Gaza on starvation diet -it's official

Israeli Government Documents Show Deliberate Policy To Keep Gazans At Near-starvation Levels

Documents, whose existence were denied by the Israeli government for over a year, have been released after a legal battle led by Israeli human rights group, Gisha. The documents reveal a deliberate policy by the Israeli government in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level. This documents the statement made by a number of Israeli officials that they are "putting the people of Gaza on a diet".

Calculation sheet from newly-released documents (image from Gisha)

In 2007, when Israel began its full siege on Gaza, Dov Weisglass, adviser to then Prime-Minister Ehud Olmert, stated clearly, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” The documents now released contain equations used by the Israeli government to calculate the exact amounts of food, fuel and other necessities needed to do exactly that.

The documents are even more disturbing, say human rights activists, when one considers the fact that close to half of the people of Gaza are children under the age of eighteen. This means that Israel has deliberately forced the undernourishment of hundreds of thousands of children in direct violation of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

This release of documents also severely undermines Israel's oft-made claim that the siege is "for security reasons", as it documents a deliberate and systematic policy of collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza.

Gisha's director, in relation to the release of documents, said, "Israel banned glucose for biscuits and the fuel needed for regular supply of electricity – paralyzing normal life in Gaza and impairing the moral character of the State of Israel. I am sorry to say that major elements of this policy are still in place."

In its statement accompanying the release of the documents, Gisha wrote:

The documents reveal that the state approved "a policy of deliberate reduction" for basic goods in the Gaza Strip (section h.4, page 5*). Thus, for example, Israel restricted the supply of fuel needed for the power plant, disrupting the supply of electricity and water. The state set a "lower warning line" (section g.2, page 5) to give advance warning of expected shortages in a particular item, but at the same time approved ignoring that warning, if the good in question was subject to a policy of "deliberate reduction". Moreover, the state set an "upper red line" above which even basic humanitarian items could be blocked, even if they were in demand (section g.1, page 5). The state claimed in a cover letter to Gisha that in practice, it had not authorized reduction of "basic goods" below the "lower warning line", but it did not define what these "basic goods" were.

Commentator Richard Silverstein wrote: "In reviewing the list of permitted items for import, you come to realize that these are the only items allowed. In other words, if an item is not on the list, it’s prohibited. So, for example, here is the list of permitted spices: Black pepper, soup powder, hyssop, sesame. cinnamon, anise, babuna (chamomile), sage. Sorry, cumin, basil, bay leaf, allspice, carraway, cardamon, chiles, chives, cilantro, cloves, garlic, sesame, tamarind, thyme, oregano, cayenne. Not on the list. You're not a spice Palestinians need according to some IDF dunderhead. And tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, toys, glassware, paint, and shoes? You can forget about them too. Luxuries all, or else security threats."

Despite the disturbing nature of the documents, which show a calculated policy of deliberate undernourishment of an entire population, no major media organizations have reported the story.

The full text of the released documents, and the original Freedom of Information Act request filed by Gisha, can be found on Gisha's website below

http://www.gisha.org/index.php?intLanguage=2&intItemId=1904&intSiteSN=113

Originally published on IMEMC News by Saed Bannoura

The real Yitzhak Rabin

The War of Ideas in the Middle East

The real Yitzhak Rabin
by ALEX KANE on November 4
Originally published on MondoWeiss

Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of when former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist for Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords with Yasir Arafat. With the anniversary comes the obligatory mourning of Rabin as a “man of peace,” as the Israeli leader who, had he survived, might have been the one who brought lasting peace to Israel and Palestine.

While that’s the conventional wisdom of Rabin, it’s based on a total erasure of his sordid role in the Israeli military establishment as well as a fundamental misreading of what the Oslo accords were intended to do. The only way that wisdom holds is if you shut out Palestinian views of Rabin, which is what happens in U.S. media and political discourse.

