Category: In the Media

Treading the borders between life and death

Ewa Jasiewicz | The Palestine Telegraph

16 September 2009

It happened at 2:30am, Wednesday, December 31 2008. Israeli helicopter gunships and warplanes had been bombing the length of the Gaza Strip. In Eastern Jabaliya, white phosphorous had been exploding over Ezbit Abid Rubbu, Al Gerem, and Jabal al Rais.

Jabal Al Rais, the President’s Mountain, renamed “The Mountain of Fire” because of the resistance in the area against incoming Israeli forces, was where Dr Ihab al Madhoun, 34, and Mohammad Al Hassira, 21, had driven to rescue suspected casualties. Both medics were inside their ambulance when it was struck by Israeli missile fire. Hassira, a medical volunteer, died instantly.

Madhoun, suffering shrapnel injuries to the head and neck lived until midday the following day. Visiting him in the Kamal Odwan Hospital in Jabaliya, I saw the experienced doctor lying bandaged up, semiconscious, with blood and brain fluid seeping from the back of his skull, writhing in pain. Hasira and just hours later, Madhoun, would join 14 other medics who lost their lives, most in the line of duty during Israel’s 22-day attack.

During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 – January 2009, Israeli forces killed 16 emergency medical staff and injured 57, including at least four who needed leg and arm amputations. Thirteen of the medics killed worked for the Civil Defence Service (CDSS)-a mixture of fire fighters and frontline emergency medical personnel. Eleven fire fighters were also injured, their red engines bearing bullet holes directly targeting drivers.

On the first day of Israel’s attack, Israeli warplanes destroyed half of all of the CDS’s 16 offices in the Gaza Strip. In the central governorate of Diere Balah every single CDS building was reduced to rubble within five minutes of the first attack, and tens of staff members killed. Bodies continued to be pulled out of the rubble for days after the initial bombardment.

In one day, 235 police officers, including CDS staff, were killed-an attack human rights lawyer Daniel Machover of UK legal firm Hickman and Rose claims should be recognized as a war crime. “It was a premeditated, pre-planned attack on civilian institutions, including the coming out parade of a police academy. These were not military targets, and as such, there is strong evidence to suggest the bombing of these was a war crime.”

The CDS had four of its eleven ambulances wrecked. With 600 trained rescuers, the service needs ten more to be working at full capacity. During Cast Lead the CDS was working at ten percent capacity, lacking basic equipment such as protective vests and powerful torches. “Despite 50 percent of our equipment being destroyed in the first day of the attacks, we answered 1300 cases and worked 24 hours a day,” explained Mohammad Al Atar, Chief of the CDS in Gaza.

The CDS has trained 50 women through the Ministry of Youth and Women’s Affairs to take on some of the toughest work in Gaza. Al Atar says, “A mother cannot protect her children-a child could be shot in her arms. The Palestinian woman needs training in Civil Defence to protect her family-this is a national duty.” Despite this, CDS staff has been denied uniforms for the past two years by the Israeli authorities, relying on their own thrown-together luminous orange vests and jumpers.

Not protected

The IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) implied that the CDS rescuers were not protected under international law because they are “combat medics.” However, even medics tending to combatants are still protected. “Their medics were part of the Hamas medical staff and were similar to combat medics that we have in the IDF in the sense that they are soldiers,” the head of the CLA Col. Moshe Levi told The Jerusalem Post in February. Reporting for Israeli daily Ha’artez in April, Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote of evidence of Israeli soldiers being given rules of engagement that told them to “Fire also upon rescue.”

Traumatic experiences for Palestinian medics are part of their work. Mohammad al Hissi, 34, a Gazan paramedic was part of a team struck by an Israeli artillery shell in Sudaneya in March 2002. His colleague and chief medic Sa’ed Shalai was killed, joining four other senior medics killed in the West Bank and Gaza in less than a week. Hissi, pierced all over his body with shrapnel, was brought into the emergency room with virtually no pulse. “It’s a miracle I survived,” he told me, driving his Red Crescent ambulance through the now liberated if besieged streets of Khan Younis. Colleagues called him a living martyr for months afterwards. “But I couldn’t work for about year after the attack. I just couldn’t bring myself to go out into the field again. I took on desk work, taking calls. Then when I healed, I got brave again and returned.”

