Two years ago the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace set up its project entitled, Who Profits from the Israeli occupation? In January, the Coalition officially launched its on-line database, www.whoprofits.org, listing companies directly involved in the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights. Dalit Baum, coordinator of the project, explains to The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof how the project came about. Read more about Israeli women expose companies complicit in occupation
The most recent assault on Gaza has been an awakening for American Arab and Muslim youth. The attacks came at the most festive holiday season of the year. Instead of celebrating, many young American Arab and Muslim teenagers and kids spent their time protesting on the streets as they watched disturbing and devastating images streaming into their living rooms and onto their computers. Yasmin Qureshi reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Gaza shakes American Arab and Muslim youth
In spite of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, in Palestine and throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, Hamas and the resistance option it represents is immeasurably stronger. The ridiculous no-longer-president-of-anything Mahmoud Abbas, and the gangs loyal to Fatah warlord Muhammad Dahlan, are much weaker. It wasn’t Abbas but Hamas political chief in exile, Khaled Meshal who represented Palestine at the Doha emergency summit last month. While the Abbas-Dahlan traitors arrested Hamas activists, and tried (and largely failed) to suppress solidarity demonstrations on the West Bank, the resistance was standing firm against Zionist terror. Robin Yassin-Kassab comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about The resistance option
Israel’s deadly 22-day assault on Gaza killed more than 1,300 persons, mainly civilians, and left nearly 5,000 injured. The damage caused to public and private infrastructure was massive, and the agricultural sector suffered a nearly insurmountable amount of devastation. The day after Israel unilaterally declared a ceasefire on 18 January, the agriculture minister in Gaza declared that 60 percent of the Strip’s agricultural land was destroyed, along with 80 percent of all agricultural products for this season, with a total economic loss for the sector alone estimated at $170 million. Gen Sander comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Fair trade, not aid, is the way forward
“The BBC cannot be neutral in the struggle between truth and untruth, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery, compassion and cruelty, tolerance and intolerance.” Thus read a 1972 internal document called Principles and Practice in News and Current Affairs laying out the guidelines for the BBC’s coverage of conflicts. It appears to affirm that in cases of oppression and injustice to be neutral is to be complicit, because neutrality reinforces the status quo. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad comments. Read more about BBC's "impartiality" anything but
Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics. In a process one military historian has termed the rapid “theologization” of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Israeli army "subcontracted" by extremist settlers
UNITEDNATIONS (IPS) - The United Nations is urgently appealing for 613 million dollars to aid more than a million desperate civilians in the ruins of Gaza, where schools, hospitals, houses, factories and even farmland were obliterated during the three-week assault by Israeli air and ground forces. At least 1,300 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,300 injured in the war, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Some 21,000 homes were reported destroyed or badly damaged, and more than 50,000 people were displaced into temporary UN shelters. Read more about Gaza slowly reemerging from the rubble
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani4 February 2009
CAIRO (IPS) - Despite declarations of victory by Israel, the military assault on the Gaza Strip failed to achieve its stated aims, many analysts say. The assault, and even its exceptional brutality, may only have vindicated the notion of resistance among the Arab public. “The steadfastness of the resistance in Gaza in the face of Israeli military power has resuscitated the idea of armed resistance,” Gamal Fahmi, political analyst and managing editor of the Egyptian opposition weekly al-Arabi al-Nassiri told IPS. Read more about Hamas' political victory
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - As fears rise of renewed violence in Gaza, Elena Qleibo, a French-Costa Rican aid worker from Oxfam, gives IPS a first-hand account of surviving Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza: I was attending a meeting at Gaza City municipality on 27 December when suddenly the meeting was interrupted by heavy booming sounds coming from a short distance away. Plumes of smoke were rising from a number of bombed areas surrounding the building I was in. I and a number of colleagues rushed outside to try and establish what was happening. Read more about Aid worker: Gaza an "apocalypse"
The status of Israel as the enemy of the Arabs has largely depended in the last six decades on its enmity or alliance with Arab regimes and not with the Arab peoples. Insofar as Israel threatened Arab regimes, it was depicted by them as the enemy, insofar as it did not, it was welcomed as a friend. Joseph Massad comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Israel and the politics of friendship
