11 days of war crimes in gaza

khalil bendib's latest

it’s unbelievable really. i literally just shut down my computer to go to my friend mohammad’s house. he lives about 10 minutes away from my other friend’s house where i stay when i’m in amman. i had just finished blogging about last night’s israeli terrorist attack on an unrwa school where 13,000 palestinians, many of whom are already refugees from jewish (there were no israelis until 1948) terrorists’ ethnic cleansing operations during an nakba, who had fled their homes because of israeli terrorists’ murderous rampages had forced them to flee and because they are locked in the gaza concentration camp, they sought shelter in unrwa schools. this is not uncommon: when the lebanese army (in cahoots with saudi arabia and the united states) destroyed nahr el bared refugee camp in lebanon where did most palestinian refugees flee to (many of whom fled the lebanese forces attacks on tel al za’atar refugee camp in 1976 and also an nakba in 1948)? they fled to unrwa schools in other palestinian refugee camps in lebanon. the united nations, like hospitals, the media, ambulances are supposed to be protected. under international law, under international rules of war you do not target repeatedly such sites. and yet year after year the zionist regime does just that. look at their record it is not difficult to see the piles of evidence. and yet they did it again: now israeli terrorists have targeted not 1, not 2, but 3 unrwa schools–united nations schools–with palestinian internally displaced people (idps) fleeing from war seeking refuge inside.

where is the outrage over these clear violations of the geneva conventions? of international law? of humanity?

there are now 660 palestinian martyrs. there are now 2,950 palestinians injured, many in critical condition. 214 of these palestinians who were killed are children; 89 are women.

Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians at a UN school that was sheltering displaced people in Jabaliya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip late on Tuesday afternoon.

John Ging, Director of Operations in Gaza of UNRWA, said that 30 people died and 55 others were injured when three Israeli artillery shells landed at the perimeter of the school.

Ma’an spoke with witnesses who saw two shells exploding at the school. Medical officials at Gaza hospitals said 42 were killed.

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli military onslaught had taken shelter in the school.

Witnesses reported ambulances and private cars evacuating the dead and wounded, some of whom appeared to have been blown to pieces. Many women and children are said to be among the dead. Hundreds of people were reported to be in the area of the school at the time of the shelling.

Ma’an’s reporter said that dozens more, all civilians, were injured in the attack on the Al-Fakhoura School. The death toll is expected to rise as a number of the wounded are said to be in critical condition. Ambulances were initially unable reach the school.

The school is operated by UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA has been using its schools to house some of the 15,000 Gazans who have fled their homes due to Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, which began on Saturday.

UNRWA says it handed over the GPS coordinates of all UN installations throughout the Gaza Strip to the Israeli military. The school was clearly marked as a UN facility.

Earlier on Tuesday, the United Nations confirmed that three refugees had been killed at 11:30 on Monday night when Israeli forces fired directly on a UNRWA school in Gaza City.

According to the UN, Another UNRWA school also came under fire in the city of Rafah. An UNRWA health clinic in Al-Bureij Refugee Camp was also damaged when an Israeli missile hit an adjacent building, injuring ten medics and patients.

“There’s nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized,” said John Ging, the top UN official in Gaza. He also said that people in Gaza are “entitled” to action by the international community to stop the Israeli invasion.

“I am appealing to political leaders here and in the region and the world to get their act together and stop this,” he said, speaking at Gaza’s largest hospital. “They are responsible for these deaths.”

ma’an news gives you a good overview of the facts. israeli terrorist newspapers like ynet, however, offer a great counterpoint to show you not only how they spin their propaganda, but also how they do this to justify the outright murder, massacre of civilian populations in a united nations facility–layer upon layer of war crimes. but the united states chimed in with complicity in these attacks with their weapons, rationalizing, legitimizing the slaughter of innocent civilians by repeating israeli terrorist propaganda that hamas uses human shields (when in reality it is israeli terrorists who nightly kidnap youth in the west bank and force them out of their houses as they make their nightly kidnapping rampages using these youth as human shields–i have a number of students who have told me harrowing stories about their experiences being forced to be human shields for israeli terrorists):

Dana Perino, spokeswoman for the White House, said: “I saw the reports about the school. I don’t have any information about that. I think that we should not jump to conclusions and we should wait to find out what the evidence says.

“What we do know is that Hamas often hides amongst innocents and uses innocent people, including children, as human shields.”

if you would like a truthful representative of what happened here is the report from al jazeera:

and here is unrwa’s john ging making strong statements about how palestinians in gaza are terrorized and holding the international community responsible for its inaction:

a reminder, as i mentioned earlier today, the israeli terrorist forces had all of the gps coordinates for all of the united nations facilities in gaza thereby rendering it a targeted attack:

Three members of the same Palestinian family were killed whilst taking shelter in a United Nations school designated as a temporary refuge from the violence on Monday night, the UN told Ma’an.