Gazan medics crave relief, decompression, a break from their horrific experiences. One of Gaza’s longest serving Red Crescent medics, Ali Khalil, aged 47, was part of the team which brought the body of infant Shahed Abu Halima from the ravaged northern district of Atatara during a brief respite in Israel’s attack. Medics had been denied entry to the area for days. Despite coordination with the Red Cross, ambulances had been repeatedly fired upon, forcing medics to turn back empty-handed.

Ali found Shahed lying on the main sandy road to Atatara. “At first I thought it was a doll,” he said. She was red, bloated and her legs were missing-she had been half eaten by dogs. “I see her in my sleep,” says Ali. “I have nightmares about it. We need a rest; we need help. I think some counseling would help all of us.”

Attacks on medics are not limited to invasions. Ali’s ambulance was shot at in April whilst trying to collect two injured Islamic Jihad fighters at the border area of Ezbit Abid Rubbu in Eastern Jabaliya. The two were unable to move but were still alive when Ali tried to reach them. Unfortunately he was forced to turn back, and when he finally returned a few hours later the casualties were dead, their bodies pumped full of bullets by Israeli snipers.

“Coordination”

“I have only one coordination”, says Mahmoud Abu Speitan, Director of the Amul Hospital Red Crescent Training Institute and veteran paramedic from Khan Younis. “Ashahadu Lā ilaha illal-Lāh, Muhammadun rasūlula-Lāh,” (I testify that there is no god but God and Mohammad is his messenger)-a blessing commonly declared by Muslims when expecting to die. “This is what I say when I get inside my ambulance.”

“Coordination”-Tanseek in Arabic-refers to permission from the Israeli Occupation, organized through the International Committee for the Red Cross, to enter areas to collect the dead and injured. During Israel’s attacks in December and January “coordination” was only granted in some cases after four days-as was the case of the Samouni family, which saw over 30 people from the same family killed when homes they were sheltering in were shelled by the Israeli army.

Medics from the Tel Al Howa station close to Al Quds Hospital-which was later bombed by an F16, shelled by tanks and gutted with white phosphorous-had to walk for over a kilometer dragging a donkey cart on foot because Israeli forces banned them from taking either an ambulance or a donkey. The medics said they could not forget the white parched mouths of the child survivors they found clinging to the bodies of their parents. They dragged the injured, limp and jostling around, on the back of the carts as Israeli soldiers looked on.

Articles 14-24 of the Fourth Geneva Convention afford special protection to medical and humanitarian staff. The Convention guarantees respect for the freedom of movement of medical personnel, and ensures they be granted all necessary material facilities to perform their duties, including removal of victims, and attending to and transferring injured and sick civilians. Care of and access to the sick and injured are also enshrined in Article 17, which states that “the parties to the conflict shall endeavor to conclude local agreements for the removal from besieged or encircled areas, of wounded, sick, infirm, and aged persons, and for the passage of ministers of all religions, medical personnel and medical equipment on their way to such areas.”

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), perhaps hundreds of those killed could have survived if emergency services had been able to access them promptly-the access denied to them can be defined as a deliberate violation of the Geneva Conventions and therefore a war crime.

Throughout Israel’s war on Gaza, basic, essential medical supplies and equipment including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) were in short supply. After nearly two years of a hermetic siege, even basics like gauze, electric blood pressure monitors, spare parts, and petrol were scarce. Ministry of Health (MOH) teams in the north lacked walkie-talkies, relying instead on coordination through other services, and trusting their hearing to follow the sounds of falling bombs. The MOH ambulances in Jabaliya ran out of petrol in the final days of the attack. Concerned residents joined together to bring canisters of fuel to their operating base at Kamal Odwan Hospital and an entire convoy from the north swung into the headquarters of the United Nations in Gaza City to literally beg the UN to let them fill up.

Protective vests were limited to around four per station, meaning team members had to take turns wearing them. Perhaps, if the much admired paramedic Arafa Abdel Deim had had the luck to wear his on a run to rescue five shelled casualties, he would have survived the direct flechette shell that hit his ambulance. He died of massive blood loss. The vests the medics use-primarily in the hands of the Red Crescent, the Palestinian arm of the International Red Cross-are inadequate for the quick lifting of casualties. Made of two heavy plates of steel, they weigh down on the person like a Knight’s armor.

