ei: Egypt's uprising and its implications for Palestine We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when events are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt — however it ends — will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine. If the Mubarak regime falls, and is replaced by one less tied to Israel and the United States, Israel will be a big loser. As Aluf Benn commented in the Israeli daily Haaretz, “The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse” (“Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast,” 29 January 2011). Indeed, Benn observes, “Israel is left with two strategic allies in the region: Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.” As for Jordan, change is already underway. Related Links
What WikiLeaks Reveals about Israel-Palestine In March 2010, then-CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus set off a storm of protest among neoconservatives when, in his statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he named "insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace" as an obstacle to U.S. goals in the region. "The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [area of responsibility]," read the statement. While this represented only one of a number of "cross cutting challenges to security and stability" detailed in his statement, Petraeus' analysis was too much for the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman, who quickly issued a scolding: "Gen. Basically, the "linkage" argument holds that continued irresolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hinders America's ability to achieve its national security goals in the region, both by serving as a driver of extremism and a source of anti-American sentiment. AFP/Getty images
The Egypt Revolution & The Jewish Revolution It Produced Philanthropist George Soros, chairman of the Open Society Foundation which supports democracy and human rights in 70 countries, is optimistic about the future of Egyptian democracy. And he thinks that shifting opinion in the American Jewish community is helping. After all, if the powerful and unrepresentative "pro-Israel" lobby successfully influenced U.S. opinion against the Egyptian revolution, it is possible that the U.S. would not lend its enthusiastic support to it. But, in a Washington Post column yesterday, Soros writes that the lobby isn't what it used to be, even if the Netanyahu government is as predictable as tomorrow's sunrise. In reality, Israel has as much to gain from the spread of democracy in the Middle East as the United States has. That became ever more obvious today when the New York Times ran a feature on Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which has been successfully organizing support in the Jewish community for the Egyptian revolution.
Palestine Papers: Why I blew the whistle In Palestine, the time for national reconciliation has come. On the eve of the 63rd commemoration of the Nakba, this is a long-awaited and hopeful moment. Earlier this year, the release by Al Jazeera and the Guardian of 1,600 documents related to the mislabelled "peace process" caused deep consternation amongst Palestinians and in the Arab world. Covering more than ten years of talks (1999-2010) between Israel and the PLO, these "Palestine Papers" illustrate the tragic consequences of a highly inequitable and destructive political process grounded on the assumption that the Palestinians could effectively negotiate their rights and achieve self-determination while enduring the hardship of the Israeli occupation. Since my name was circulated as one of the possible sources of these leaks, I would like to clarify here the extent of my involvement in these revelations and explain my motivations. Shortly after the Gaza war, I started to write about my experience in Ramallah.
Cafe Noah: Cultural exile in Israel - Witness In 1948, a group of Jewish Arab musicians from Baghdad and Cairo were amongst the streams of Jewish immigrants coming to the new state of Israel from all over the world. They were masters of Arabic music - but found that their music was not valued in their new homeland, and the ongoing Arab-Israeli war left no room for their identity as Arab Jews. Cafe Noah in Tel Aviv became the one place where their music and culture could survive. Award-winning filmmaker Duki Dror spoke to Al Jazeera's Donata von Hardenberg about the making of Cafe Noah and the issues behind it. Al Jazeera: Why did you decide to make a film about Cafe Noah and cultural exile in Israel? Duki Dror: When I was a child, Cafe Noah was the place where my parents spent their happy Saturday nights with friends, listening to their favorite Arabic music, drinking whiskey and forgetting for a moment the agony of being in cultural exile in Israel. They both were born in Iraq. What does it mean to live in cultural exile in Israel?
The Palestine Papers: A fact-based play in one act - Israel Earlier this week, Al-Jazeera released a decade’s worth of memos, emails, maps and minutes from high-level negotiations between the United States, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The documents revealed that the Palestinians had offered far more significant concessions than previously reported. In the wake of these revelations, Palestinians expressed anger at their increasingly weak leadership, accusing them of capitulating, while some Israeli commentators accused the government of missing its chance for peace. The Americans, meanwhile, came across as intent on not offending the Israelis, even if it meant contradicting established U.S. policy. It was against this backdrop that Uncle Sam decided to spend some time on the couch this week… Scene: A psychiatrist’s office in a nondescript strip mall in suburban Virginia. Dr. Uncle Sam (not meeting the doctor’s eyes): Doesn’t matter. Dr. The two men settle into their comfortable armchairs. Dr. Sam: It’s about the Middle East. Dr. Dr. Dr.
