The screaming of 11 year old Palestinian Huda Abu Ghalia from Gaza seems not to have reached American officials. Huda’s parents and five siblings were killed before her eyes last week when Israeli artillery crashed onto the beach as they picnicked. The US was the only major power which not only refused to condemn the incident, but described it as “self defense.” Afterwards, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Israel’s army the “most moral” in the world. Palestinian Central Election Commission Salfit coordinator, Fareed Taamallah, comments. Read more about America deaf to Palestinian screams 

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. Read more about Does Israel have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians? 

The referendum called by Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is supposedly meant to gain public endorsement for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in all the territories occupied in 1967, as set out in a plan agreed by senior Hamas and Fatah leaders held in Israeli prisons. But Abbas’ ploy has nothing to do with hastening the creation of such a state, and everything to do with Fatah’s inability to come to terms with its defeat in last January’s legislative elections. It is, says EI co-founder Ali Abunimah, another sordid attempt to use “democracy” not to reveal the will of the people, but to frustrate it. Read more about Dangerous dirty tricks in Palestine 

Israelis have a word for it: “hasbara”. It is often misleadingly translated as “advocacy for Israel”. But what the word signifies more deeply for Israel’s supporters is the duty, when the truth would be damaging, to dissemble or to disseminate misinformation to protect the interests of Israel as a Jewish state — that is, a state with an unassailable Jewish majority. If hasbara is expected of the lowliest members of Israel’s international fan club, it is a duty of the first order for the country’s prime minister. Read more about How Olmert conned Washington over convergence 

The U.S. and Europe decided, despite Israel’s opposition, to permit the Palestinian people to hold democratic elections. According to Jimmy Carter’s report in the “Herald Tribune”, the elections were “honest, fair, strongly contested, without violence and with the results accepted by winners and losers. Among the 62 elections that have been monitored by… the Carter Center, these are among the best in portraying the will of the people.” In a just and well-ordered world, it would be unthinkable for a government that was elected in this way to be disqualified because Israel does not like the choice of the electorate in question. Read more about The Hamas Government Should be Recognized 

The Shin Bet is possibly best known for its interrogation methods when extracting confessions from detainees. As Kimmerling notes, the most likely result will be a “professional studies” programme relating to the Shin Bet’s work. Such arrangements are nothing new in Israeli academia, Kimmerling points out. There are strong ties between the universities and the defence industry because “some university staff join academia after [military] service and careers in the defense establishment, and not all of them manage to ‘go civilian’.” Read more about Academic Boycott: Shin Bet training program highlights academic complicity with occupation 

On Wednesday afternoon, 23-year-old Sama was stepping out of a taxi in Ramallah’s bustling Manara Circle, when machine gun fire erupted. An undercover Israeli Defense Force (IDF) kidnapping mission, aimed at a senior Islamic Jihad figure, had run amok. Sama took cover in a side-street as the events unfolded. It started with youths hurling stones at the IDF agents — they were disguised as locals — and setting their car ablaze. Within minutes, about 11 armored IDF jeeps arrived, surrounding the Lo’Lo’A building on Manara, where the agents supposedly were. Two IDF helicopters came on the scene to provide further backup as the IDF made its violent withdrawal. Read more about Summer Time and the Living's Uneasy 

At the present, the Western world seems still under the spell of the legend of Ariel Sharon, who, so the story goes, has brought a gigantic change in Israeli policy - from expansion and occupation to moderation and concessions - a vision to be further implemented by his successor, Ehud Olmert. Since the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements, the dominant Western narrative has been that Israel has done its part towards ending the occupation and declared its readiness to take further steps, and that now it is the Palestinians’ turn to show that they are able to live in peace with their well-intending neighbor. Read more about Sharon's Legacy in Action