Ambulance crews with the CDS lacked high voltage searchlights-essential equipment for night-work. Every second spent searching fruitlessly means a second closer to a potential re-hit by Israeli forces or a second closer to a casualty turning into a fatality. Medics ended up using tiny cube-lights, shining a thin hazy beam stretching just a few feet in front of them.

Unity and solidarity

In April of this year, medics from the CDS, MOH, Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, Red Crescent, and Military Services met together to establish an organizing committee for an “International Campaign of Solidarity with Palestinian Emergency Workers.” The group of over 50 gathered together to speak in a common voice, despite Israel’s attempts to divide them into categories of “legitimate” and “illegitimate” or “combat medics.”

The aims of the nascent campaign are to mobilize the international community to react to Israeli violations of international law; to stop attacks on emergency staff; to build advocacy for the observance of international law; and to organize the twinning of ambulance stations in Gaza with others around the world. The campaign also aims to secure badly needed equipment, engage in staff exchanges, and build a louder, more public and unified voice for Palestinian rescuers internationally.

According to the MOH, 100 rescuers have been killed in the past nine years-an average of one per month. To date, there has been no political cost or accountability for Israel’s targeting of Palestinian rescuers. We need to turn the spotlight on the occupation’s targeting of medical professionals-the front line in civilian resistance to Israel’s policy of massacre, collective punishment and community devastation. Making it too politically costly for Israel to keep killing rescuers is imperative to saving lives.

Solidarity campaigning for Palestinian human rights has been active since the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel on stolen and ethnically cleansed Palestinian land. A 60-year history of dispossession, massacres, home demolition, extra-judicial killing of leaders, imprisonment, land grabs, and invasions keeps repeating itself. Generations of Palestinian emergency staff have been responding to these invasions and attacks by putting out the fires that Israeli bombs have ignited, picking up the pieces of broken bodies that often break families and communities, and saving the lives that Israel wants to kill-civilian or combatant. Referred to in the Palestinian community as “unknown soldiers,” these courageous men and women are frontline witnesses to the effects that white phosphorous, flechette shells, missiles, sniper fire and bulldozers have on the human body. As such, their witness to Israeli attacks is up close and personal and hard to refute.

Medical services fulfill a strategic aim of keeping Palestinian communities together, and defending their survival on their land. They have rescued 40,000 Palestinians injured by Israeli forces since the eruption of the second intifada alone. Supporting them is key to resisting Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing and massacre. “When we put on our uniforms, we are life-savers, it doesn’t matter who we support, which Palestinian side, we have to save lives, even those of Israeli soldiers-that’s our job, it’s the promise we make,” explains Abu Issam, a senior Paramedic with Jabaliya’s Red Crescent Society.

Following Israel’s massacres in January 2009, the number of applicants for rescuer and ambulance driver training in Gaza soared. Many Gazans were traumatized by hearing friends and family members calling local radio and television stations begging for ambulances to collect their bleeding loved ones. The rage over those who could have lived if Israel had not attacked those trying to save them has turned into a practical resistance of young men and women being prepared to sacrifice their own lives in the service of preserving the lives of others. We need to support this resistance and defend these rescuers as a clear form of “solidarity triage” in the midst of the intensifying attacks on Palestinian communities and their land.

Palestinian-led movement to boycott Israel is gaining support

Gal Beckerman | Forward

16 September 2009

Uzbekistan-born diamond mogul Lev Leviev announced late in August that his company, Africa-Israel, was drowning in debt of more than $5.5 billion that it could not repay. Over the next two days, shares in the company’s stock plummeted by more than one-third. It was relentless bad news for one of the world’s richest men. His holding and investment company had lost $1.4 billion since 2008, mostly due to failed real estate investments in the United States.

Watching Leviev’s precipitous downfall from the sidelines were pro-Palestinian activists. And they were cheering.

Though certainly not the cause of his financial collapse, for the past two years, these activists have singled out Leviev as one of their high-profile villains for his large contributions to West Bank settlements. And they have been effective gadflies. Several of the company’s major shareholders have divested their holdings from Africa-Israel after receiving complaints from clients. And at least two charities have declared publicly they will not accept Leviev’s contributions.

The pro-Palestinian activists are affiliated with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, an international coalition with the goal of isolating and discomfiting Israel just as South Africa’s apartheid regime was targeted in the 1980s.