Majida Abu Rahmah: A Message from Israeli Military Prison on International Human Rights Day My imprisoned husband Abdullah Abu Rahmah passed the following message through his lawyer: A year ago tonight, on International Human Rights Day, our apartment in Ramallah was broken into by the Israeli military in the middle of the night and I was torn away from my wife Majida, my daughters Luma and Layan, and my son Laith, who at the time was only nine months old. As the coordinator of the Bil'in Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements I was convicted of "organizing illegal demonstrations" and "incitement." I find it strange that the military judges could call our demonstrations illegal and charge me for participating in and organizing them after the world's highest legal body, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, has ruled that Israel's wall within the occupied territories is illegal and must be dismantled. I have been accused of inciting violence: this charge is also puzzling. This week the door of our cell was opened and a sixteen year boy was pushed inside.
David Remnick erases Norman Finkelstein Norman Finkelstein (Photo: OR Books) Yesterday I praised David Remnick for his story about Joan Peters’s 1984 book of propaganda that said that there were no Palestinians in Palestine till Jews got there. And I barely touched on a curious aspect of his piece that many commenters then seized on: Remnick left out Norman Finkelstein’s role in exposing the fraud; he gave credit to an Israeli: The book was thoroughly discredited by an Israeli historian, Yehoshua Porath, and many others who dismantled its pseudo-scholarship. Remnick’s link was to Porath’s 1986 review of the book, From Time Immemorial, in the New York Review of Books. This is a misrepresentation of intellectual history. The story began in spring 1984 with the publication of Peters’s book. For much of that spring he lay on his bed tearing the book apart with a pencil– it looked like it had been in a “blender,” he later recounted. Anyone who knows Finkelstein knows that he was not finished. Here is Chomsky telling the story:
Israeli Soldiers’ Brutality at Prison Camp for Palestinians | RO: Ramallah Online Juan Cole, 22 April 2011 Israeli television has shown shocking cellphone video of the October, 2007, actions at Ketziot Prison, against unarmed Palestinian prisoners, by Israeli security forces. The thousand or so prisoners there revolted at a provocative search abruptly conducted by “Control and Restraint” units or Metzada. An interview with an inmate was broadcast by The Real News in 2007 soon after the Israeli attack: B’Tselem was already charging in 2007 that abuse and even torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons was all too common. The Israeli excuse for the killing and injuring of the prisoners was that they were menacing, but the video does not bear out this charge. Ketziot was the prison camp for Palestinians at which Cpl. Since Israelis deprive Palestinians of the right to citizenship in a state, in essence all Palestinians are more or less in prison. Citizenship is the right to have rights. Juan Cole Juan R.
'The Fate of an Honest Intellectual', by Noam Chomsky (Excerpted from Understanding Power) I'll tell you another, last case—and there are many others like this. Here's a story which is really tragic. How many of you know about Joan Peters, the book by Joan Peters? Well, he got back one answer, from me. Well, he didn't believe me. By this time, he was getting kind of desperate, and he asked me what to do. He's now living in a little apartment somewhere in New York City, and he's a part-time social worker working with teenage drop-outs. But let me just go on with the Joan Peters story. Meanwhile, Finkelstein was being called in by big professors in the field who were telling him, "Look, call off your crusade; you drop this and we'll take care of you, we'll make sure you get a job," all this kind of stuff. Well, as soon as I heard that the book was going to come out in England, I immediately sent copies of Finkelstein's work to a number of British scholars and journalists who are interested in the Middle East—and they were ready.
Human Rights activist Ahmad Qatamesh, detained for 6 years in the 90s, is arrested again without charges Omar Barghoti released this statement earlier today accompanying an article (which follows) regarding Dr. Ahmad Qatamesh, a prominent Palestinian writer, academic and human rights advocate. “They told him they will issue an “administrative detention” order against him, clearly indicating that they have arrested him for his writings and political views. In the early hours of dawn on Thursday, 21 April 2011, a large force of Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers raided the home of the prominent Palestinian writer and academic Dr. Ahmad Qatamesh was born in 1950 in a cave in Bethlehem to a refugee family expelled during the Nakba from the village of Al-Malihah, near Jerusalem. Qatamesh earned his diploma in Arabic literature from the UNRWA-run Teacher Training Center in Ramallah. In 1992, he was arrested by a massive Israeli force in the presence of his then 3-year-old daughter. LATimes ’98 describes Dr. * Amnesty International (pdf)