Former President Bill Clinton’s Op-Ed in today’s New York Times is emblematic of the narrative about Rabin in the United States. Clinton says Rabin had a “vision for freedom, tolerance, cooperation, security and peace”; that had he lived, “I am confident a new era of enduring partnership and economic prosperity would have emerged”; and that the “the cause for which Yitzhak Rabin gave his life” was “building a shared future in which our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences.”

The reality of Rabin is that he was a key player in the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians during the 1947-49 war that led to Israel’s founding, which Palestinians refer to as al-Nakba, or the Catastrophe. During the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Rabin infamously gave orders to “break the bones” of Palestinians participating in the uprising against the then-twenty year old Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And the Oslo accords were never really about peace; it was a successful attempt to “subcontract” the occupation out to the newly formed Palestinian Authority, as Israeli professor Neve Gordon puts it in his excellent book Israel’s Occupation.

In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe writes:

Israel’s ‘peace’ axioms were re-articulated during the days of Yitzhak Rabin, the same Yitzhak Rabin who, as a young officer, had taken an active part in the 1948 cleansing but who had now been elected as prime minister on a platform that promised the resumption of the peace effort. Rabin’s death – he was assassinated by one of his own people on 4 November 1995 came too soon for anyone to assess how much he had really changed from his 1948 days: as recently as 1987, as minister of defence, he had ordered his troops to break the bones of Palestinians who confronted his tanks with stones in the first Intifada; he had deported hundreds of Palestinians as prime minister prior to the Oslo Agreement, and he had pushed for the 1994 Oslo B agreement that effectively caged the Palestinians in the West Bank into several Bantustans.

Ha’aretz columnist Amira Hass gave voice to what Palestinians think of Rabin in this article:

Before the handshake on the White House lawn, before the Nobel Prize and before the murder, when Palestinians were asked about Rabin, this is what they remember: One thinks of his hands, scarred by soldiers’ beatings; another remembers a friend who flitted between life and death in the hospital for 12 days, after he was beaten by soldiers who caught him drawing a slogan on a wall during a curfew. Yet another remembers the Al-Amari refugee camp; during the first intifada, all its young men were hopping on crutches or were in casts because they had thrown stones at soldiers, who in turn chased after them and carried out Rabin’s order.

As for the goals of the Oslo accords, here’s what Gordon writes:

The Oslo process was, to a large extent, the result of Israel’s failure to crush the intifada, and Israel’s major goal in the process was to find a way of managing the Palestinian population while continuing to hold on to their land. As Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and several others pointed out from the outset, Oslo was not an instrument of decolonization but rather a framework that changed the means of Israel’s control in order to perpetuate the occupation. It constituted a move from direct military rule over the Palestinians in the OT to a more indirect or neocolonial form of domination.

And what has the creation of the Palestinian Authority, perhaps the most lasting legacy of the tenure of Rabin, brought to the Palestinian people? Collaboration with Israel and repression of dissent.

Let’s save the lauding of Rabin as a “man of peace” for someone who is really working towards peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.

This post originally appeared on Alex Kane's blog.

Road to Hope: tenth day at Egyptian border

As the Road To Hope Convoy languishes with its loads of aid for Gaza, convoyer Laura Stuart has released this bulletin, below. Laura was a member of the Viva Palestina convoy which passed through North Africa in February/March 2009. Many of the current travellers have already travelled with an Al Quds convoy on that first journey and they have a bond already with the Libyan drivers as they shared the hardships and difficulties of the journey with them. On that occasion there was no objection from Egypt and they were welcomed by the Egyptian Government who gave members of Viva Palestina and Al Quds a police escort and hospitality all the way from Al Saloum to Rafah.

Laura is one of 7 present survivors of the Mavi Marmara attack by Israeli commandos which took place in international waters on the 31st May 2010 and which has been called a "war crime" and a "crime against humanity" by the United Nations Fact Finding Mission report published in September. She said "we owe it to those who lost their lives on the ship, the widows and 29 children who were orphaned by the attack, to continue the struggle to have the blockade of Gaza lifted completely and for all borders to be open for aid convoys".