Initiated by Palestinian groups in 2005 but strengthened by a network that takes in dozens of leftist organizations in Europe and the United States, the Global BDS Movement claims a number of recent successes. Especially in the wake of the Gaza incursion of last winter, groups associated with the boycott have now felt spurred to expand their efforts into even the sensitive realm of academic and cultural boycotts of Israel.

As Omar Barghouti, one of the Palestinian leaders of the BDS movement, told the Forward, “Our South Africa moment has finally arrived.”

Some major Jewish groups acknowledge BDS as a possible threat. “There are clearly a number of episodes building up here that would allow advocates of a boycott to say that slowly, slowly we are achieving what we want, which is the South Africanization of Israel,” said American Jewish Committee spokesman Ben Cohen. “I’m not sure that the increase in activity is quite as dramatic as some people would believe, but it’s clear to me that this discourse of boycott is being increasingly legitimized, and it would appear that some companies are responsive to it.”

The BDS movement is highly decentralized, with each group in the coalition allowed to choose its own targets as it sees fit. It has no articulated political vision. such as a one- or two-state solution to the conflict. The principles that guide the movement — as set out in a call for boycott, divestment and sanctions issued in June 2005 by a wide group of Palestinian civil society organizations — demand instead that Israel adhere to international and human rights law. The amorphous structure and broad goals appear to be responsible for many of the group’s appeal. But some who watch this movement closely contend that, in the end, even a “targetted” boycott is ultimately aimed at all of Israel.

The actual monetary impact of the movement is often unclear. But for activists seeking as much to affect Israel’s image in the public’s mind, money is not always the bottom line.

The campaign against Leviev is a good example. It was initiated by Adalah-NY, one of the handful of American groups in the BDS movement’s network. It was Adalah’s activists who chose to focus on Leviev’s construction projects in the West Bank and on contributions he has made to the Land Redemption Fund, which gives money for settlement development. Adalah-NY protesters first picketed the opening two years ago of Leviev’s diamond retail store, yelling at actress Susan Sarandon as she entered the Madison Avenue shop. Since then, the group has taken every opportunity to point out his connections to the West Bank settlements.

Lately, the fruits of this focus on Leviev have been piling up. On Sept. 11 TIAA-CREF, the giant pension fund, announced that it had divested from Africa-Israel last March after 59 of the company’s investors accused it of being “a company which violates human rights and international law.” UNICEF and OXFAM denied Leviev’s public claims to have given them generous contributions and added that they would not accept contributions from him because of his financial support for West Bank settlements. Also, in the past few weeks, a couple of Africa-Israel’s largest investors have sold their stock in Leviev’s company after receiving pressure from their clients. Most notable was BlackRock, the British subsidiary of the major Wall Street banking firm, which announced that it was divesting following concerns expressed by three client Scandinavian banks.

“Those aren’t small things,” said Andrew Kadi, a member of Adalah who is involved with the Leviev campaign. “People don’t completely grasp how serious it is when two of your top 10 or 12 shareholders divest. We’re talking about millions of dollars.”

Neither Leviev nor Africa-Israel responded to requests for comment.

Leviev’s trouble is just one of many recent signs of the movement’s higher profile. There was the protest joined by several celebrities in mid-September at the Toronto International Film Festival of the festival’s official cultural partnership with the city of Tel Aviv in celebration of the latter’s 100th anniversary. A few days earlier, Neve Gordon, a professor at Ben-Gurion University, wrote a controversial opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, endorsing the BDS movement as the “only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel.” This past June, the French company Veolia Environnement SA abandoned its multibillion-dollar project to build a light rail train system in Jerusalem after pressure mounted in France from BDS-affiliated groups. The activists counted it as one more victory.

Ironically, Barghouti, who appears to be one of the movement’s chief strategists, is currently in a master’s degree program in philosophy at Tel Aviv University — even though he is one of the founding members of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He has been one of the activists strongly pushing the greater BDS movement in the direction of opposing any institution associated with Israel.

Asked about his affiliation with an institution he wants boycotted, Barghouti declined to discuss his personal life.

In an e-mail to the Forward, Barghouti emphasized that the BDS movement “does not adopt a particular political solution to the colonial conflict.” The main strategy, he wrote, “is based on the principle that human rights and international law must be upheld and respected no matter what the political solution may be. This was key to securing a near consensus in Palestinian civil society and a wide network of support around the world, including the Western mainstream.”

The exclusive focus on rights rather than on a political prescription for the conflict brings together both those who want to target Israel’s existence as a whole and those—mostly American activists—who stick to the more narrow issue of the occupation and settlement activity.

