Category: In the Media - Page 207 - International Solidarity Movement

Europe stalls on closer Israel links in Gaza protest

European commission moves to upgrade political and trade links with Israel on hold, diplomats say

Ian Traynor | The Guardian

European plans to turn Israel into a “privileged” partner enjoying special political, diplomatic and trade links were frozen by Brussels today in protest at the Israeli onslaught in Gaza.

Senior officials and diplomats in Brussels also said Czech pressure to stage a Europe-Israel summit to launch a new “special relationship” was facing stiff resistance and would probably not take place.

Senior figures in Brussels said the European move was ordered by Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the commissioner for external relations, who instructed various departments of the European commission to suspend implementation of a policy decided last year “to upgrade” relations between Israel and the EU.

“Senior people are saying there should be a pause in close ties between Israel and the union,” said a European diplomat.

“The commission has frozen contacts with the Israelis on practical aspects of the upgrade,” another diplomat said.

Commission officials denied that the decision amounted to sanctions against Israel. “There’s been no talk of sanctions. We’re very focused on the Egyptian [ceasefire] plan,” said a senior official.

The EU and the Israeli government agreed last summer on the new policy giving Tel Aviv a privileged partnership with Europe, entailing greater integration into Europe’s single market.

Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal, the EU commission’s ambassador to Israel, told reporters in Jerusalem today that the war in Gaza meant bilateral relations between Israel and the 27-nation bloc “cannot proceed business as usual”.

He said: “In a war situation, in a situation in which Israel is at war, using its war means in a very dramatic way, in a powerful way in Gaza, everybody realises that it is not the appropriate time to upgrade bilateral relations.”

The decision to suspend implementation comes as a blow to the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, a month before she faces the rightwing hawk Benjamin Netanyahu in a general election.

The new European policy was in part designed to help Livni win the election and late last year she had two “tempestuous” meetings with Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, demanding quicker European action to boost her poll chances. EU foreign ministers responded with a decision to push ahead with the policy.

While the practical impact of the freeze may be minimal, officials said, the political and symbolic signals are strong, controversial and unusual.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if people like Fererro-Waldner were working not on an upgrade, but on a downgrade,” said a third diplomat in Brussels.

The protest move has been orchestrated by the commission which, at a meeting in Strasbourg yesterday, agreed that “people should stay away from Israel”, said another source.

The decision is likely to run into strong criticism among governments of the 27 member states. The Czech Republic assumed the EU presidency at the beginning of the year with a robust pro-Israeli campaign in mind. “The Czech presidency is seen to be very keen to take an American line on this,” said the source.

The Czechs have been seeking to organise a European summit with Israel in May or June in Prague to mark the launch of the new deal.

“They want a highly symbolic summit to demonstrate the EU’s partnership with Israel as particularly privileged,” said one of the diplomats. “It’s all off for the moment; particularly inappropriate. It would be tremendously divisive.”

British diplomats neither supported nor opposed the commission move, saying only that the priority was to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

‘Israeli produce boycotted’

Yair Hason | Ynet

Farmers claim UK, Jordan boycotting Israeli fruit: Fruit growers disappointed by canceled orders from abroad, leaving produce to rot in warehouses

Fruit growers in Israel have reported delays and reductions in orders from abroad since the military operation in Gaza was launched, due to various boycotts against Israeli produce.

Farmers say much of their produce is being held in warehouses due to canceled orders, and fear a sharp decrease in fruit exports to countries such as Jordan, Britain, and the Scandinavian countries.

“We export persimmons, and because of the fighting a number of countries and distributors are canceling orders,” Giora Almagor, of the southern town of Bitzaron, told Ynet. He said some of the produce had already been shipped while some was awaiting shipment in warehouses.

Almagor said a large number of cancellations came from Jordan. “The produce stays packed in warehouses, and this is causing us massive losses,” he said.

“The longer the fruit waits in storage after sorting, the more its quality decreases. We also have to pay for cooling the merchandise that should have already left, and the cost in considerable,” he added.

Ilan Eshel, director of the Organization of Fruit Growers in Israel, said Scandinavian countries have also been canceling orders. “It’s mostly Sweden, Norway, and Denmark,” he said. “In Scandinavia the tendency is general, and it may come to include all of the chains.”

Eshel says the boycott did not exist before the Gaza offensive was launched. “It’s getting worse, and more voices can be heard calling to boycott Israeli merchandise,” he said. “Until the operation began we had excellent business, though the economic recession in Europe was causing a slight fall in the market.”

He added that winter was an especially difficult season to be unable to export fruit, because the avocado, persimmon, and citrus markets are at their height.

Progressive: Critic of Israel Threatened Before Talk in NY

Matthew Rothschild | The Progressive

Adam Shapiro has enemies.