But well before the current fighting, the UN says it had given Israeli authorities the GPS coordinates of all its installations in Gaza, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency school, which was struck by an Israeli missile on Monday.

“These tragic incidents need to be investigated, and if international humanitarian law has been contravened, those responsible must held accountable,” said UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory Maxwell Gaylard in a statement.

“There are no safe places to flee. We call on all parties to uphold international humanitarian law and protect civilians,” he added.

israeli terrorists not only assault refugees fleeing the fighting–albeit limited fleeing as they are enclosed in a concentration camp (what is that line in israeli terrorist propaganda about jews always worried about being pushed into the sea? what exactly are the israeli terrorists doing right now?)–they also assault the medical workers, ambulances, medical clinics and facilities trying, desperately to care for the wounded:

The Chair of the Palestinian Health Care Committees, Nihal Al-Akhras, called on the international community and human rights groups to pressure Israel to stop firing on medical facilities and workers in the Gaza Strip, a day after the Committees’ offices were destroyed.

Al-Akhras said that Ad-Dura Hospital was bombarded, and that a building in the Ar-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City the Health Care Committees was completely destroyed. Three mobile clinics provided by a Danish aid agency were also destroyed.

He said that the world must place pressure Israel to comply with the Geneva conventions governing the conduct of war.

According to DanChurchAid, which donated the mobile clinics, the vehicles were parked by the Union of Healthcare headquarters and all were clearly marked with red crosses and the marked “Mobile Clinic.”

“We’ve been able to help the wounded and suffering so far, because our vehicles have been present and ready inside Gaza. This possibility of emergency aid is now in ruins. We are deeply shocked that the Israeli air strikes directly prevent the humanitarian aid effort.”, says Henrik Stubkjær, Secretary General of DanChurchAid.

and here is a report that includes statements about these attacks on the medical sector from the international red cross:

Meanwhile the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has declared a “full-blown humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, said it is investigating reports that a Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) ambulance station in Jabaliya refugee camp was targeted Monday night.

In an earlier attack last Friday, the ICRC reported that two clearly marked ambulance medics from the PRC, evacuating the dead and wounded from an earlier Israeli attack, were targeted by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) fire.

The paramedics were wearing fluorescent jackets and their ambulances had flashing lights visible from a considerable distance.

“I have no doubt that one missile was aimed at us. I do not know for certain whether it was meant to kill us or warn us to keep away, but it was definitely aimed in our direction,” said Palestinian ambulance driver Khaled Abu Saada.

Sammy Hassan, a spokesman from Shifa Hospital said in the last week that four ambulance personnel had been killed in Israeli strikes. “One was a doctor and the other three were medics. We are very worried about our ambulance staff,” Hassan told IPS.

for readers interested in really understanding the origins of terrorism in the region: it began when the jews started to colonize palestine (again, i am using the word jew here because there were no israelis then). angry arab offers a very small and partial listing of such key events, though there are hundreds, if not thousands more over the last sixty-one years:

Origins of Terrorism in the Middle East

Who Started Terrorism in the Arab-Israeli Conflict?

Bombs in Cafes: first used by Zionists in Palestine on March 17th, 1937 in Yaffa.
Bombs on Buses: first used by Zionists in Palestine Aug. 20th-Sep. 26, 1937.
Bombs in Market Places: first used by Zionists on July 6th, 1938 in Haifa.
Bombing of Hotels: first used by Zionists on July 22nd, 1946 in Jerusalem.
Bombing of Foreign Embassies: first used by Zionists on October 1st, 1946 in Rome (against the British).
Mining of Ambulances: First used by Zionists on October 31st, 1946 in Petah Tikvah.
Letter Bombs: first used by Zionists in June 1947 against British targets in UK.

(for documentation, consult The Arab Women’s Information Committee and The Institute for Palestine Studies, Who Are the Terrorists? Aspects of Zionist and Israeli Terrorism, (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1972).

this is why people must organize to make the israeli terrorist state a pariah state by halting all forms of normalization with israel NOW. some people–clearly not americans, clearly not american academics–are on this now. in canada, for instance, in response to this caranage a bold new proposal has been drafted:

Ontario’s largest university workers’ union is proposing a ban on Israeli academics teaching in the province’s universities, in a move that echoes previous attempts to boycott goods and services from the Jewish state.

The resolution, proposed by CUPE’s Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee, is in protest against a Dec. 29 bombing that damaged the Islamic University in Gaza.

“In response to an appeal from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, we are ready to say Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the university bombing and the assault on Gaza in general,” said Sid Ryan, president of CUPE Ontario.

in a smaller gesture today, but one no less important (recall the significance of the sports boycott during apartheid south africa!) turkey halted a basketball game between israeli terrorists and turkey:

A basketball game between a Turkish and an Israeli team was suspended on Tuesday after Turkish fans erupted in protests against the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, Turkish media reported.

