"Make sure I am remembered"
By Felloula Al-Rajabi, Cactus48.com 10/25/2003
Felloula's Page -- I was born in Haifa in 1942. My family always believed in the Palestinian cause. However, unlike me, they believed in working alongside Jews for peace and for a life together with our cousins, the Jews.
We lived near a Jewish settlement and helped each other with farming, selling produce at the market, everything, living almost door to door.
A Jewish couple who lived near us had a son who grew up with me. I never felt any romantic feelings toward him. He was like the older brother (by 2 years) I never had. We shared our childhoods together. He would always tell me that Jews and Muslims were cousins who should love each other and that Christians are the ones we should hate.
But I never cared for someone because of their religion. There are bad Jews and good ones, bad Muslims and good ones...in every people and religion there is a good and bad side.
1948 we lost our homeland to Israel, the newly founded state for Jews. We stayed. We didn't sell our land. We didn't run away like others. We were offered Israeli passports. However, we refused.
We lived in fear and terror for years.
As I grew up with feelings of anti-Zionism, my friend grew up with the idea that any relations he had with Arabs and Muslims were sins. So he grew to the other extreme. By the time he was 12 he would not set foot near us or any of our friends or members of our community.
An American surgeon in Nablus
By Edward W. Gallagher, M.D., Electronic Intifada 11/10/2003
The soldier said "Tourists are not allowed." This was my first experience in Palestine.
In September of 2003 I was on a humanitarian mission sponsored by the Palestine Children Relief Fund (PCRF). I am a Facial, Plastic and Cosmetic surgeon in San Diego, California. I had been invited by the Minister of Health for the Palestine Authority to work in Rafidia Surgical Hospital in Nablus, Palestine. They had arranged for me to examine about 100 children with various facial injuries and deformities and gave me an operating room to use with nurses and anesthesiologists to help with the surgery.
When I first arrived in a taxi from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport at the Israeli checkpoint before entering Nablus, the Israeli soldier would not let me pass. He said "Tourists are not allowed." I sat down on the highway and wouldn't move until they finally let me cross into Palestine.
For the next two days, I examined many horribly injured children who were shot by Israeli soldiers or who were injured when their homes were bombed and destroyed by Israeli F–16 bombers. I later operated on several of the children to repair their disfigurement and deformities.
Prevent Israel from becoming like South Africa
Daily Star/The American Prospect Zbigniew Brzezinski
In the last three weeks there were two votes on the subject of the Middle East in the General Assembly of the United Nations. In one of them the vote was 133 to four. In the other one the vote was 141 to four, and the four included the United States, Israel, (the) Marshall Islands and Micronesia.
All of our NATO allies voted with the majority, including Great Britain, including the so-called new allies in Europe in fact almost all of the EU and Japan. I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena: the loss of US international credibility (and) growing US international isolation. Both together can be summed up in a troubling paradox regarding the American position and role in the world today. American power worldwide is at its historic zenith. American global political standing is at its nadir. Why?
We will not turn the Middle East into a zone of peace … unless we more clearly identify the United States with the pursuit of peace in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not be translated de facto into a policy of support for a really increasingly brutal repression, colonial settlements and a new wall. Let us not kid ourselves. At stake is the destiny of a democratic country, Israel … the security of which, the well-being of which, the United States has been committed (to) historically for more than half a century, for very good historical and moral reasons. But soon there will be no (alternative to) a two-state solution.
[see also: Another American Casualty: Credibility, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington Post and Zbigniew Brzezinski's remarks from the "New American Strategies for Security and Peace" conference, American Spectator - Ed.]
Breaking the silence surrounding the Zionist movement
By Tamara Mattar, Daily Star 11/11/2003
Every time the imposed silence on the topic of Zionism is broken, a lot of noise is made. Little wonder then, that an Arab TV series which touches upon the most taboo of all political issues is subjected to the usual barrage of accusations from Israel and its defenders.