Especially in the Jewish Defense Organization, the militant Zionist group that broke with the Jewish Defense League back in the 1980s.

The group’s website calls Shapiro a “maggot” and a “self-hating Jew” and “a Jew intent on destroying Israel.”

Shapiro, a human rights activist, is one of the co-founders of the International Solidarity Movement, a group that practices nonviolent civil disobedience against Israeli actions in Gaza and on the West Bank.

Hours before Shapiro spoke at a town hall meeting in New York on January 13, he received a threat from the Jewish Defense Organization. Also speaking at the town hall meeting were Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, the actor Vanessa Redgrave, Peter Weiss of the Center for Constitutional Rights, playwright and actor Naila Said (daughter of the great Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said), and Alan Goodman, a writer for Revolution newspaper.

The Jewish Defense Organization pasted leaflets on the window of Revolution Books, which was sponsoring the event.

The leaflet called Shapiro a “traitor to Israel, the Jews, and America.” It said he was a “Jewish John Walker Lindh” and condemned him for going to Ramallah to show solidarity with Yasser Arafat when the PLO leader was surrounded by Israeli tanks in 2002.

Shapiro, the leaflet said, “has made numerous statements of hate to both Israel and America.”

The leaflet also heaped abuse on Alan Goodman, who recently picked the Holocaust museum, according to the Jewish Defense Organization.

“These enemies to the Jews will pay very soon for their act of treachery,” the leaflet said. And it gave out Shapiro’s home address in Brooklyn, as well his parents’ address.

“I wasn’t too alarmed from a physical safety point of view,” says Shapiro, “but I was concerned that people would come to the event and disrupt it.”

That didn’t happen.

“There didn’t seem to be any disturbances outside or inside,” he says. But he recalls seeing a lot of police officers there.

Shapiro was pleased with the event. “There was a big crowd, about 500 people.

“If their goal was to intimidate us or to rally people to oppose the event, then they totally failed.”

Joseph Goodman, a spokesperson for the Jewish Defense Organization, says the leaflet was part of “Operation Crush Terror,” which, he says, is aimed at “self-hating Jews.”

He denies that the leaflet constituted a death threat. “No, it’s not,” he says. “The idea is to make sure no one rents a meeting place or an apartment to them. We want to run them out of their homes and get them fired from their jobs. We are going after them.”

When I told Goodman that I saw a press release from the Coalition for Justice in the Middle East condemning the threat against Shapiro, he said: “Do you think they’re freaked out?”

Vittorio Arrigoni: In Gaza Hippocrates is dead

Published by Il Manifesto, 10th January 2009.
Translated from Italian by Daniela Filippin

In Gaza, a firing squad put Hippocrates up against a wall, aimed and fired. The absurd declarations of an Israeli secret services’ spokesman, according to which the army was given the green light in firing at ambulances because they allegedly carried terrorists, is an illustration of the value that Israel assigns to human life these days – the lives of their enemies, that is. It’s worth revisiting what’s stated in the Hippocratic Oath, which every doctor swears upon before starting to practice the profession. The following passages are especially worthy of note:

I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity. I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity. The health and life of my patient will be my first consideration. I will cure all patients with the same diligence and commitment. I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient.

Seven doctors and voluntary nurses have been killed from the start of the bombing campaign, and about ten ambulances were shot at by the Israeli artillery. The survivors are shaking with fear, but refuse to take a step back. The crimson flashes of the ambulances are the only bursts of light in the dark streets of Gaza, bar the flashes that precede an explosion. Regarding these crimes, the last report comes from Pierre Wettach, chief of the Red Cross in Gaza. His ambulances had access to the spot of a massacre, in Zaiton , East of Gaza City, only 24 hours after the Israeli attack. The rescue-workers state they found themselves faced by a blood-curdling scenario. “In one of the houses four small children were found near the body of their dead mother. They were too weak to stand on their feet. We also found an adult survivor, and he too was also too weak to stand up. About 12 corpses were found lying on the mattresses.” The witnesses to this umpteenth massacre describe how the Israeli soldiers, after getting into the neighbourhood, gathered the numerous members of the Al Samouni family in one building and then proceeded to repeatedly bomb it. My ISM partners and I have been driving around in the Half Red Moon ambulances for days, suffering many attacks and losing a dear friend, Arafa, struck by a howitzer shot from a cannon. A further three paramedics, all friends, are presently inpatients at the hospitals they worked in until a few days ago. Our duty on the ambulances is to pick up the injured, not carry guerrilla fighters. When we find a man lying in the street in a pool of his own blood, we don’t have the time to check his papers or ask him whether he roots for Hamas or Fatah. Most seriously injured can’t talk, much like the dead. A few days ago, while picking up a badly wounded patient, another man with light injuries tried to hop onto the ambulance. We pushed him out, just to make it clear to whoever’s watching from up above that we don’t serve as a taxi to usher members of the resistance around. We only take on the most fatally wounded – of which there’s always a plentiful supply, thanks to Israel.