A referee suspended the game between Turk Telekom and Bnei Hasharon, part of a European basketball championship, and ordered the players back to the dressing room after hundreds of Turkish fans began chanting “Israel, killers!” in an Ankara sports centre, SkyTurk broadcaster reported.

and…of course, you gotta love hugo chavez. always. the man has cajones. while i heard that mauritania did the same today, coming from venezuela means so much more and i hope both of these countries’ attempts at halting normalization with the zionist terrorist regime has a tremendous domino effect around the world:

Venezuela has expelled the ambassador to Israel in protest over the offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 500 Palestinians, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

and here is what chavez had to say about the zionist terrorist regime today, a regime that is imprisoning 1.5 million palestinians and slaughtering them every day:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday called Israel’s offensive in Gaza a Palestinian “holocaust” and said the presidents of Israel and the United States should be tried in international court.

“The Holocaust, that is what is happening right now in Gaza,” Chavez said in televised comments. “The president of Israel at this moment should be taken to the International Criminal Court together with the President of the United States.”

carlos latuff

and the rhetoric from jordan seems to be continuing on a path that suggests the same–god i hope!–will happen in jordan. king abdullah gave a speech tonight and spoke on al jazeera and used language such as “there is a conspiracy against the palestinians” and i suspect we can see the zionist terrorist ambassador to jordan leaving very soon. and don’t let the door hit you on your way out! it is such a hopeful possibility that i must cling to so that these martyrs who have been massacred in gaza do not die in vain. people in jordan are really motivated, getting out and doing things, even people who are not normally activists. people are forming new networks and trying to create change here. and the protests here are unprecedented, especially that the government even allows them to happen in the first place. there is also a tremendous relief operation going on, though it does not seem to be coordinated among the people. the blood bank refrigerators seem to be full and i don’t think blood has been taken to gaza yet. however, it seems that the hashemite kingdom has been getting some of its aid into gaza. though israeli terrorists seem to have an odd secret list about what they will and will not let in–which they do not inform people of here who are collecting the aid. for instance, goods made in syria or iraq are forbidden. as are used blankets; israeli terrorists are only allowing brand new blankets into gaza it seems. so jordanian activists are having to deal with figuring out what can and cannot go in. of course, if jordan kicks out the israeli terrorist ambassador its aid convoys will likely be forbidden to enter, at least through 1948 palestine. but i would argue that the larger good: halting all normalization in order to liberate palestine completely is for the larger good. this is the more important way to go. the moral way to go. doing so honors the steadfastness and patience of the palestinian people who will remain, who will not allow this to be another nakba as fida’ qishta writes about um muhammad, who just lost her sons by israeli terrorists:

“We are nine in the family, I have five daughters and three sons, I lost two and now we are seven including me and their Dad.”

“It’s true that I lost two of my sons but when I see other people’s misery I feel that my misery is small.”

“I’m like any person living here. I could die any night, killed by an Israeli attack. They just attack the area. I could be killed, who knows. I will die today or tomorrow or now. All the Palestinians here are threatened. I say every day, tomorrow I could die.”

“They want us to leave our homes, but it is in their dreams. They are wrong. We will not leave our homes. We will always stay here. It will not be like the 1948 war. We will stay in our homes, and we prefer to die in our homes. It’s an honor to die in our country rather than to escape. They will not evacuate our land and take it. They occupied our land and they came to us. Why did they come to us? We didn’t go to their homes but they came to ours. I don’t know what they want from the Palestinian people, or why they occupied us? We are strong in our faith, and God will always help us.”

experiment in return

so i am loving watching these images on al jazeera of illegal israeli settlers being removed from their homes. i love watching this. it is a beautiful sight to see. but the problem is that these settlers are just going to be removed to some other part of palestine–albeit probably in 1948 palestine–where they will still be settlers. perhaps not regarded as “illegal’ by international law as most of the world regards those living in west bank cities like khalil. it would be better to move them back where they came from–to expel them. in any case, for now they’ve been “expelled” or “evicted” back to 1948 palestine:

Israeli riot police today dragged hundreds of militant Jewish settlers from a disputed house in the city of Hebron, in the first major such eviction on the West Bank for more than two years.

Security forces used teargas as they surrounded the three-storey property set on a hillside in a Palestinian district of Hebron. The settlers responded by throwing rocks and eggs.

It took the police about an hour to carry the more than 200 settlers from the house, each dragged away by teams of four officers. Around 20 people were injured, ambulance staff said, although most were not seriously hurt.

but what this report leaves out is that after they left the remaining illegal settlers–numbering in the thousands (see map above for demographics of illegal settlements in the west bank–who went on a rampage attacking palestinians violently until a couple of hours ago. in order to know this you must read palestinian media, apparently:

The evacuation touched off violent settler attacks across the West Bank.