"Now we have moved to Tobruk, we have received an amazing welcome from the local people here, who are stopping us on the streets and inviting us into their homes and restaurants for tea and food. All across the Muslim lands of North Africa we have been given the utmost protection and assistance from the King of Morocco instructing his police force to ensure our safe passage through Morocco followed by the amazing fact that Algeria and Morocco opened the border which is sealed for many years. If this border was thrown open to us after 15 years of closure then we wonder why can't the Egyptian border not be opened to us as well? Algerian, Tunisian and Libyan police have escorted and protected our convoy and many local organisations have given us free food and accommodation. The support for the Palestinians and people of Gaza across North Africa from people at every level is overwhelming.

'We are not wealthy people, we are humanitarians, people of conscience who came together to form a convoy taking aid to Gaza, now we are faced with the prospect of our only hope of reaching Gaza being to hire a ship for our vehicles and to pay for ourselves to fly to Al Arish. The cost of this was never reckoned into the cost of reaching Gaza. We also feel that although charities from Libya or elsewhere may offer to assist us financially that this money could be better spent directly on the people of Palestine rather than being spent on taking a ship to deliver what we can take by road. On the other hand we are steadfast in our determination to continue however much we may suffer from being separated from our families and loved ones, we recognise that our suffering is very minor compared to the struggle of daily life that the people of Palestine face. Some of our people have had to leave to fulfil work commitments but about 60 of us remain and reaching Gaza is our aim and we remain steadfast on that aim."

On the 1st November, Siamak Alimi sent out a quick blog:

Libyan Government actively and vigorously trying to help R2H get a boat. Egyptian Government has been very happy, for weeks, to facilitate r2h getting into Gaza by El Arish port. Egypt has repeated its full permission to facilitate access to Gaza through El Arish. Libya is repeating its offer to try to fix up a boat. It is all still up for grabs. We are confident that the convoy will be on the move again soon and will complete its mission.

Mike Leigh boycotts Israel

British director Mike Leigh, who was scheduled to visit Israel from November 20-27 to teach a master class in Jerusalem as part of the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School’s "Great Masters" programme, cancelled for political reasons. He last visited Palestine/Israel in 1990.

In a letter announcing his decision, Leigh, the director of Abigail’s Party, Secrets & Lies, Happy Go Lucky and the just-released Another Year, cited several of Israel’s policies, including the proposed “loyalty oath”, plus the so-called 'settlements' and the attack on the Freedom Flotilla as the reason for his change of heart. In his letter to the School he said,"I have become ever-increasingly uncomfortable about what would unquestionably appear as my implicit support for Israel were I to fulfil my promise and come."

"I have absolutely no choice. I cannot come, I do not want to come, and I am not coming,"


For an in-depth comment on this, visit Youth Against Normalisation:

While the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against apartheid Israel continues to grow, its opponents continue to resort to the same old canards in trying to defend Israel. In a Jerusalem Post article published on 17 October 2010, columnist Hannah Brown gives us a good example of some of the Israeli talking points ("British director Mike Leigh cancels Israel visit". In her concluding paragraph she writes...
http://youthanormalization.blogspot.com/2010/11/bds-debunking-pro-israeli-arguments.html

Picture: BAFTA.org

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Hebron a closed city during Jewish holiday

On Saturday 30 October in Al-Khalil much of the city was under alert for another Jewish holiday; the old city was overwhelmed with thousands of settlers and Jewish tourists. The atmosphere was tense and internationals were restricted from entering the area surrounding the Ibrahim Mosque until 4 p.m. Access to the mosque was completely denied to Muslims for the entire day as settlers had the whole mosque to themselves.

Due to the massive presence of settlers in the city, the weekly Shuhada Street demonstration was canceled. During the day a Palestinian activist working for B’tsellem was arrested while monitoring settlers and released only late that night.

