDF soldiers killing 13-year old Ahmad Abu Daqqa, who was playing soccer with his friends in the village of Abassan, east of Khan Yunis. The soldiers were 1.5 kilometers from the kids, inside the Gaza Strip area, busy with “exposing” (a whitewashed word for destroying ) agricultural land. So why shouldn`t the count of aggression start with a child? On November 10, after the attack on the jeep, the IDF killed another four civilians, aged 16 to 19.

Can West Bank Palestinians find justice in court?
Yonah Jeremy Bob – Jerusalem Post – Doing real justice is impossible because the Palestinians are a conquered people. Often there is no right for Palestinians to demonstrate, noted Gabi Lasky at the Israel Bar Association conference in Tel Aviv. So even if the courts were fine, they can be trying Palestinians for action, like demonstrating, that should not be crimes in the first place.

Dozens of artists call for ceasefire and dialogue which will lead to a peace agreement.
Merav Yudilovitch – Ynet – “We have already assassinated terrorists and launched military operations, as well as invaded Gaza, and nothing has changed apart from more killing and more hatred.”

A selection of articles posted on earlier days

A Nobel Laureate on Israel`s Operation Cloud Pillar – Israel’s Gaza Attack: Not Defence But Murder of Unarmed Civilians
Mairead Maguire – CounterPunch – “The question on many people lips is; ‘When is the Israel government going to stop this bombing and continual wars and threat of war, against the Palestinians, and its neighbours, admit that there will be no military solution to the Palestinian Occupation, and begin to talk seriously with their enemies, in order to solve the problems for the sake of the Palestinians, Israelis, and indeed the whole of the middle east and world!’?”

Reporters Without Borders condemns Israeli strikes
Thomas Adamson, Associated Press – Yahoo!News – “The Israeli military said the strikes targeted Hamas ommunications equipment on the buildings` rooftops and accused the group of using journalists as `human shields.` Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, urged journalists to stay clear of Hamas bases and facilities”

Civilian death toll mounts in Gaza
AlJazeera and Agencies – Twelve Palestinians from one family killed in Israeli rocket attack in single biggest loss of life since crisis began

Let`s try something new
Gideon Levy–The Palestinians try three different approaches, weapons, diplomacy and nonviolent resistance, and Israel says no to all three. dn

REPORT FROM GAZA
Adie Mormech–I`m writing this from near the Gaza seaport from where I can see smoke rising around me from the bombs that fall down on the Gaza Strip from the Israeli planes above. Words fail me. Despite the limits to life from Israel`s five-year siege on Gaza some kind of normality is attempted in Gaza. How could it be any other way when the majority of the population are children, do parents and older siblings have any other option?dn

Israel’s Shortsighted Assassination
Gershon Baskin – New York Times – Mr. Jabari is dead — and with him died the possibility of a long-term cease-fire. Israel may have also compromised the ability of Egyptian intelligence officials to mediate a short-term cease-fire and placed Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt at risk. This was not inevitable, and cooler heads could have prevailed.

Refusing the Elections War
Sarah Anne Minkin–This morning, four social justice and anti-occupation groups—the Women’s Coalition for Peace, the Alternative Information Center, Yesh Gvul, and New Profile—placed a joint advertisement on the front page of Haaretz. The ad reads:

A Short Report from the Cave Dwellers Village of Tuba
The Villages Group–In the midst of sirens and bombs in our area as part of the recent war between Israel and Gaza, I received a telephone call from Hamed from Hebron asking if we are safe. Five minutes later we received a telephone call from Eid inviting us to come to Um el Khair in South Mount Hebron because it is safer there. “It is Thursday tomorrow” I told him, “and we come at any rate.”dn

Phoney truce may have lured Hamas man into open
Jeffrey Heller – Ma`an News Agency “In what now appears to have been a diversionary tactic, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak paid a visit to the Syrian frontier in the north, hours before the air offensive began in the south.-Jaabari may have been lulled into the open by public signals from Israel that a round of cross-border violence along the frontier in the past week had run its course.” ca

WATCH: Israelis protest military operation against Gaza
Video – +972 A demonstration took place Wednesday night place in front of Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s house in Tel Aviv, protesting the killing of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari and the launch of of ‘Operation Pillar of Defense.’ The demonstrators called for an end to the bloodshed and for dialogue between Israel and Hamas. A second demonstration will be held this evening (Thursday); see here for more details. By Israel Social TV.” ca “

Gaza escalation: There was another way
Dahlia Scheindlin – +972 “Just over one year ago, the Fatah leadership presented its statehood bid to the United Nations. Had Israel not blocked the effort hermetically – forcing America to kill the process by steadfastly viewing statehood as an anti-Israel notion, what might have happened?We can’t know. But Israel could have realized that Palestinian statehood basically along 1967 parameters was in its national interest.” ca

Netanyahu and Barak have decided to deliberately violate a cease-fire which had just been stabilized. Uri Avnery – Press Release – “At the price of great suffering on both sides of the border, the government`s aim has been accomplished: the social issues, which threatened to assume prominence in these elections, have been pushed aside and removed from the agenda of the elections campaign.-rh

Hamas says `gates of hell opened` as Israel kills military leader in Gaza
Harriet Sherwood – The Guardian – Most political figures in Israel endorsed the operation. The Labour leader, Shelly Yachimovich, said Israel was “united in its war against terrorism”. But Dov Hanin, of the leftwing Hadash party, condemned the killing . “In place of the leaders killed, others will grow, and we will only get another cycle of fire and blood,” he said.-rh

Is the Cat Out of the Bag on Israel?
Emily Johanson – Foreign Policy in Focus – In his latest book, Knowing Too Much: The American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to An End, veteran activist Norman Finkelstein argues that the growing international awareness of the Israeli occupation has heralded a perceptible shift among the U.S. Jewish community away from a close identification with Israel.-rh

Army Occupies School In Jenin
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC – “Israeli soldiers invaded, on Tuesday evening, a school east of Jenin city, in the northern part of the West Bank, and used it as a military post and monitoring tower.” – id

The limits of deterrence
Editorial – Haaretz – “Israel would be better off recognizing that the deterrence formula has limits and adopting the mechanism of informal agreements instead.” – id

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Crazy Country

 

Sirens and protests

http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com   (עברית)

TOI-Billboard – the ‘ezine’ of THE OTHER ISRAEL, a peace-oriented news service existing since 1983, editors Adam Keller & Beate Zilversmidt. The billboard includes relevant articles  from the Israeli mainstream press as well as alternative sources – mostly from what was collected in Occupation Magazine from within Israel/Palestine & from international media. You also find Adam Keller’s comments, in his Crazy Country blog. Since November 2009 there is no longer a bi-monthly printed issue. An archive of old issues covering 26 years of  peace movement struggles is under construction.

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