Witnesses said that there are Palestinian families “who are besieged in their homes” that were set on fire by Israeli settlers, while the Israeli army prevented Palestinian medics from reaching the homes. Ten Palestinians were reported injured as a result of the army’s inaction.

Settlers have repeatedly attacked Palestinian homes in the city over the past few days. Prior to the evacuation, Israeli settlers fired randomly at Palestinian homes. Settlers set fire to two Palestinian homes and a store, later attacking a number of residents in the Wadi Hussein area of Hebron.

Haj Mohamad Abu Aisha, a resident of Tel Rumeida, said that settlers in the Ramaat Yesahi outpost chased children in the area and hurled stones at their homes. No injuries were reported there.

Mohamad Naser Ad-Din, a resident of the same area, said that dozens of settlers who were accompanied by the army attacked residents’ homes with tear gas canisters and rubber-coated bullets. Cases of inhalation injuries were reported.

A child identified as Amal Al-Muhtaseb sustained bruises, along with her father, Abed-Ar Ra’uf, when they were attacked by settlers near the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque. Settlers also set fire to a Palestinian fire vehicle that was on the scene in Hebron.

illegal settlers also decided to go on a rampage and attack palestinians near nablus tonight. elsewhere they continued their rampage in other ways:

Settlers graffitied racist slogans about Islam and the Muslim Prophet Mohammad on buildings in the West Bank villages of Azzun, An-Nabi Elyas, Kafr Laqif, Jinsafut, Immatin and Al-Funduq east of Qalqilia on Thursday.

an op-ed in ha’aretz today named this what it is: jewish terrorism.

It is difficult to fathom the way Israeli politics and society were seduced into turning a blind eye toward the growing Jewish terrorism. Ever since the heads of the Jewish underground were released as part of a shady deal, this trend, which was given the deceptive term “wayward weeds,” has continued. Under the hypocritical umbrella of “national unity” and the self-righteous threat of “a rift in the nation,” the rampaging has become the norm, a daily routine. The settlers utter profanities, spit, beat, sow ruin and destruction, while the army turns a blind eye in the best-case scenario and takes part in the worst.

while certainly the illegal settler violence is absolutely jewish terrorism, what the problem is with such naming is that it is done in ways that obfuscate the state terrorism of the israeli military, which also occurs on a daily basis. this, too, is terrorism. it’s state terrorism, but it is terrorism nonetheless. moreover, it makes a distinction between those who are called “settlers” and those who are not called settlers. but all israelis are settlers. they have colonized and continue to colonize palestine. this is settler colonialism like any other.

my dear friend sami last week talked to me about al kurd family in al quds. he feels that this should be the source of a new struggle here. for him it is like many people i know from al quds–they feel like they are forgotten in this struggle. like al quds is forgotten–particularly the people because it is looked at as a holy space rather than a place where real people live, where real people are from, where real people should be allowed to return to. but for me it isn’t and it shouldn’t be about al quds. i think that this struggle that is ongoing, the struggle of the al kurd family, should be used as symbolic of all palestinians not only in gaza and the west bank, but also of those in 1948 who face similar issues all the time with respect to not being allowed to build, to move, to own property in their own land. here is recent news about the al kurd family:

The Kurd family is again making news after being forcibly expelled from their home in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Now Um Kamal Al Kurd intends to return to her original home in West Jerusalem with a massive nonviolent action planned for Thursday.

Last month the family moved to a tent nearby which Israeli forces destroyed three times. It became a beacon of popular resistance with hundreds of people sitting-in in solidarity.

The father, Abu Kamal, died in a Jerusalem hospital after being evicted from the home he lived in since the 1950s when Jordan and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency created the neighborhood housing. The Kurd family was among thousands of East Jerusalem residents driven from their West Jerusalem homes by Zionists in 1948.

Um Kamal is working to return to her original home in West Jerusalem with the support of a group of activists from civil society and human rights organizations. On Thursday the Coalition for Jerusalem will demand her full return.

Today Um Kamal said that she has been expelled twice, and as such will return to her original home. The Coalition for Jerusalem wrote in a statement Wednesday, “Um Kamal Al Kurd was expelled by the Israeli occupying authorities for the second time at dawn on Thursday, 9 November 2008. The Israeli occupying forces were heavily armed and surrounded the Kurd family home in Sheikh Jarrah. They expelled the family from their home and this is the second time to expel the entire family. The first time was in 1948.”