However, the TV series Al-Shattat, or The Diaspora, is perceived by many in the Arab world as a bold step in the right direction: that of digging deep into Zionist history to better understand the tragic situation the region now finds itself in, and to bring to the attention of sleeping minds the thoughts and plots of Zionism.
The film highlights important stages of the Zionist movement, from 1812 to 1948, when major Jewish personalities such as Theodore Hertzl, Amshel Rothschild and Alfred Dreyfus contributed to the birth to Israel. The 30-part Syrian production series aired on Al-Manar satellite channel has been acclaimed as the biggest Arab-produced historical drama to reveal the true face of Zionism, devoid of any fabrications.
The series is based on over 250 authentic historic sources and well-known Zionist documents, and has nothing to do with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Sources include: the Torah, the Talmud, the memoirs of Hertzl and his book, The Jewish State, the books The First Israelis, as well as The New Israelis and A Letter to the Pagans.
Fence of folly
Editorial, Ha'aretz 11/11/2003
The separation fence should bring residents of Israel security by blocking the way for terrorists plotting to cross the Green Line and commit murder in the country's cities. But the purpose of the fence has been lost in its planning and construction. From the start, the government rebutted right-wing critics who argued that the fence would have political significance. Now in retrospect it turns out that the planners gave up on pure security considerations as they worked to make the fence unequivocally political.
That's what happened to the main section of the fence, opposite Ariel, where the planners meanwhile have left "openings," to avoid provoking the Americans, with the clear intention of eventually surrounding the settlements in the area, despite the resultant annexation of Palestinian communities in the same area.
The same is even more true of the southern parts of the fence, which according to yesterday's report by Haaretz correspondent Amos Harel, will encompass the entire Adumim area east of Jerusalem, all the way to the outskirts of Jericho. According to the report, the plan worked out in the defense establishment has already been given Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's blessing. The city of Ma'ale Adumim is essentially annexed to a greater Jerusalem, and with it Palestinian communities that are not inside Jerusalem's jurisdiction.
Hanadi The Bomb
By Amin Houweidi, Al-Hayat 11/11/2003
Hanadi Tayssir Jaradat is a 29-year-old Palestinian lawyer in Jenin. Her brother, cousin and fiancé are martyrs. On the third of October 2003, she went to Maxims' restaurant in Haifa, shot the doorkeeper to death and blew herself up, killing 20 Israelis and seriously wounding 50 others.
Some who are against suicide attacks, especially against civilians denounced her behavior. They wanted her to wear the explosive belt, ask the doorkeeper's permission to enter the restaurant and check if all people inside are not civilians. If they are not, she comes back home. If they are, she blows herself up.
Hanadi did not think that way for her brother, cousin and fiancé are martyrs. Although they are civilians. Her territories are stolen, her houses destroyed, her people killed. She found that every crime is allowed and that international legitimacy is not holding back the criminal. What should Hanadi do? She is not an ordinary human being, thinking or feeling like one. She became a human bomb, but refused to become like Sharon and Mofaz and chose to be the bomb because she is Hanadi. She is Arab, and above all else, she is Palestinian.
Arab-Canadians, Arar's Homecoming and the Audacity of Some
By Samah Sabawi, Palestine Chronicle 11/10/2003
In Arabic, there is a saying used to describe the extent of audacity a person can reach: He can murder a man, and then march in his funeral. The last few days, I watched a lot of people marching.
Maher Arar’s return from ‘the grave” is nothing short of miraculous. The Syrian born Canadian was kidnapped by the US on his way home to Canada from a trip to Tunis. He was arrested and deported to Syria for interrogation without a thought given to his rights or liberties as a Canadian citizen. Many who were happy to see him reunite with his family celebrated his return to Canada but were outraged over his treatment and his torture. However, some who advocated for the laws that led to his ordeal saw it fit to crash his homecoming party and to wash their hands of the responsibility their hateful incitement played in setting the environment that made his deportation possible.
