EI co-founder Ali Abunimah writes to the Swiss foreign minister: “I am not an ambassador, a minister, or an elected official. I have no standing to appeal to your conscience except as a human being. I do so now with all the will I can muster to urge your government immediately to reconvene the Conference of the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention urgently to consider measures to enforce this Convention and end the grave and mounting breaches being perpetrated by Israel, the Occupying Power, in the Gaza Strip.” The letter followed the morning of an Israeli massacre in Beit Hanoun which killed 19 civilians, including 11 from a single family. Read more about Letter: Switzerland must act on Gaza even as others choose silence
EI Co-founder Ali Abunimah responds to a statement issued by Finland, in its capacity as EU President, about the mounting atrocities in Gaza. “I wholeheartedly agree with that part of your statement which says, ‘Violence will only aggravate an already grave situation in the region,’” Abunimah writes, “But violence will not be ended by empty condemnation of the victims and craven appeasement of the occupier. It will end when governments like yours take action to make Israel, as the occupying colonial power, accountable.” Abunimah points to six steps the EU could take if it was really interested in ending violence and bringing about peace. Read more about Letter: European inaction and complicity as Gaza burns
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has brought Yisrael Beitenu into his coalition, a party that has openly advocated the “transfer” — ethnic cleansing —of Palestinians, and has made clear that a Jewish supremacist state is more important than a democratic one. Yet spokesperson for European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana affirmed that the EU would take no action against Israel. In contrast, the EU has imposed crippling sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, starving ordinary Palestinians for having elected a government of the which the European Union disapproves. EI co-founder investigates a new low in western double standards and appeasement of Israeli extremism. Read more about World silent as fascists join Israel government
There are ominous signs that the long-contemplated plan to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas-led Palestinian Authority cabinet is about to enter its most dangerous phase: a political coup, supported by local militias, with foreign and regional backing. This could ignite serious intra-Palestinian violence. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah and contributor Hasan Abu Nimah write that with Iraq providing a dreadful warning of how foreign occupation can foster civil bloodshed, everything must be done to expose and thwart this dangerous conspiracy. Read more about A re-run of the Lebanon war in Palestine?
Watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach’s new feature film set mainly during the Irish Civil War in the early 1920’s, it is impossible not to make comparisons with contemporary events. Indeed Loach, whose film won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, has been quite explicit about his own view that the film is not merely an examination of the past, but a comment on the times we live in. Loach also recently announced his support for the call by Palestinian film-makers, artists and others to boycott state sponsored Israeli cultural institutions and acknowledged that “Palestinians are driven to call for this boycott after forty years of the occupation of their land, destruction of their homes and the kidnapping and murder of their civilians.” Read more about Echoes of Ireland in Palestine: a review of Ken Loach's new film
The scenes of carnage from Qana, where ten years after an almost identical massacre, rescue workers are pulling the broken bodies of children from the rubble, break the heart and generate a deep and boiling anger. But it is not enough to point the finger at Israel’s war criminal government which carried out the atrocity, nor the United States administration, which encourages Israel and arms it. We must also demand that all those with the power to act do so immediately. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah argues that Arab states must immediately break off ties with Israel to show Israelis they will pay a price unless they change course. Read more about Arab states must repudiate ties with Israel now
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
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
“Suppose I were to leave my office here in Chicago and walk the short distance to the kidney dialysis unit down the road and pull out the tubes to which four elderly patients were attached, making them seriously ill or killing them.” EI co-founder Ali Abunimah argues that this, effectively, is what the so-called international community is doing to Palestinians by cutting off aid in an attempt to blackmail Hamas into changing its policies. Reports from hospitals in Gaza say that at least four people have died due to lack of medicine due to Israeli closures and the EU aid cut off. Read more about Helping Israel kill Palestinians
A young woman stands before a camera refusing to take the chair the director has set up. He asks why? “I have come to sing,” she says. Irritated, the director orders her, “You must act, didn’t they tell you we are looking for actors here?” With calm assertion she insists, “I do not know how to act. I have come to sing. Come on, you film and I will sing…” This scene illustrates a main theme running through Rashid Masharawi’s latest feature film Waiting: Palestinians forced to speak from someone else’s script, writes Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah in this review of Masharawi’s latest feature which had its Chicago premiere at the Chicago Palestine Film Festival 2006. Read more about Film Review: Rashid Masharawi's "Waiting"