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood houses were built by the Jordan authority and the UNRWA to accommodate until return the 28 families who were taken from their homes in 1948. Among them are original residents of Jaffa, Ramle and West Jerusalem. Um Kamal Al Kurd says she will no longer wait for the implementation of United Nations Resolution 194, the Right of Return. She will go home now.

there is a petition you can sign to support the al kurd family on a website that has been named, appropriately, “thou shalt not steal.” and what is important, i think, about this solidarity for the al kurd family returning to the part of al quds that they originally come from is that is sets a precedent for the right of return. this is key. but i think it should be done with the mindset that we want this to be an action to be emulated by all palestinians, not just to benefit those in al quds.

the same is true for people in gaza, so many of whom are refugees. who are about to welcome eid al adha with no cooking gas. who are apparently only allowed to have 40 more trucks of goods inside gaza after days of closure. and now the banks have shut down because money seems to be forbidden as well. sameh habeeb has a beautiful piece in electronic intifada today describing what this feels like in gaza:

This writer asked an old friend of his, a young mother named Um Muhammad Abu Ouf, how her family has been affected by the siege. As darkness descended upon Gaza City’s Omar al-Muktar Street, she replied, “The siege has become a daily nightmare, day and night. Electricity cuts off and that frightens my 11-month-old infant. It makes conditions unsafe for him. Further, I’m trying to get some fortified food for him. I went to many stores and shops but in vain. I could not find any food nor necessary supplies for my son as there is a shortage of a lot of the basic products needed to care for infants, such as milk, diapers and so forth.”

Meanwhile, Nahed Deeb, who feared that famine looms near, was similarly frustrated: “We are slowly dying and no one is taking action. I lost my work eight years ago and I’m dependent on irregular aid. This is applicable to hundreds of thousands in normal circumstances. Nevertheless, poor people like me are no longer getting any kind of support.”

of course some people are trying to take action, but the zionist regime won’t allow ships in any longer, it would seem. though new ships are on their way and insha’allah they will be allowed in. fortunately, the united nations security council is taking up the issue of the zionists not allowing the libyan ship into gaza.

AND below you will find a very important petition to sign and send to the united nations to encourage them to act on the important naming of israel as an apartheid state and to call for official boycott, sanctions, and divestment. hopefully kicking israel out of the united nations for its hundreds of violations will shortly follow.

what moderate looks like

Anyone who wonders about the influence of the Israel lobby on American media or on U.S. foreign policy needs to watch the documentary Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land. It’s an older film, but unfortunately still applies. I’m posting it here for people who want to watch it to see what happens in the world of U.S. media and mis-information:

I’ve been thinking about this film again, partially because of the continued, incessant attacks on Rashid Khalidi. Fox News’ Sean Hannity has led the pace, but there are others, too. One particularly offensive article by Mona Charen in the Washington Times is not only offensive, it’s a terrific example of an American journalist who gets away with publishing false information under the guise of facts:

“Twenty-three-year old Ibrahim Abu Jayyab sits by the computer in the Nusairat refugee camp (in the Gaza Strip) trying to call American citizens in order to convince them to vote for the Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama.”

Like many Palestinians, Abu Jayyab is excited about the prospect of an Obama presidency. (By the way, the Gaza Strip is completely under the control of Hamas. Why then do they persist in speaking of “refugee camps”? But of course, we know why.) If Abu Jayyab and many others in the Palestinian areas are delighted, why are so many American Jewish voters feeling the same way? One side or the other has the wrong man. Which is it?…

Many politicians have distanced themselves from positions and associations of their youths. But in Mr. Obama’s case, he is distancing himself from positions staked out as recently as 2003. As National Review Online has reported, the Los Angeles Times is apparently sitting on a videotape showing Mr. Obama’s remarks at a farewell dinner that year for Rashid Khalidi, the one-time Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman who now heads the Middle East Studies Department at Columbia. (Columbia University’s shame is a subject for another column.) Mr. Khalidi is not distancing himself from his past.

Consistent with what you would expect from someone who justified PLO attacks on civilians in Israel and Lebanon from 1976 to 1982, Mr. Khalidi routinely refers to Israel as a “racist” and “apartheid” state, and professes to believe in a “one-state” solution to the conflict. Guess which country would have to disappear for that “one” state to come into existence?

I don’t even know where to begin. Gaza is controlled by the Zionist state of Israel. It controls its land, air, and sea borders. It controls what and who is allowed to leave and when. It assassinates leaders and civilians alike. It destroys homes, murders Palestinians with impunity. Yes, Hamas is the political party attempting to rule Gaza: but how exactly does one rule an area that is not a state, that is besieged by a state? The most offensive part of this article comes when she puts refugee camps in scare quotes to challenge their very existence. Of course, she can’t explain why she does this because it’s just plain factually inaccurate and deeply offensive as to deny the existence of Palestinian refugees is to deny the history and present Zionist project of ethnic cleansing. This is all a lead in to her attack on Obama vis-a-vis Rashid Khalidi. As with her claims about Gaza and Palestinian refugees, her claims about Khalidi are also erroneous. It usually follows that when you are deceitful about one claim you cannot be trusted with any other claims that you make.