As far as Barghouti is concerned, BDS is a “comprehensive boycott of Israel, including all its products, academic and cultural institutions, etc.” But he understands “the tactical needs of our partners to carry out a selective boycott of settlement products, say, or military suppliers of the Israeli occupation army as the easiest way to rally support around as a black-and-white violation of international law and basic human rights.”

Cohen, the AJC spokesman, views this tactic as a transparent deception. “If you probe these groups a little deeper, you’ll find that really this is entirely ideologically motivated. They are just a bunch of radical groups that want to see the state of Israel eliminated,” he said. “That is the thread that unites all the disparate groups in the BDS movement, they all see BDS as a means to arrive at the goal of a world without Israel. I think that many people who might be troubled by Israel’s presence in the West Bank are going to run a mile when they see what the real agenda of these groups are.”

The activist group Code Pink: Women for Peace recently turned its attention to this type of targeted boycott, focusing on the cosmetics company Ahava. Based in the kibbutz Mitzpe Shalem, a settlement in the West Bank, Ahava was a convenient target for the group. After picketing stores that sold Ahava products — mostly mud masks and mineral salts from the Dead Sea — the Code Pink activists looked on with satisfaction as the company’s spokeswoman, “Sex and the City” star Kristin Davis, was dropped as an ambassador for OXFAM. The group gave its reasons in a statement, saying that it “remains opposed to settlement trade, in which Ahava is engaged.”

Nancy Kricorian, Code Pink’s New York City coordinator and the organizer of its Ahava campaign, dubbed Stolen Beauty, said that this push against the cosmetics company was effective precisely because it was tightly focused on a settlement operation. And yet, it also fell squarely within the guidelines of the BDS movement’s principles and objectives and was even cited by Barghouti as a successful model because it sullied Ahava’s name publicly.

Barghouti, Kricorian and other BDS activists attended the national conference of the U.S. Campaign to the End the Israeli Occupation, which took place on September 12 and 13 in Chicago. The organization is itself an amalgamation of dozens of smaller pro-Palestinian groups from across the country. Up until this conference, its BDS activity had also been narrowly focused on American companies involved in the West Bank. Specifically, they have targeted Caterpillar Inc. for manufacturing the bulldozers involved in settlement construction, and Motorola USA for the surveillance and communications equipment used by the Israeli army.

But according to David Hosey, national media coordinator for the campaign, the group resolved at the conference to extend its activities for the first time to the more sensitive cultural and academic boycott. Like many other pro-Palestinian activists, Hosey dated this willingness to increase boycott activity to the Gaza incursion of this past winter.

“It was a big shock to the system, and it caused a big sea change in what people were willing to do,” said Rebecca Vilkomerson, the national director of Jewish Voice for Peace, which, though supportive of the BDS movement, has not officially joined it.

Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com

UN says Israel should face war-crimes trial over Gaza

Donald Macintyre | The Independent

16 September 2009

Israel targeted “the people of Gaza as a whole” in the three-week military operation which is estimated to have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians at the beginning of this year, according to a UN-commissioned report published yesterday.

A UN fact-finding mission led by the Jewish South African former Supreme Court Judge Richard Goldstone said Israel should face prosecution by the International Criminal Court, unless it opened fully independent investigations of what the report said were repeated violations of international law, “possible war crimes and crimes against humanity” during the operation.

Using by far the strongest language of any of the numerous reports criticising Operation Cast Lead, the UN mission, which interviewed victims, witnesses and others in Gaza and Geneva this summer, says that while Israel had portrayed the war as self-defence in response to Hamas rocket attacks, it “considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole”.

“In this respect the operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas, and possibly with the intent of forcing a change in such support,” the report said. It added that some Israelis should carry “individual criminal responsibility.”

The 575-page document presented to yesterday’s session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva was swiftly denounced by Israel. The foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the UN mission had “dealt a huge blow to governments seeking to defend their citizens from terror”, and that its conclusions were “so disconnected with realities on the ground that one cannot but wonder on which planet was the Gaza Strip they visited”.

The Gaza war began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009.

The UN report found that the statements of military and political leaders in Israel before and during the operation indicated the use of “disproportionate force”, aimed not only at the enemy but also at the “supporting infrastructure”. The mission adds: “In practice this appears to have meant the civilian population.”

