The Israeli Security Fence

by kokomero Thu Mar 25, 2004 13:22

"3.2.3 Palestinians Claim The Fence Is Nothing More Than A Land Grab.

Under Israeli law if a farmer cannot harvest or plant in his land for three consecutive seasons4 then the state of Israel receives the land. With the difficulty now faced by Palestinians trying to cross the barrier added to the fact that internment is regularly used by the Israelis (there are currently 1200 prisoners held in Israeli prisons without trial) then it often near impossible for farmers to get to their lands."

It seems that a concerted effort to plant and harvest on Palestinian lands by foreign activists will be required in order to prevent even more land being stolen from the Palestinians. In any case if the Israelis get away from this what's to prevent them from moving the fence progressively over the years in order to create more and more lebensraum at the expense of the Palestinians. This is truly sick behaviour by a cancerous racist state!

by Ali H. Thu Mar 25, 2004 13:43

Leading advocates of an academic boycott of Israel have stepped up their campaign calling for an "outing" of Israeli universities which support their government's policy on the occupied territories.

Nearly 300 academics from around the world have published an open letter calling for leaders of Israeli universities to lay their political cards on the table and reveal whether they support the government's policies on the border conflict.

One Israeli academic said the move echoed the days of "McCarthyism" in America.

The letter, which is addressed to Professor Menachem Magidor, president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and "members of Israel's forum to combat the academic boycott", says that Palestinian universities are being severely compromised. "Harassment, arrests, random shootings and assaults" are carried out regularly by Israeli troops on Palestinian campuses, it claims.

It goes on: "Given the destructive nature of Israeli government action against Palestinian education and academic freedom, and your simultaneous expression of concern for Israeli academic freedom in the face of the boycott, we feel that it is only fair to ask the Israeli academic leadership where it stands on the issue of current Israeli policy as described above, and to share with us what Israeli academic institutions are doing to challenge the behavior of your government."

The letter also calls for an international public debate to be held at an Israeli institution. Among the signatories, who hail from 12 countries including Israel, are Andre Brink, the South African novelist, Ronnie Kasrils, minister of water affairs and forestry of South Africa, and Hilary and Steven Rose who were among the first in the UK to call for the boycott. Mona Baker who caused a row after she sacked two Israeli academics from a journal she edited after signing the original petition two years ago is also on the list.

Hilary Rose said: "I'm hoping that this will re-open... and deepen the discussion of what is happening to the Palestinian academic system at every level - schools are shut, universities are shut, the military enter the campuses at will; it is a completely impossible situation."

"It's about outing Israeli academics and saying you can't actually pretend that this isn't going on."

She said that the recent assassination of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas's founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had "intensified" her belief in the boycott and added that they were calling for a public meeting so people could see that such a meeting would be impossible for Palestinian academics to attend in the current climate.

Professor Nachman Ben-Yehuda, of Hebrew University's sociology department, said that there was no formal forum discussing a response to the boycott, but that members of the university were monitoring the boycott and approaching individuals taking part in the boycott to discuss the issues. He said the letter harped back to the days of McCarthyism.

"I have no desire to go back to the days of McCarthy where people had to sign forms to say whether they were loyal or not.

"We should isolate this conflict [the border conflict] not escalate into other parts of public life. If people want to go against the government, that's fine, but what do they want from Israeli academia? Israeli academia is not the Israeli government."

He added: "Did such a letter go to Harvard to ask whether they support Bush in Iraq? If academics have to come out and say what they believe in why just Israel? Why shouldn't they ask the LSE [London School of Economics] if they support the Gulf war? Why just Israel?"

The debate over the academic boycott of Israel has raged for the past two years since two petitions, one calling for an out and out boycott and the other for a moratorium on EU research funding to Israel, were established. Further petitions opposing the boycotts have since gathered thousands of signatures.

by Ali H. Thu Mar 25, 2004 13:51

Increasingly, the world outside United States understands that Israel is not a 'normal' country. The Zionist movement sought to establish an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine, a land inhabited almost entirely by Palestinian Arabs in 1900. Since no people yet has been known to commit collective suicide, this could only be accomplished by conquest and ethnic cleansing. This is how Israel emerged in 1948, through conquest and ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians.