Vijay Prashad, however, had an excellent piece in Counterpunch on the smear campaign of Khalidi as he shows how Sarah Palin’s team confused Khalidi with Edward Said in the claims she leveled against Khalidi and Obama:

Palin’s staff seem to be sloppy readers. Obama, we are told, did toast Khalidi at his going-away party in 2003. So far so good. Having seen the name Khalidi and Edward Said in the same sentence, the Palin team assumed they were the same person. But, it was Said, and not Khalidi, who played an active organizational role in the Palestinian struggle. Between 1977 and 1991, Said was a member of the Palestinian National Council, but not of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (the slippage is made all too often). The PNC was a general, all-party council of a people in the middle of a struggle, not like the PLO, which was an umbrella of various political parties headed by al-Fatah (whose leader in those years was Yasser Arafat, later a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace). Said broke with the PNC in 1991, just about when he was in Chicago for his talk. He would point out that the PLO, which had usurped the reins of the Palestinian struggle, lost ground during the Oslo discussions because of which it “lacked credibility and moral authority” (his voluminous writings that detail this break are collected in The Politics of Dispossession, 1994, Peace and Its Discontents, 1996, and The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, 2000). Said also received his diagnosis about leukemia in 1991. It was a fateful year.

Khalidi, whose name Palin could not pronounce, was born in New York. He is an intellectual with a moral commitment to peace and justice in the Middle East. His main organizational commitments don’t include the PLO, which, in the period of Khalidi’s ascent into the higher altitudes of the academy, was already in impervious decline. Nothing the New Yorker could say or do would help the festering Palestinian Authority, and neither would Khalidi give his voice to being the puppet of al-Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas or Farouk Kaddoumi (if anything, the politics of Khalidi might line up with those of Marwan Barghouti of al-Mustaqbal, but Khalidi’s intellectualism might not be the disposition for the jailed leader).

Where might this disinformation be emanating from? Well if you watched the above video you will begin to have some idea. Or if you read an earlier post where I talked about Hannity’s libelous program about Obama’s “radical friends” you may know the answer given that Daniel Pipes is featured so prominently in it. Pipes’ McCarthyite, witch hunting website, Campus Watch, currently features Khalidi on its front page. And one of its racist writers and activists, Cinnamon Stillwell has an article regurgitating these false claims about Khalidi in American Thinker (also posted on the Campus Watch website).

This is the same distorted, offensive and libelous material we hear on Hannity’s program. Here is an example of it:

Apparently my fellow Los Angelenos are upset about one of the core issues in this story: McCain and Hannity and other neocon, racist people in the public eye want the Los Angeles Times to release some video footage of a dinner where Obama was with Khalidi and Bill Ayers. There is also a video of this which interviews some American Jewish terrorists at the newspaper protest:

Notice the Jewish terrorist woman in this clip; she is from the organization with the oxymoronic name (a pattern with various Zionist militant organizations), the Jewish Defense League (JDL). The JDL has been on the U.S. terrorist watch list for quite some time. Here are some of its terrorist activities right in the U.S. of A. (Note to Palin: these are actual terrorists if you’re looking for the home grown variety.) Here is one example of their work:

The two terrorist plots prevented by law enforcement in 2001 were being planned by domestic extremists. Ronald Mike Denton was planning to attack his former place of employment, the Chevron Oil Refinery at El Segundo, California, when he was arrested in March 2001. In December 2001 Irving David Rubin and Earl Leslie Krugel, members of the extremist Jewish Defense League, were arrested as they were in the final stages of planning attacks against the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California, and the local office of U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa.

Did I mention that the above quote comes from the FBI’s own website? A second incident is also from my home town (I don’t know what it is about Jewish terrorism in Los Angeles…) from my youth. Allison Weir’s If Americans Knew website has a detailed article about Jewish terrorism and here is just one example cited in it:

The other high-profile murder came in 1985, on Oct. 11, when Alex Odeh, 37, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in Santa Ana, California, was killed by a bomb planted at his office. Odeh had appeared the previous night on a television show and called Yasser Arafat a “man of peace.” The Jewish Defense League praised the bombing but denied involvement, its usual practice in such incidents.

One of the suspects was Robert Manning, 36, of Los Angeles, a JDL member. He and his wife, Rochelle, moved to Israel, where he joined the Israel Defense Forces. FBI agents said Manning and others were also suspected of being involved in a year-long series of violent incidents in 1985 including the August house-bomb slaying of Tscherim Soobzokov, of Paterson, N.J., a suspected Nazi war criminal; the Aug. 16 attempted bombing of the Boston ADC office in which two policemen were severely wounded; the September bombing at the Brentwood, Long Island home of alleged Nazi Elmars Sprogis, in which a 23-year-old passerby lost a leg, and the Oct. 29 fire at the ADC office in Washington, DC, which was called arson.