The mission also had harsh conclusions about Hamas and other armed groups, acknowledging that rocket and mortar attacks have caused terror in southern Israel, and saying that where launched into civilians areas, they would “constitute war crimes” and “may amount to crimes against humanity”.

It also condemned the extrajudicial killings, detention and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees by the Hamas regime in Gaza – as well as by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank – and called for the release on humanitarian grounds of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal abducted by Gaza militants in June 2006.

While the Israeli government refused to co-operate with the inquiry – or allow the UN team into Israel – on the ground that the team would be “one-sided”, Cpl Shalit’s father, Noam, was among those Israeli citizens who flew to Geneva to give evidence.

That said, the much greater part of the report – and its strongest language – is reserved for Israel’s conduct during the operation. Apart from the unprecedented death toll, the report says that “the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces”. The purpose was “to make the daily process of living and dignified living more difficult for the civilian population”.

The report also says that vandalism of houses by some soldiers and “the graffiti on the walls, the obscenities and often racist slogans constituted an overall image of humiliation and dehumanisation of the Palestinian population”. Hospitals and ambulances were “targeted by Israeli attacks.”

Amid a detailed examination of most of the major incidents of the war – albeit an examinations carried out five months after the incidents took place – it says that:

* The first bombing attack on Day One of the operation when children were going home from school “appears to have been calculated to cause the greatest disruption and widespread panic”.

* The deaths of 22 members of the Samouni family sheltering in a warehouse were among ones “owing to Israeli fire intentionally directed at them”, in clear breach of the Geneva Convention.

* The firing of white phosphorus shells at the UN Relief and Works Agency compound was “compounded by reckless regard of the consequences”, and the use of high explosive artillery at the al-Quds hospitals were violations of Articles 18 and 19 of the Geneva Convention. It says that warnings issued by Israel to the civilian population “cannot be considered as sufficiently effective” under the Convention.

* On the attack in the vicinity of the al-Fakhoura school, where at least 35 Palestinians were killed, Israeli forces launched an attack where a “reasonable commander” would have considered military advantage was outweighed by the risk to civilian life. The civilians had their right to life violated as under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). And while some of the 99 policemen killed in incidents surveyed by the team may have been members of armed groups, others who were not also had their right to life violated.

* The inquiry team also says that a number of Palestinians were used as human shields – itself a violation of the ICCPR – including Majdi Abed Rabbo, whose complaints about being so used were first aired in The Independent. The report asserts that the use of human shields constitutes a “war crime under the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court.”

U.K. labor unions mull Israel boycott in wake of Gaza war

Ha’aretz

17 September 2009

British labor unions say they’ll vote at an annual conference on whether to support a boycott of some Israeli goods in response to the offensive in Gaza.

The boycott, proposed by the Fire Brigades Union, calls for a ban on importing goods produced in some Israeli settlements, an end of arms trading with Israel and disinvestment from some companies.

A motion to be debated on Thursday at a conference of labor union officials also condemns the actions of Hamas.

About 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed in the December-January offensive, which sought to stop rocket fire by Gaza militants on southern Israeli towns. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.

In May of this year, Norway’s largest labor union urged the Scandinavian country to lead an international boycott of Israel if it did not reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, whose members constitute more than a third of the country’s employees, said in a statement that both Israel and the Palestinians deserve to live in peace and security, and as long as this was not achieved, the Israeli government was to be held accountable.

The organization urged Israel to put an end to the “illegal occupation,” respect the 1967 borders, halt the expansion of the settlements and remove the security barrier.

In February, Irish trade unionists said that they plan to launch a boycott of Israeli goods in 2009. Meanwhile, Manchester University Student Union adopted a resolution supporting a boycott of Israel.

In moving ahead with plans to boycott Israel, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) says it is relying on “evidence” left in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion into Gaza in December.

It also said to be drawing from a “fact-finding mission” to Gaza by a dozen of its senior members more than a year ago. Leaders within the Irish Congress of Trade Unions are to hold a conference this year to act as “a springboard” for their campaign.

Border Control / Better late than never?

Akiva Eldar | Ha’aretz

16 September 2009

A little over four years ago, when Kadima’s Ze’ev Boim was deputy defense minister in the Likud government, he launched a huge attack on Col. (res.) Shaul Arieli and his colleagues from the council for peace and security.

These people, he said, make the saying “Those who destroy you will come from within,” come true, he said.