Since Sept. 11, there has been a strong campaign by some in Canada to convince the public of the importance of following the American example in dealing with terror suspects. Radio talk show hosts dedicated hours of airtime toward advocating racial profiling. Newspapers produced countless numbers of articles about the terrorists who live amongst us. A few politicians stood up in Parliament and demanded we tighten our laws and compromise our liberties. Refugee claimants of Arab origin were seen as a threat to Canadian society. Fear and panic were left to guide us and to overpower our sense of reason and critical thinking as we were urged time and again to put the security of our nation above all else.
Israel May Soon Take Path U.S. Can't Follow
By Jay Bookman, Miftah/Atlanta Journal-Constitution 11/11/2003
Israel stands today at an important crossroads, trying to decide which of three roads it will travel.
If it chooses one road, the United States will be able to walk proudly alongside Israel as its friend, ally and, if necessary, its protector against any that threaten its security.
But if Israel chooses either of the remaining two routes, it will repudiate the shared values and strategic interests that have united Israelis and Americans for decades. Those Americans who count themselves as friends of Israel have an obligation to make that danger clear.
The issue, of course, is the fate of 3.5 million Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Ever since the Camp David accords of 1978, official U.S. and Israeli policy has been based on the expectation that land could be exchanged for peace. Under that formula, Palestinians would recognize Israel's right to exist and live in peace; in return, Israel would abandon settlements in the occupied territories and allow creation of a Palestinian state.
Today, that path to peace is in danger of becoming a dead end. More than 230,000 Israelis now live on occupied Palestinian land, most of which would have to be surrendered to the Palestinians under the land-for-peace formula. Illegal settlements continue to be built, and a new wall being built to separate Palestinians from Israelis is extending deep into the West Bank.
It’s about the economy, Ariel!
By Khatoun Haidar, Daily Star 11/11/2003
For three years Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has managed to satisfy the Israeli electorate. His intransigent insistence on “the full halt of terrorist activities by the Palestinians” prior to any resumption of peace negotiations has pleased the right, while his elusive two-state solution and promise of “painful concessions” has pacified the center. However, this convenient status quo was recently disrupted by the publication of the so-called “Geneva Accord.”
The accord presents the Israeli public with a plausible alternative to the present standoff: a clear definition of the borders of separate Israeli and Palestinian states; a credible answer to Israeli security fears; and a likely solution to the difficult issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian right of return. Sharon described the initiative as an act of treason, but one wonders whether he can persist in simply refuting the plan without providing a clear alternative that satisfies his electoral promise of “security and peace.”
In the pages of the daily Maariv, Labor Party secretary-general Ophir Pines-Paz reminded Israelis of Sharon’s failed pledges: “(H)e did not keep any of his promises. There is no security, no economic results, no prosperity.”
Increasingly, the Israeli public seems to agree with such assessments, but it is the economy more than security that may destabilize Sharon.
Palestinian Farmers Face Insurmountable Odds
Editorial, Miftah 11/11/2003
The olive harvest, a mainstay of the Palestinian economy, has been plagued by Israeli settler violence towards peaceful Palestinian farmers wishing to pick their produce. Over the past three years, with the resurgence of hostilities, the farmers have found it increasingly more difficult to care for their land in the face of threats, humiliation and beatings, but coupled with the Separation Wall being built on the most fertile Palestinian, the task has simply become impossible.
In recent years, the Israeli settlers, backed by the government, have justified their attacks as ‘self defense’ needed to secure what they say is their God-given right to land that has been farmed by Palestinians for generations. Thus, in the Palestinian village of Ein Abus, about 3 miles south of Nablus, settlers from the Mitzpe Yitzhar outpost had destroyed all of the 255 trees on Fauzi Hassan Mohammed Hussein’s hillside orchard, leaving him with no means to support his family. Not a single olive was left in sight on any of the branches.
The Shawkat family lost 200 olive trees in the same way just before the 2002 harvest, rather then launching an investigation the Israeli police and army soldiers deployed at the Mitzpe Yitzhar outpost forced the distraught family from the orchard because "they were causing a disturbance." Mitzpe Yitzhar, one of the 120 Israeli West Bank illegal outposts slated for destruction under the "road map" to peace, along with the larger settlement of Yitzhar, one of the most aggressive and ideological of the settlements, that surround the village of Ein Abus have been the source of numerous complaints of Jewish violence against Palestinians.