By December 1985, FBI Director William H. Webster warned that Arab Americans had entered a “zone of danger” and were targets of an unnamed group seeking to harm the “enemies of Israel.”

Manning and his wife lived in the radical Kiryat Arba settlement in Israel’s occupied West Bank until March 25, 1991 when, after two years of pressure, Israel acceded to U.S. extradition demands.

Notice where these terrorists–the Mannings–moved to after their crime: to the most aggressively violent illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank. This settlement in Khalil is the site where the most active ethnic cleansing takes place on the part of the illegal settlers by way of murder, intimidation, and theft. This is also where New York Jew Baruch Goldstein lived when he carried out the terrorist massacre of the mosque in Khalil in 1994.

Of course you would never hear about this on Fox News. Nor would you hear a presidential candidate talking about Jewish terrorists. Only Muslims and Arabs are characterized that way. This is one reason why the republicans have worked so hard to try to get Americans to think that Obama is a closeted Muslim. Apparently, 1/4 of Texans believe this story. And for all the complaining of the “gotcha journalism” or “liberal media” in the U.S. another report released today shows that when it came time to discussing Obama and McCain’s relationships with religious leaders, the Washington Post and New York Times published more than 12 times as many articles mentioning Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright as they did mentioning McCain and John Hagee.

All of this got me thinking about censorship again. What stories are allowed to be told? What stories are reported in a truthful way? What stories are silenced? It reminds me of the way in which censorship always works: those doing the censoring are rarely familiar with the text or the person they wish to silence. I would bet my life that Hannity and Charen have never read a single one of Khalidi’s books. Or watched him interviewed. Or listened to him give a lecture. If they had they would see that Khalidi is the epitome of moderation. I’m actually re-reading his book The Iron Cage right now for my own research. While I like the book and find it useful it could hardly be considered radical, anti-Semitic, or anything of the sort. But it’s hard to convey this to people like Hannity who are offended by the very fact that the Arabic word for Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine is an nakba, which literally means catastrophe. This is something he objects to. But I get what is threatening about Khalidi: he’s an historian. He’s an historian who is dedicated to revealing the long silenced history of Palestine and Palestinians in various contexts. That very fact disrupts the Zionist mythology that has been allowed to reign supreme in the U.S. for far too long. But this is not the only time Khalidi has found himself under attack for these reasons, in spite of his moderate point of view. I actually published an academic article about this new McCarthyism and the way it has affected scholars like Khalidi and Joseph Massad among others. My article is here for those who would like to read it.

For those who are too lazy or busy to read Khalidi’s writing themselves I’m posting a couple of videos here that you may watch to hear him in his own words. Both are from 2007. The first one is and interview from Charlie Rose and the second one is a lecture from Portland State University. Watch and judge for yourself: does this sound like the terrorist? Personally, I think that the way Hannity is behaving is far more like a terrorist than Khalidi could ever be.

And if after all this my Zionist readers out there still think that Obama might be secretly pro-Palestinian, I’d like to remind readers he sold his sole to the Zionist devil a long time ago. See these three articles on Electronic Intifada by Ali Abu Nimah:

How Barack Obama learned to love Israel

What Obama missed in the Middle East

The senator, his pastor and the Israel lobby

And the Israeli press today reported on who just might be Obama’s adviser on the Zionist state:

Israel may earn more White House representation than it bargained for, in the event that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama emerges victorious from the November 4 elections.

Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who has served in the Israel Defense Forces and even speaks a little Hebrew, could be appointed the White House’s next chief of staff.

fighting the war on terror; israeli terrorism, that is.

of course, i don’t trust israelis in general, but today i am finding myself trying to make something of their new rhetoric. could it be their jewish supremacy? their idea that they are superior to all other people? first, olmert finally calls it like it is and names illegal israeli settler violence a “pogrom”:

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, has likened a rampage by armed Jewish settlers in a Palestinian village to a “pogrom” and said Israel would not tolerate such attacks in the occupied West Bank.

“In the state of Israel, there will be no pogroms against non-Jews,” Olmert said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.

of course admitting that this is a daily phenomenon or that israeli terrorist forces are equally responsible for this phenomenon, or participate in, or ar complicit in, or all of the above, was not mentioned by olmert. although there was another article this week in an israeli newspaper that called itself the “danger of jewish terror.” unfortunately, this guy also misses the point and does not see that it is a systemic practice that is institutionalized that all israelis participate in on some level. the violent episode of jewish terrorism that was referred to in the above articles is described here:

Israel expressed outrage on Sunday after a mob of Jewish settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village in the West Bank to avenge the stabbing of a nine-year-old boy in a nearby settlement….

Local rights groups have long accused Israeli forces of failing to combat settler violence against Palestinians, especially around Yitzhar and other hardline settlements that surround the northern West Bank town of Nablus.