Yet this was not enough. Although Israel now sat on 78 percent of historic Palestine, this fell short of Zionist goals. In 1967 this shortfall was corrected when Israel, after defeating Egypt, Syria and Jordan, occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Another, smaller campaign of ethnic cleansing was rolled into this second round of conquests.

Although the Security Council promptly passed a resolution, calling for Israeli withdrawal from the territories it had occupied in 1967, this never had any teeth. Impressed by Israeli rout of Arab nationalist forces, United States deepened its partnership with Israel and promptly rewarded Israel by doubling its military and economic assistance.

As a result, thirty-five years later, Israel still remains in 'Occupation' of West Bank and Gaza. In reality, this Occupation is merely a fiction, a farcical cover under which Israel buys time, time which it uses to insert armed Israeli settlers, to increase Israeli control and ownership of Palestinian lands, to push the Palestinians into ever shrinking enclaves, to escalate the violence against Palestinian resistance, and to deepen the misery of Palestinian lives till they can be forced to flee their homes.

The logic of the Occupation is brutal, and it should be transparent to all but the purblind. If Palestinian demography prevents annexation, and if Palestinians cannot be expelled in one fell swoop-as they had been in 1948-then the same results can still be achieved by forcing the Palestinians into Bantustans. If a million Palestinians can live in Gaza, a strip of 100 square miles, the two million in West Bank can be pushed into similar enclaves, freeing 90 percent of the West Bank for Jewish settlers. It is about time that we gave up the fiction of the Occupation, and describe this oppressive regime by its proper name. This is Aparthied: one country with two systems of laws, one for the colonizers and one for the colonized.

I have two objectives in rehearsing, though ever so briefly, this narrative of Palestinian dispossession. First, it is a narrative that has been denied repeatedly and falsified massively by Zionists. It therefore needs to be affirmed, simply and forcefully, again and again, in the expectation that world conscience will bear witness to the Zionist project of wiping out the Arab presence from Palestine to make room for Jewish settlers.

Once this narrative is affirmed; once it becomes clear that the destruction of Palestinians was necessary-and always known to be necessary and accepted as necessary-for Israel to emerge as an exclusive Jewish state; once it is admitted that the dispossession of Palestinians has involved wars, ethnic cleansing, massacres, villages destroyed, cities besieged, homes demolished, children maimed and killed, prisoners tortured, ambulances bombed, journalists targeted, municipal records destroyed, and trees uprooted; once all this destructiveness-already accomplished, and more of it unfolding everyday-is recognized the protestations about the "destructiveness" or "ugliness" of an academic boycott of Israel become insupportable, indeed unconscionable.

by Eoin Thu Mar 25, 2004 15:33

Here's a petition calling on the Irish Government to do more to oppose the wall.

by Bystander Thu Mar 25, 2004 17:14

Check out the photo and article on page 12 of today's Irish Times. If you had kids like this being used against you, you'd build a bloody wall too!

by kokomero Thu Mar 25, 2004 18:25

for building the wall has much more to do with lebensraum than keeping out suicide bombers. The presence of the wall in itself guarantees nothing and merely serves as a goad to Palestinians. The sooner the Israelis withdraw to the pre-1967 borders and comply with all outstanding UN resolutions the better for them and for the Palestinians.

by avi H. Thu Mar 25, 2004 20:52

trotting out the usual rubbish: complete distortions and canned histories which are about as close to reality as Pluto is to Earth.

by Northern Eye Thu Mar 25, 2004 21:46

Avi, all you can do is attack with twisted lies and crappy one sentence anwsers. How about trying to tell us why you are a racist fascist and explaining your Nazi beliefs to us all instead of just replying with these idiotic, empty denials of Israeli terror and and bullying.