On Sunday, ISM volunteers patrolled the city all day, following soldiers stopping Palestinians at random to check their IDs, and monitoring children on their way to school. Wadi Al-Hussein is a Palestinian neighbourhood close to Qiryat Arba, the settlement with a population of 5000 people.

On one of the settler-only roads, an old man approached us and told us about the situation of his 11-year-old grandson, Karam. One day while Karam was walking to school, settlers threw stones at him so he ran home scared. Shortly thereafter, soldiers arrived at Karam’s house to arrest him and bring him to prison in Ramallah. He was held for a week and released only on a bail of 2,000 shekels and house-arrest. He’s spent the last five months confined to his uncle’s home. Once a week the teacher brings the whole class to have a lesson with him. His family goes to visit him regularly but his mood is very low.

Since there are few internationals monitoring that particular area regularly, the ISM is going to step up its presence there. We (of the International Solidarity Movement) spoke to the headmaster of the school who told us that sometimes during the night, settlers break into the school to destroy property and shoot live ammunition. Teachers are often stopped by soldiers on their way to school, and have been strip-searched, or forced to drop their trousers, take off their shirts, and stand for an hour in front of the school while kids pass by. Israeli Soldiers often interrupt lessons by coming into the school, and in one case broke a teacher’s hand.

First published by http://palsolidarity.org

Gary Moore boycotts Israel

Belfast man Gary Moore has announced that he would never visit Israel, describing it as a criminal state during a press conference in Moscow.

The PIC [Russian language] quoted Moore, who recently arrived in Russia to perform at a number of concerts, as saying that he had visited a lot of countries, offering the opinion that music is without boundaries but adding that he would not visit Israel.

He told the press conference that his refusal to visit Israel was because of its racist policies against the Palestinian people, adding that he could not accept Israel's policy and lies about Palestine and its people.

The renowned guitarist, whose blues/rock career stretches back to the late Sixties, said that Israel was exerting big efforts to display itself as a victim of war, while it is "absolutely not".

Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0nKJFVVoYM&feature=related

Road to Hope: long wait outside Egypt

Continued from: http://palywely.blogspot.com/2010/10/hope-convoy-still-waits-at-egyptian.html

The Road to Hope humanitarian aid convoy now comprises 30 vehicles and over a hundred humanitarian aid workers. It has travelled four and a half thousand miles through Europe and across North Africa. However the entire convoy has now been stuck for several days on the Libyan - Egyptian border following a wrangle with the Egyptian authorities.

Egypt is insisting that all aid for Gaza must arrive at the port of Al-Arish near the Gaza crossing, either by sea or by air, and refuses all overland crossings of its territories. The Road to Hope convoy is now faced with two options. They will wait for the Libyan convoy “Al Quds 5” which is due to leave shortly and if there is sufficient international pressure on Egypt both convoys may be able to cross the border together. However, if Egypt remains intransigent the only other option is to take all the vehicles by ship from Libya to Al Arish, which may take several weeks to organize.

A spokesman for Road to Hope said: “Now we find ourselves in our third day at the Libyan / Egyptian border and we remain hopeful that the land route will be opened to us in the coming days”. The convoy departed from London with the understanding that the land crossing through Egypt had not been closed to it. One reason for our optimism that we will travel the land route is the fact that the Al Quds convoy, a Libyan convoy also delivering aid to Gaza, is set to travel the land route in the coming days. For several weeks we have hoped to join our convoys and travel together. However, the convoy is awaiting permission from the Egyptian authorities to pass through Egypt in this way.”

As of today, Sunday 31st, Egypt has withheld its permission for Road to Hope to join forces with Al Quds Convoy - although that hardly seems within the Egyptian authorities' remit.

“Although the outlook for an expeditious approval to proceed with our mission is likely, we have always been prepared for the ups and downs and challenges that have been commonplace when attempting to deliver aid to Gaza. If we were to move forward in the next day or two this would be one of the most trouble-free convoys yet.” – Convoy Leader Kieran Turner, 1st November