“The violence against the villagers in Asira al-Qibliya is just one case among hundreds of attacks against the Palestinians,” a spokesman for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem told AFP.

“The settlers have virtual immunity. Even if they are arrested they are rarely prosecuted, and even when they are prosecuted they are given ridiculously light sentences.”

The Palestinians have repeatedly said the settlements themselves — built contrary to international law on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war — are the greatest obstacle to the Middle East peace process.

Ghassan Daghlas, head of village affairs in the Nablus governorate, said settler violence grows worse every year, peaking during the autumn olive-picking season when farmers are targeted.

this village is not far from where i live, in nablus. olive harvest will begin in a few weeks and if it is anything like when i came to the village of yanoun a few of years ago to help pick olives we will indeed see an increase of poisoned and burned trees not to mention harvesters shot.

but here is another form of jewish supremacy. not one that is based on violence per se; nor one that is based on proclaiming that somehow jews are more moral than other people, when clearly they are far less moral. rather, here is one based on the transparent idea that somehow jews are just worth more than non-jews–the title alone says it all: “One Israeli is worth thousands of gentiles,” but so does the story:

There are countries that promise a computer for every child or a car for every employee. Israel, which as we well know is blessed with giant open spaces, promises a hill for every resident, and even upholds this promise. In this way, the settlers across the Green Line have the privilege of living on any hill they wish, and inside the Green Line, hills are dished out with generosity to individual farmers and religious settlement groups around Wadi Ara and the Jerusalem Hills.

just to be clear, the line i emphasized above was done to highlight the duplicity in which she makes it appear as if any “resident” can live in any “open space,” when in reality it is only the jews who may live wherever they wish in palestine, on palestinian land, in palestinian homes, using palestinian furniture. jonathan cook gives us a far more realistic idea of what is happening with respect who it is who is really being evicted from their lands, from their homes in side 1948 palestine:

Mr Khimayl, however, like hundreds of other families in the Arab neighbourhoods of Ajami and Jabaliya, is up to his eyes in debt and trapped in a world of bureaucratic regulations apparently designed with only one end in mind: his eviction from Jaffa.

Sitting on the cafe’s balcony, Mr Khimayl, 59, said he feels besieged. Bulldozers are tearing up the land by the beach for redevelopment and luxury apartments are springing up all around his dilapidated two-storey home.

He opened a briefcase, one of five he has stuffed with demands and fines from official bodies, as well as bills from four lawyers dealing with the flood of paperwork.

“I owe 1.8 million shekels [Dh1.8m] in water and business rates alone,” he said in exasperation. “The crazy thing is the municipality recently valued the property and told me it’s worth much less than the sum I owe.”

Jaffa is one of half a dozen “mixed cities” in Israel, where Jewish and Palestinian citizens supposedly live together. The rest of Israel’s Palestinian minority, relatives of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, live in their own separate and deprived communities.

Despite the image of coexistence cultivated by the Israeli authorities, Jaffa is far from offering a shared space for Jews and Palestinians, according to Sami Shehadeh of the Popular Committee for the Defence of Jaffa’s Homes. Instead, Palestinian residents live in their own largely segregated neighbourhoods, especially Ajami, the city’s poorest district.

while palestinians continue to be ethnically cleansed, now the zionist state is looking for a quick scheme to pretend as if it is going to evacuate the illegal settlements inside the west bank. of course, israelis never take responsibility for their theft, murder, and destruction. therefore, if their scheme of buying economic settlers out of the west bank works (in which case we’ll be left with the worst ideological nut cases running around creating pogroms as in the first article quoted above) then it will be american and european tax payers who will be paying the price:

Israel has been exploring the possibility that the European Union and the US will put up some of the funds required for the implementation of the evacuation-compensation bill, should it mature into an act.

The cabinet held a heated debate on the motion on Sunday, but Ynet has learned that none of the party heads have actually been briefed on the bill, nor has the cabinet been presented with details as to its funding.

Both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Vice Premier Haim Ramon want to see the evacuation-compensation motion pushed through. Ramon presented the cabinet with the motion’s outline during its Sunday meeting, according to which settlers who will agree to voluntarily leave their West Bank homes, east of the separation fence, will be eligible for up to NIS 1.1 million (about $305,640) each in restitution funds.

i wonder how hard it would be, given the way that even olmert admits that illegal israeli settlers participate in pogroms now, if only in one utterance, that we can by extension get the europeans and americans to see that by paying these criminals money to move their houses–which of course would be a continued theft of palestinian land–is a kind of funding of terrorists; they are jewish terrorists (of course it was jews who brought terrorism to the region in the first place–irgun, stern gang, hagana, palmach, etc.). therefore, i think that those who fund their removal–unless it’s to europe where they came from–they should have to pay a price and be prosecuted under these ridiculous anti-terrorism laws.