Last night at Al Qudas hospital in Gaza City, 17-year-old Miriam was carried in, with full-blown labour pains. Her father and sister-in-law, both dead, had passed through the hospital in the morning, both victims of indiscriminate bombing. Miriam gave birth to a gorgeous baby during the night, not aware of the fact that while she lay in the delivery room, her young husband had arrived in the morgue one floor below her.

In the end, even the United Nations realised that here in Gaza, we’re all in the same boat, all moving targets for the snipers. The death toll is now at 789 dead, 3,300 wounded (410 in critical conditions), 230 children killed and countless missing. The death toll on the Israeli side has thankfully stopped at 4. John Ging, chief of UNRWA (UN agency for the rights of Palestinian Refugees) has stated that the UN announced they shall suspend their humanitarian activities in the Gaza Strip. I bumped intoGing in the Ramattan press office and saw him shake his finger with disdain at Israel before the cameras. The UN stopped its work in Gaza after two of its operators were killed yesterday, ironically during the three-hour truce that Israel had announced and as usual, had failed to comply with. “The civilians in Gaza have three hours a day at their disposal in which to survive, the Israeli soldiers have the remaining 21 in which to try and exterminate them”, I heard Ging state two steps away from me.

Yasmine, the wife of one of the many journalists waiting in line at the Erez pass, wrote to me from Jerusalem. Israel won’t grant these journalists a pass to let them in and film or describe the immense unnatural catastrophe that has befallen us in the last thirteen days. These were her words: “ The day before yesterday I went to have a look at Gaza from the outside. The world’s journalists are all huddled on a small sandy hill a few km from the border. Innumerable cameras are pointed towards us. Planes circle us overhead – you can hear them but you can’t see them. They seem like illusions, like something in your head until you see the black smoke rising from the horizon, in Gaza. The hill has also become a tourist site for the Israelis in the area. With their large binoculars and cameras, they come and watch the bombings live.”

While I write this piece of correspondence in a mad rush, a bomb is dropped onto the building next to the one I’m in now. The windowpanes shake, my ears ache, I look out the window and see that the building gathering the major Arabic media agencies has been struck. It’s one of Gaza City’s tallest buildings, the AlJaawhara building. A camera crew is permanently stationed on the roof, I can now see them all bending around on the ground, waving their arms and asking for help as they’re covered by a black cloud of smoke.

Paramedics and journalists, the most heroic occupations in this corner of the world. At the Al Shifa hospital yesterday I paid Tamim a visit – he’s a journalist who survived an air raid. He explained how he thinks that Israel is adopting the same identical terrorist techniques as Al-Qaeda, bombing a building, waiting for the journalists and ambulances to arrive and then dropping another bomb to finish the latter two off as well. In his view that’s why there’ve been so many casualties among the journalists and paramedics. As he said this, the nurses around his bed all nodded in agreement.Tamim smilingly showed me his two stubs for legs. He was happy he was still around to tell the story, while his colleague, Mohammed, had died with a camera in his hand when the second explosion had proved fatal. In the meantime I asked about the bomb that was just dropped on the building next door, where two journalists, both Palestinian, one from Libyan TV and the other from Dubai TV, were injured. This is a harsh new reminder that this massacre must in no way be described or recorded. All that’s left for me to hope is that among the Israeli military summit no one readsIl Manifesto, or habitually visits my blog.

Stay human,
Vittorio Arrigoni

ei: Too much to mourn in Gaza

By Eva Bartlett – ISM activist in Gaza

To view original article, published by Electronic Intifada on the 8th January 2009, click here

After finishing a shift with the Palestine Red Crescent Society yesterday morning, we went to the United Nations-administered al-Fakhoura school in Jabaliya, which was bombed by Israeli forces, killing at least 40 displaced people who were taking shelter there. When we arrived, prayers were happening in the street in front of the school. I’d seen prayers in open, outdoor places in Palestine and Egypt. But these days, when I see a mass of people praying, in front of al-Shifa hospital, in the streets of Jabaliya, I think of the mosques that have been bombed, and of the loss of lives and sanctuaries. And yesterday I thought of the loss of another safe haven.

The Deeb family was preparing bread when they were killed in their home by Israeli shelling.

The grief was very evident, as was the indignation: “Where are we supposed to stay,” one man demanded. “How many deaths is enough? How many?” It’s the question that has resounded in my mind since the attacks on 27 December.