It seems all right wingers are fucking imbeciles who can only shout the loudest to get their way.

by Joe le Taxi Fri Mar 26, 2004 00:10

CRH plc is benefiting from the construction of the land grab wall. You can write to the CRH directors to express your opinion of their activities. They are:

Daniel Godson, Island View, Nerano Road, Dalkey, Co. Dublin
Brian Hill, Ringdijk 14, 3054 KW, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Thomas Hill, 9550 North Avalanche Canyon Drive, Jackson, Wyoming 83001 USA
David Kennedy, 20 Herbert Park, Donnybrook, Dublin 4
Howard Kilroy, Rarc an Ilan, 22 Coliemore Road, Dalkey, Co. Dublin
Kieran McGowan, 5 Cairn Hill, Foxrock, Dublin 18
Patrick Molloy, Colwyn, Kilteragh Drive, Foxrock, Dublin 18
Anthony O’Brien, 1 Ardglas, Sandyford Road, Dublin 16
William O’Mahony, Were-Di, Carrickbrack Road, Sutton, Dublin 13
Wilhelmus Roef, Dopperlaan 5, 5691 GS SON, Netherlands
Henry Sheridan, Flagstaff Hill, Glenalua Road, Killiney, Co. Dublin
John Wittstock, 2110 Northwick Pass Way, Alpharetta, GA 30022, USA

The companies registration office on Parnell Square can provide information on directors and shareholders of any company in return for a small fee. Ask for the last B1 return of the company concerned.

by another sticky brickie Fri Mar 26, 2004 00:39

Stamp it with cheapest stamp.

by kokomero Fri Mar 26, 2004 11:45

Avi avoids defending the indefensible and in order to deflect attention attacks those who expose his state for the criminal state that it is rather than question his beliefs.

Accusations of anti-semitism and emotional outbursts are simply a part of his repertoire of defenses and are water off a ducks back to people who've been on the receiving end of such smears in the past.

Really Avi prefers to let his Galil do the talking like 80% of Israelis while he participates in the butchery of Palestinians and innocent bystanders if need be.

Of course he and his like have the aprons of mother America to hide behind when the going gets tough as we saw yesterday.

The Palestinians have no such protection from the daily onslaught they face apart from a few brave ISM activists who've been shot and killed for their trouble by the Israelis.

Protection from Eurpoe for the Palestinians is absent and as long as there is no protection there will be no hope, and with no hope there is no future and with no future it is hardly surprising that Palestinians are queueing up to have a go at their oppressors.

Was the Kuwaiti resistance right to fight against the Iraqis? Were the Irish wrong to rid themselves of their colonial oppressors? Were the native indians right to fight back agains the US cavalry? Were those in the Warsaw ghetto who fought back against the Nazis wrong to do so?

For decades we non-Israelis have paid a high price in terms of instability and terrorism born out of the arrogance of the Israeli state and its refusal to allow Palestinians to return to their homes or to deal with them in any sort of negotiations.

Instead the Israelis preferred to attack Palestinian camps in Jordan and Lebanon leading to civil wars in both countries, and destabilising all of the others.

Did the Israelis seriously think they could march in and grab the Palestinians land with no repercussions?

Israel both promotes and thrives on the inaction on the part of the West and it is the political vacuum that has been filled by Israeli and Palestinian terror.

Every minute we wait is a minute that can be used to build settlements, and disposess Palestinians of their land on the pretext of security for the Israelis which they contrive to maintain in a perilous state by their criminal assassinations and barbarous repression of Palestinians and criminal persecution of Israeli Muslims.

It is about time Europe started to use its economic muscle against the Israelis to force them to the table as it did with the Serbs in Kosovo whose barbarism pales into insignificance when compared to the Israelis treatment of the Palestinians for over half a century.

Boycott Israel, even you can make your non-violent contribution to Palestinian human-rights!

by streek Fri Mar 26, 2004 17:22

An academic boycott is foolish, offensive and certainly does smack of McCarthyism. Israeli academia is completely justified in resisting this attempt at a coerced moral compulsion.

No, what is required now is full UN sanctions against the state of Israel. And if the sanctions dont work, or if they are going too slow, (or if our trigger fingers are getting just that wee bit itchy), lets just go in!

Sharon is killing his own people. He is a clear and present threat to his neighbours, all of whom Israel has attacked in the past. If he doesnt give up his illegal weapons of mass destruction a militarily effected regime change must follow.

Thats how we do things now, isnt it?

by ? Fri Mar 26, 2004 17:39

your mathematics are flawed.

by streek Fri Mar 26, 2004 17:54

?....yeah, I know, a bit embarrassing, really, dont let on, will you? (oh, yeah, just in case you hadnt noticed, I think your 'dasein' is showing).