***IMAGE1***People walk the dusty, broken roads in scorching summer heat, taking shelter in the basements of empty buildings. In Gaza and Lebanon, in the refugee camps of Khan Younis and Rafah, in Tyre and Beirut, in Nabatiyeh and Sidon, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children seek refuge. As they flee, they risk the indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that can not be assuaged, only stopped. Ambulances are struck, UN observers are struck. Warning leaflets are dropped from the sky urging people to abandon their homes, just as they were in 1996, 1982, 1978, 1967 and 1948. The ultimately impossible decision in Gaza and Lebanon today is: where does a refugee go? Read more about The refugees' fury will be felt for generations to come
It is finally time. After years of internal arguments, confusion, and dithering, the time has come for a full-fledged international boycott of Israel. Good cause for a boycott has, of course, been in place for decades, as a raft of initiatives already attests. But Israel’s war crimes are now so shocking, its extremism so clear, the suffering so great, the UN so helpless, and the international community’s need to contain Israel’s behavior so urgent and compelling, that the time for global action has matured. A coordinated movement of divestment, sanctions, and boycotts against Israel must convene to contain not only Israel’s aggressive acts and crimes against humanitarian law but also, as in South Africa, its founding racist logics that inspired and still drive the entire Palestinian problem. Read more about The Case for Boycotting Israel
Words are cheap when used to describe the ongoing slaughter and destruction in Lebanon and Palestine at the hands of the US-funded Israeli occupation army. No matter how eloquent or expressive, words stand helpless and ring hollow when confronted with the distressing human suffering inflicted on Lebanese and Palestinian civilians by the Israeli war machine and the utter apathy, even indifference, of world powers towards them. Israeli attacks have killed at least 615 Lebanese civilians in the past 18 days and 160 Palestinians over the past month under the shield of “self defense.” Read more about Not in My Name
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, by declaring the attack on Lebanon as an “existential” one, set forth a dangerous series of events which will only serve to do long-term damage to Israel. It was an overstep and overreaction which will have profound and deep consequences in the years to come. It will also bolster the case of churches, labour unions and human rights organizations which are calling for a divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel in an attempt to force the state to change its policies related to the occupation. “Existential” threats do not absolve Israel of the responsibility to comply with international law. Read more about What Exactly is an "Existential" Threat, Mr. Olmert?
The extensive military operations that have been conducted by the Israeli army in and around the Gaza Strip over the past weeks have displayed a marked disregard for international humanitarian law and have involved the imposition of grave and unlawful measures of collective punishment on the Palestinian population. The principle of proportionality has been completely abandoned. As part of its attempt to secure the release of a single captured Israeli soldier, the army has destroyed bridges, government offices and civilian property, and cut off the electricity to over half the population of Gaza. Read more about Israel's long-standing practice of unlawful collective punishment
With regard to Israel’s “defense” rhetoric, one should pose some key questions and consider the obvious irrefutability of their answers. Does Israel’s violence safeguard the life of the three kidnapped soldiers? No; rather it jeopardizes their safety. Does Israel’s policy of throwing bombs bring about peace? No; on a structural level Israel’s policy exacerbates the grass root level anti-Israel sentiments fundamental to Hezbollah’s existence. It also explains why Hezbollah is now shooting its missiles on Israel. Is Israel’s violence legitimate? No; Israel’s violence is, first and foremost, to the detriment of innocent civilians, not Hezbollah or Hamas. Read more about Who condemns the victimizer?
Israel’s claims that it has attacked Lebanon and Gaza to free captured soldiers or prevent resistance rocket fire are designed to obscure what truly lies at the heart of this ongoing conflict: Israel’s violent takeover of Palestine. In this contribution to Ireland’s Sunday Business Post, EI co-founder Ali Abunimah argues that lacking in political and moral legitimacy, Israel exists only due to the constant exercising of brute force and American-supplied weapons technology. Israeli Jews can only gain such legitimacy, and therefore peace, by abandoning claims to special privileges enshrined in law as white South Africans abandoned apartheid. Read more about Israel's Catastrophe
Although little known outside Israel, Mizrahim — the descendants of Palestine’s indigenous Jewish community as well as Jews brought to Israel from the Arab World and non-European countries— form the majority population among Israeli Jews. Long discriminated against by Israel’s European Jewish Ashkenazi elite, Mizrahim have paid a high price for European Zionism’s war against the Palestinians. In this contribution to EI, two important Mizrahi voices, Reuven Abarjel, a founder of the Israeli Black Panther movement representing Mizrahim, and Smadar Lavie, call on Mizrahim to stand against their co-optation into Zionist militarism. Read more about Another Act in the Mizrahi-Palestinian Tragedy
In less than four weeks, the civil infrastructure of two emerging Middle Eastern democracies has been laid to waste, and over 400 Palestinians and Lebanese, mostly civilians, have been killed by Israeli forces. The urgency of finding a just solution to the Israeli- Palestinian dispute has never been more compelling. But if calm is to be restored, the international community must convince Israel that security comes not through warfare but through peace. While Israel enjoys the security rewards of peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, it has been strangely reluctant to pursue the same with Lebanon or the PLO. Instead, at the heart of Israeli policymaking today lies a deluded faith in the benefits of unilateral action over diplomatic engagement. Read more about The failure of Israeli unilateralism
Words fail; ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the horrors Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for years, against the Palestinians. The tragedy of Gaza has been described a hundred times over, as have the tragedies of 1948, of Qibya, of Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin — 60 years of atrocity perpetrated in the name of Judaism. But the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel, in the U.S. political arena, in the mainstream U.S. media. Those who are horrified — and there are many — cannot penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite in Israel, even more so in the U.S., and increasingly now in Canada and Europe, from seeing, from caring. Read more about Atrocities in the Promised Land
