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Waiting to Exhale

Zachary Wales 13 June 2006


On Tuesday, state mouthpiece Israel News Agency delivered the verdict the world was waiting for: Israel was not guilty of the shelling on Beit Lahiya’s beach that wiped out a family of eight last Friday. The trend is distinctly Orwellian yet familiar. The harder reality bites, the bigger Israel lies. But the story the media missed rests less in the allegations and disputed facts, and more in the space where the world waited to exhale. That is, while the media interrogated all the possibilities — or in the above examples, only one — it forgot to interrogate itself. 

11 Palestinians, Including a Man, His Two Children and Two paramedics, Killed and 30 Others Wounded in an IOF Air Strike on a Civilian Car in Gaza

13 June 2006


On Tuesday noon, 13 June 2006, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) committed a new extra-judicial execution in Gaza City, which killed 11 Palestinians, including 9 civilian bystanders. A man, his two children and two paramedics were among the victims. The targeted person in this attack was a member of the Islamic Jihad. Investigations conducted by PCHR indicate that IOF aircrafts launched a missile at dozens of civilians, including paramedics, who gathered near a civilian car shortly after IOF aircrafts attacked it, targeting a member of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad. 

Does Israel have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians?

Nigel Parry 13 June 2006


After the 9 June 2006 Israeli shelling of the beach in Gaza that killed eight Palestinians, including seven members of the same family, and injured 32 civilians, including 13 children, the Israeli government initially expressed it’s “deep regret” at the incident. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised an investigation, stating that “there has never been - and there isn’t now - a policy of attacking civilians,” a blatant but reassuring lie for those of us who want to believe that these things aren’t so. EI’s Nigel Parry looks at the patterns. 

Israel Spinning Out of Control

Sam Bahour 13 June 2006


Israel’s Defense Minister Amir Peretz announced today that Israel is preparing a global “propaganda offensive” to counter the recent barrage of news reports and writings that condemned Israel for the recent killing of 10 civilians, including 5 children, on a Gaza beach. In political and media lingo this is called spin, to twist and turn an event so as to give an intended interpretation, and Israel excels at it. Sam Bahour writes from Ramallah/Al-Bireh, occupied Palestine. 

Book Review: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State

Raymond Deane 12 June 2006


Jonathan Cook’s new book “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State” focuses attention on the descendants of Palestinians who managed to remain in “sovereign” Israel during the ethnic cleansing of 1948. In this book review, EI contributor Raymond Deane says Cook meticulously analyzes the political basis for the daily discrimination exercised by the Jewish state against its Arab citizens. Cook lays bare the Zionist ideal of a state that is racially pure, and demonstrates how successive generations of Israeli politicians and soldiers - the former tending to be enlisted from the ranks of the latter - have sought to bring about this regressive aim. 

Israeli human rights organizations: End killing of civilians

10 June 2006


Five Israeli human rights organizations demanded today in an urgent appeal to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense that they take immediate action to end the killing of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Territories, and to eradicate the factors contributing to these killings. The organizations (B’Tselem, ACRI, PCATI, HaMoked and PHR-Israel) state that the killing of a family at the Gaza seashore on Friday (a father, mother and five children), apparently by a shell fired by Israeli soldiers, is a terrible addition to an already horrifying statistic: according to B’Tselem data, since the onset of the second Intifada, 3,431 Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have been killed by Israeli security forces. 

ICRC steps up aid, calls for action to avert major humanitarian crisis

12 June 2006


The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is increasing by roughly a quarter its 2006 budget for its activities in Israel and the occupied and autonomous territories, bringing the overall figure to more than 52 million Swiss francs. The additional funding will provide the means to meet most acute needs of Palestinians affected by the current crisis, particularly in the faltering health-care sector. The ICRC will fund the purchase of medical supplies and cover salaries and running costs to help the Palestine Red Crescent Society operate four hospitals, 30 primary health-care centres and ambulance services. The ability to provide these services has been severely jeopardized by the fact that the Society no longer receives funding from the Palestinian Authority. 

Black Eyed Peas: Celebrating South African freedom while normalizing Israeli apartheid

Maureen Clare Murphy and Nigel Parry 12 June 2006

We are writing you regarding the Black Eyed Peas’ concert in Tel Aviv June 3rd during which you put on a spectacular performance to an effusive Israeli crowd. During the concert, Ms. Ferguson declared that Israel is “one of the most fun places on the planet.” Mr. Adams described the Peas’ time in Israel as “the best five days of our lives.” However, for your Palestinian fans living in the West Bank in Gaza, who are not allowed to travel to Tel Aviv to attend hip-hop shows, life under the thumb of Israeli occupation is anything but fun. 

Open Letter to the Capitol Steps

Kathleen Kern 11 June 2006


I have for years loved your clever musical routines. I first enjoyed you on NPR. My fiancé, shortly after we first began dating gave me a bunch of your CDs and actually took me to a New Year’s Eve performance in Rochester, NY, where I first saw you live. In more recent years, I have begun to wince whenever you refer to people of Middle Eastern origins, but since these slurs usually only appeared once in half hour radio shows, I let them slide. I left the theater that evening feeling deep grieved and angry. 

The case against torture: A personal account

Christopher Brown Palestine 11 June 2006


“While I lived in Palestine for three years, I had many conversations with both Israelis and Palestinians about the issue of torture. The conversations always varied and they never became dull. I heard from many Palestinians who had been tortured. I also heard from some Israelis and Palestinians who felt that certain forms of torture are useful. But every time I got into one of these conversations, I would think back to a certain time in my life that deeply affected my view on the subject.” Christopher Brown ponders Israel’s torture of Palestinians out of his own torture experiences at the hands of the apartheid government of South Africa.