Across Fakhoura street from the school, about 15 meters down a drive, a gaping hole in the Deeb family house revealed what had been happening when it was hit by a shell. Rounds of bread dough lay where they’d been rolled out to bake. Amal Deeb was in her 30s, a surviving family member told us. When the missile struck, it killed her and nine others in the extended family’s house, including two boys and three girls. Another four were injured, one having both legs amputated.

Approaching the house, the stench of blood was still strong, and was visible in patches and pools amid the rubble of the room. Later, in Jabaliya’s Kamal Adwan hospital, 19-year-old Ahlam lay conscious but unsmiling, unresponsive. The woman at her side explained her injuries: shrapnel lacerations all over her body, and deeper shrapnel injuries in her stomach. Ahlam didn’t know nine of her family members were killed.

Returning to the street in front of the Fakoura school, mourners had gathered, ready to march, to carry the dead and their pieces to their overcrowded resting place. Flags of all colors mixed in this funeral march: no one party dominated, it was collective grief under collective punishment.

So many people had joined the procession through the narrow streets that the funeral split, taking different streets, to reach the cemetery. At the entrance to the cemetery, decorated cement slabs mark the older graves, laid at a time when cement and space were available. The most recently buried bodies, instead, show in sandy humps, buried just low enough to be covered but not properly so. Cement blocks mark some graves, leaves and vines on others. And some were just barely visible, by the raise in earth. But it was too packed, too hard to estimate where a grave might be, no possibility of a respectfully-spaced arrangement.

“Watch where you step,” Mahmoud, a friend, told me, pointing to a barely-noticeable grave of a child.

The enormity of the deaths hit me. After 12 days of killing and psychological warfare, I’d become less shocked at the sight of pieces of bodies, a little numb, like a doctor might, or a person subjected to this time and again. I was and I remain horrified at the ongoing slaughter, at the images of children’s bodies being pulled from the rubble astonished it could continue — but adapted to the fact that there would be bodies, maimed, lives ruined. I stood among sandy makeshift graves, watching men digging with their hands, others carrying corpses on any plank long enough — corrugated tin, scraps of wood, stretchers — to be hastily buried. As the drones still flew overhead and tank shelling could be heard 100s of meters beyond, it all become too much again. I wept for all the dead and the wounded psyches of a people who know their blood flows freely and will continue to do so.

Hatem, the other day, told me to be strong as Palestinians, for Palestinians. And I try, though each day brings assassinations no one could have imagined. Out of touch with all the other fragmented areas of Gaza, I read of the Samuni family and see photos of a baby girl pulled from the rubble of a house shelled by an Israeli warplane. Mohamed, a photojournalist, has photographed many of those killed in Israel’s bombings of houses. And today Hatem crumbled, though he is strong. It’s all too much.

Nidal, a Palestine Red Crescent Society medic, told how he was at the Fakhoura school when it was shelled. His aunt and uncle live nearby and he’d been visiting friends at the school. “I was there, talking with friends, only a little away from where two of the missiles hit. The people standing between me and the missiles were like a shield. They were shredded. About 20 of them,” he said.

Like many Palestinians I’ve met, Nidal has a prior history of loss, even before this latest phenomenal assault on civilians. Only 20 years old, Nidal has already had his father and brother killed, martyred it is said here, by sniper’s bullets. His right hand testifies his part in the story: “Three years ago, the Israeli army had invaded our region [Jabaliya]. One soldier threw a sound bomb at us and I picked it up to throw away. It went off in my hand before I could throw it away.” Sound bombs are used against nonviolent demonstrations against Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank villages of Bilin and Nilin, and many youths learn at a young age how to chuck them away. But Nidal’s stubs of fingers show that he wasn’t so lucky. However, he is luckier than his father and brother. And luckier than two of his cousins, his aunt’s sons, who were in the area where missiles were dropped at the UN school. They, 12 and 27 years old, were killed.

Osama gave his testimony as a medic at the scene after the multiple missile shelling. “When we arrived, I saw dead bodies everywhere. More than 30. Dead children, grandparents … Pieces of flesh all over. And blood. It was very crowded, and difficult to carry out the injured and martyred. There were also dead animals among the humans. I helped carry 15 dead. I had to change my clothes three times. These people thought they were safe in the UN school, but the Israeli army killed them, in cold blood,” he said.

Mohammed K., a volunteer with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, was elsewhere when the UN safe haven was shelled. “We were in Jabaliya, at the UN ‘G’ school, to interview the displaced people taking shelter there. We wanted to find out how many people were staying there, where they’d left from and why exactly, and how safe they felt in the school. While we were there, we heard the explosions, saw the smoke, and wondered what had been hit. It was Fakhoura.”

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in the Gaza Strip after having arrived with the 3rd Free Gaza Movement boat in November. She has been working with the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza, accompanying ambulances while witnessing and documenting the ongoing Israeli air strikes and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.