The Geneva Accord: Beyond Time and Space
Editorial, Challenge 11/3/2003
REPRESENTING no official body, Palestinians close to the PA and members of the Israeli left have signed a detailed plan for a peace agreement. Switzerland financed the exercise, whose result is known as the Geneva Accord. The chief figure on the Israeli side is Yossi Beilin, formerly a central leader in the Labor Party and an architect of the Oslo Accords. His Palestinian counterpart is Yasser Abed Rabo, the PA's former Minister of Information.
The new accord places before the two peoples, for the first time, an idea of the approximate price that each would have to pay in order to gain a peace agreement that the other might perhaps someday be persuaded to live with. It breaks taboos: a few Israelis speak publicly, in detail, about dividing Jerusalem; a few Palestinians adopt a document which, in effect, nullifies the refugees' right of return. Proponents make the further point that the agreement explodes the myth that Israel has "no partner" for negotiations.
Such claims, we shall see, are questionable. The single definite change is this: the Zionist left (which eleven years ago stepped into the shadow of the Labor Party, enticing the Palestinians into the trap of Oslo), has taken at last an independent stand, its most radical ever, showing how far it is willing to go in a future agreement with the Palestinians.
As to the Accord itself, we shall focus on two questions. How far exactly are the signers willing to go? How relevant is the document?
The Evangelicals Who Like to Giftwrap Islamophobia
By Giles Fraser, Arab News/The Guardian 11/11/2003
LONDON, 11 November 2003 — It all sounds innocent enough. Operation Christmas Child “is a unique ministry that brings Christmas joy, packed in gift-filled shoeboxes, to children around the world”. Over the past 10 years, 24 million shoeboxes have been delivered, making it the world’s largest children’s Christmas project. Every US president since Ronald Reagan has packed a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child. In the UK, thousands of schools, churches and youth clubs are doing the same. Some will fill their boxes with dried-out felt tip pens and discarded Barbie amputees. Others spend serious money on the latest GameBoy or Sony Walkman.
But what many parents and teachers don’t know is that behind Operation Christmas Child is the evangelical charity Samaritan’s Purse. Their aim is “the advancement of the Christian faith through educational projects and the relief of poverty”. And a particularly toxic version of Christianity it is. This is the same outfit that targeted Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and was widely condemned for following US troops into Iraq to claim Muslims for Christ.
It’s run by the Rev Franklin Graham — chosen by George Bush to deliver the prayers at his presidential inauguration — who has called Islam “a very wicked and evil religion”. Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, is from the same school of thought as Gen. William Boykin, US deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who described America as waging a holy war against “the idol” of Islam’s false god and “a guy called Satan” who “wants to destroy us as a Christian army”.
The `blood on the hands' price list
By Yitzhak Laor, Ha'aretz 11/11/2003
"In public discourse, in the ethos that permeates the work of government ministers and Knesset members and which reflects "everyday values," the concept of "blood on their hands" long ago was transformed into "Jewish blood on their hands." It has come to pass that one type of blood is not equal to another type. It has come to pass that different blood has different price tags."
Suppose Ron Arad was part of the stalled prisoner exchange deal. Would Benjamin Netanyahu then argue at the 11th hour that the release of Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar was a line in the sand that Israel must never cross? In all probability, he would not.
When you read between the lines of the public debate about the prisoner exchange, it is impossible not to observe that lurking beneath the rhetoric of morality and security, there is a price list. How much would Israel have paid for Omar Suaed, the "non-Jewish" soldier held by Hezbollah?
How much would it have given for the two other missing IDF soldiers? How much would it have paid for Elhanan Tannenbaum, had he not been an IDF colonel in the reserves, and if his shady business dealings had been his sole track record?
....When it comes to the Lebanese context, no Israeli, not those who took part in the war, nor those who demonstrated against it, has the moral right to bandy about the slogan "blood on their hands," especially when this adds to the suffering of families whose members are slated for exchange.
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