Boim’s ire stemmed from the fact that the members of the council had dared to propose to the High Court of Justice an alternative route for one of the sections of the separation fence. Their proposal was more economical and less invasive; it could be completed faster and was less harmful from a political point of view.

However, contrary to the route that had been planned in Boim’s bureau, this one was not drawn up with the settlers’ wishes in mind.

Last week, the justices of the high court, headed by the court president Dorit Beinisch, adopted the alternative proposed by these “destroyers” for the fence’s route in the area of Tul Karm and Qalqilyah. The fence in this area was completed as far back as 2003. The court’s ruling noted that events have shown that “from the start the fence was put up in a way that seriously harmed the rights of the local residents and their access to their agricultural lands … This was caused by including large stretches of agricultural land in the seam area and was aimed at making it possible for the Tsofin North plan to go into effect as well as the extension of the settlement of Tsofin in the future.”

The ruling ordered that 5,400 dunams trapped on the western (Israeli) side of the fence be returned to Palestinian villagers.

The key words, “from the start,” appear in the ruling also with reference to the opinion submitted by the council. Beinisch notes that the council presented an alternative that was “significantly” different from the existing route and that after the state changed its position, “the route it is proposing today came closer to the route that was proposed from the start by the council.”

Justices Edmond Levy and Ayala Procaccia also agreed with Beinisch that the route proposed by Arieli and his colleagues provides a solution to the security needs of the state’s citizens.

The court ruled that the state must pay NIS 20,000 in court costs from the villagers who had petitioned it. That is a paltry sum when compared with the cost to the taxpayer of what is hidden behind the words “from the start.”

Had the senior political echelons opened their minds to Arieli instead of obeying the settlers, the state coffers could saved tens of millions of shekels on this section of the fence alone.

The mathematics are simple: Putting up a fence along 6.6 kilometers according to the Defense Ministry’s route – NIS 80 million; dismantling the fence – NIS 8 million. When you add to that the hours of work spent by the state prosecution and the costs of rehabilitating the areas that were damaged by putting up the original fence and dismantling it, you get close to NIS 100 million.

Apropos to “those who destroy” – every weekend the media report “violent incidents” between demonstrators against the fence and the army near the village of Bil’in. For some reason, no one bothers to mention the fact that the High Court of Justice ruled that those who planned the fence expropriated the villagers’ lands in order to accommodate the expansion of neighboring Modi’in Ilit.

They also do not mention that it stated that the present route suffers from topographical inferiority and that this endangers the security forces.

It is now two years since the high court ruled that this section of the fence must be dismantled and built along a less invasive and more secure route.

The Israel Defense Forces spokesman responded on July 22 that, “The IDF is ready for the change of route in the fence in that area, according to the High Court of Justice’s ruling, and is now awaiting the criticisms that are expected to be presented on behalf of the villagers.”

The criticisms were submitted a month earlier.

Bully pulpits

Three months ago, Defense Minister Ehud Barak took time from his busy day to meet with South Korean preacher Dr. Jaerock Lee. Last week, foreign correspondents received an invitation to cover a festival that the evangelical guru had organized in Jerusalem with the participation of Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

They were assured that Lee would conclude the rally for the 3,000 pilgrims from 36 countries who came to receive his blessing with a special prayer for the health and blessing of Israel and its people.

Lee, who claims he is immortal, free of sin and able to perform miracles to heal the sick, did not disappoint and promised that the prayers he recited in the Holy City would keep it free of swine flu.

The organizers pointed out that the decision by Lee to hold the festival in Jerusalem was an expression of solidarity with and faith in the state of Israel and its leaders.

A few days before the thousands of believers of the South Korean preacher arrived in Jerusalem, the central committee of the World Council of Churches in Geneva signed a resolution stating that the “some 200 settlements with more than 450,000 settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem … make the peace efforts by the international community more vulnerable and virtually impossible.”

The organization, which represents 349 churches with 560 million believers, pointed out that while the whole world supports Israel’s right to live in security, its settlement and annexation policies give rise to feelings of hostility. It therefore called on all the churches that it represents to encourage non-violent opposition to the expropriation of lands, destruction of houses and banishment of Palestinians from their homes.

Moreover, the council reiterated its instruction to boycott goods and services that originate from the settlements and the believers were called on to refrain from investing in businesses that are connected with Israel’s settlement activity.