Monthly Archive for December, 2007

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 15, 2007; A01

First-graders at a Gaza school for the deaf have had to rely on sign language since Israeli import restrictions caused the school to run seriously low on hearing-aid batteries. The isolated strip is also short of antibiotics, fuel and food. (By Scott Wilson — The Washington Post)

GAZA CITY — The batteries are the size of a button on a man’s shirt, small silvery dots that power hearing aids for several hundred Palestinian students taught by the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City.

Now the batteries, marketed by Radio Shack, are all but used up. The few that are left are losing power, turning voices into unintelligible echoes in the ears of Hala Abu Saif’s 20 first-grade students.

The Israeli government is increasingly restricting the import into the Gaza Strip of batteries, anesthesia drugs, antibiotics, tobacco, coffee, gasoline, diesel fuel and other basic items, including chocolate and compressed air to make soft drinks.

This punishing seal has reduced Gaza, a territory of almost 1.5 million people, to beggar status, unable to maintain an effective public health system, administer public schools or preserve the traditional pleasures of everyday life by the sea.

“Essentially, it’s the ordinary people, caught up in the conflict, paying the price for this political failure,” said John Ging, director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, which serves the majority refugee population. “The humanitarian situation is atrocious, and it is easy to understand why — 1.2 million Gazans now relying on U.N. food aid, 80,000 people who have lost jobs and the dignity of work. And the list goes on.”

[Read the report]

Middle East Children’s Alliance is collecting donations to send a large medical shipment to Gaza. Click this link to make a special contribution now.

Smearing Ron Paul

By JACOB G. HORNBERGER, Counterpunch, 27 December 2007

I couldn’t help but be struck by the vicious smear of Ron Paul by a Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times. You can read it here.

Sure, politics is a nasty business but I just couldn’t help but wonder why the New York Times would publish garbage like this.

Here’s the thrust of Heffernan’s attack: that Ron Paul has received donations from neo-Nazi extremist groups and has spoken at events attended by right-wing extremist individuals.

Well, duh!

Pray tell: What political candidate does a background check of people before accepting their donations? And what political candidate does a background check of people attending a talk before he begins speaking?

[Read the article]

First we’ll take Ajami
Lily Galili, Ha’aretz, 24 December 2007

The city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa was jealous of the Holiday of Holidays that Haifa has been holding for years, and decided that it too would hold an event for its Jewish, Muslim and Christian residents this weekend. The mayor himself, Ron Huldai, personally blessed the mixed residents of the city: His signature graces the “Happy Holidays” posters that were put up in Jaffa.

However, for visitors to the city and the mayor himself, there was a surprise that was not quite a holiday gift. Among the decorations adorning the streets were posters stating in large letters, “Ron Huldai wishes the Arabs of Jaffa, happy expulsion.” Brutal? Annoying? That’s precisely the intention of the people behind Jaffa Struggle, a group of social activists that has been fighting to stop the eviction of residents and the scheduled demolition of 497 homes.

[Read the report]

Privatising Zionism
by Neve Gordon and Erez Tzfadia – PalestineChronicle.com

A destroyed Bedouin home in the Negev

For less than four dollars an hour, the Jewish teenagers removed furniture, clothes, kitchenware and toys from the homes and loaded them on to trucks. As they worked diligently alongside the many policemen who had come to secure the destruction of 30 houses in two unrecognised Bedouin villages, Bedouin teenagers stood by watching their homes being emptied.

When all the belongings had been removed, the bulldozers rapidly destroyed the homes. All those present, Jews and Bedouins, were Israeli citizens; together they learned an important lesson in the discrimination characterising civic life in the Jewish state.The current demolitions are part of a strategy that began with the foundation of the state of Israel. Its ultimate objective is the Judaisation of space.

[Read the report]

Palestinian farmers, including child, beaten by masked Israeli settlers near Nablus
by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – 26 December 2007

Masked Israeli settlers wearing Jewish prayer shawls

Palestinian sources reported Tuesday that a group of farmers in their fields near Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, were badly beaten by a group of Israeli settlers living illegally in the area.

The settlements in the Nablus area are illegal under both international and Israeli law, but Israeli authorities allow the settlements there, deep within the Palestinian West Bank territory, to continue to expand on stolen Palestinian land.

Local sources reported that four farmers, including one fifteen-year old boy, were badly beaten with sticks and sprayed with pepper gas by Israeli settlers. Israeli police were called, but did nothing about the incident, and the assailants were not apprehended.

Of the four who were attacked, two were injured moderately and had to be treated at a local hospital in Nablus. “They parked on the road and we thought they were just hiking, but suddenly they put on masks and they sprayed me in my eyes and beat me and I couldn’t see who it was,” reported Hussein Asida, 46, one of the Palestinian farmers who was attacked.

by Nehemia Shtrasler, Ha’aretz, 20 December 2007

An old Jewish joke tells of a devoted mother who briefs her son before he sets out to battle: “Kill a Turk and rest,” she advises. But the son asks: “And what happens if in fact the Turk tries to kill me?” She opens her eyes wide in surprise: “Why would he want to kill you? What have you done to him?”

This is exactly the kind of self-righteousness that accompanies our attitude toward the Palestinians. It is evident in the reports on the television, radio and in the newspapers — which paint only a partial picture of the conflict. Because when considerations of ratings and just plain cowardice determine coverage, the information the public gets is biased. In this way an extremist public opinion is created, which believes that all of the justice is on our side only, because “what have we done to them?”

Last Wednesday, the media reported the severe rocket attack on Sderot. Twenty rockets landed on the city and Mayor Eli Moyal resigned on live radio. The broadcasts, on all three television channels, were dramatic. Reporters interviewed furious residents who demanded immediate and harsh military action in the Gaza Strip. One of the Qassams hit the home of Aliza Amar, and she was taken in moderate condition to Barzilai Medical center in Ashkelon.

It is clear that the situation in Sderot and the Gaza-envelope locales is very difficult and is deserving of comprehensive coverage. However, the story also has other angles — which the television channels are not presenting at all. None of the channels saw fit to remind its viewers that several days prior to the attack on Sderot, the Israel Defense Forces had begun an extensive action in Gaza, the second largest since the disengagement.

Continue reading ‘So what have we done to them’

About This Video
A short film made by Images for life project with Al-Rowwad center in Aida refugee camp, Palestine.

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