Monday, August 04, 2014
Sunday, August 03, 2014
“A very frightening thing is happening now inside Israel itself: it is slowly becoming explicitly fascist"
Outrage after third Israeli strike on a United Nations school in Gaza
UN chief Ban Ki-moon tells Israel to ‘ end this madness’ after bombardment kills at least 10 people and injures dozens
Vicious Cynical Brutality With No Regard for Anyone That is a Non-Jew, Man, Woman or Child - There is No Other Explanation
I was born in Israel, and tried for many years to change it from within, but I've given up and migrated. The crimes inflicted in the names of Zionism on the non-Jewish residents of Isreal (there's not much differnce between "Gaza", "West bank" or "Israel", everything's controlled in essence by the Israeli government and army) are becoming more and more atrocious and unforgivable, although they have been atrocious and unforgivable from the very beginning.
But a very frightening thing is happening now inside Israel itself: it is slowly becoming explicitly fascist. You should understand for example that most Israeli citizens have no idea how many Palestinians were murdered in this war, the mainstream Israeli media doesn't report it at all. There was even a move by the Israeli Ministry of Communications to block foreign media in Israel, but this proved too complicated for now. Yet, most Israelis still trust their Hebrew newspapers and believe what they read in them, so thay are compeltely cut off from any factual reporting. In addition, the mainstream media (which is entangled with the political class, and sponsored by the same tycoons) is pumping up a narrative of mortal danger; as if every Jew in Israel is about to be viciously exeterminated by Hamas (a primitive guerilla force, who actually only managed to kill 3 civilians till now) in a second Jewish Holocaust.
Worse still, self appointed "patriots" prawl the streets of Tel-Aviv now, brandishing sticks and looking for left-wing demonstrators against the war. They then proceed to beat them up, with the police usually watching in delight, or even arresting the demonstrators (e.g. - https://www.facebook.com/Antifatlv/posts/711538555549183). Some Israeli reporters who were trying to investigate the Israeli army's war crimes got detained and temporarily silenced (e.g. https://www.rebelmouse.com/GZ_Politcs/654359021.html). Citizens who dare speak against this massacre risk getting fired or sanctioned (e.g., https://www.facebook.com/Antifatlv/posts/711315522238153).
Israel 2014 is a frightening place to be in: a self deluded madman on a paranoid killing spree which is, in essence, suicidal.
The Hell Hole Called Gaza is an Israeli Creation
Another day, another Israeli attack on a UN school sheltering 3000 - 11 killed
120 Killed by The IDF in Rafah Based on an Israeli Lie That Hamas Captured an Israeli Soldier. Below a Picture of Dead Bodies of Gazan Civilians Killed by the IDF in Rafah, Piled in a Refrigerator:
(Reuters) - Israel on Sunday declared dead a soldier feared abducted by Hamas Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip and said it would continue to fight even after the army completes destroying cross-border tunnels used by Palestinian fighters to attack its territory.
The dead are kept in vegetable refrigerators
#GazaUnderAttack
Saturday 2 August 2014 12:47 BST
Last update:
Saturday 2 August 2014 3:17 BST
As Gaza stranglehold tightens, full morgues have forced people to store dead bodies in refrigerators
Abu Taha, a farmer in Rafah, opened the refrigerator he normally keeps his potatoes and carrots in. In it were the corpses of children, young men and women lying on top of one another, soaked in blood. Many were impossible to identify and only a few have been placed in white burial shrouds.
Such was the savagery of Israel's bombardment in Rafah, such was the quantity of dead bodies, that there was simply no other option but to use vegetable refrigerators as makeshift morgues. The closure of hospitals which came under bombardment led to a cascade of corpses. It started when medical staff were forced to abandon Rafah's main hospital Abu Yousef al-Najjar which came under constant bombardment by artillery shelling from the east of the city.
They evacuated the injured to Kuwaiti Hospital, a facility totally ill-equipped to deal with major trauma injuries from the extended battlefield that the Gaza Strip has become. Even so, several bodies were left lying on the roads, bleeding for hours without any ambulance crew arriving to rescue them.
Meanwhile, three ambulance crew members have been killed, their bodies were unidentifiable after they were hit by an Israeli tank shell directed at their ambulance. Several of the cases close to the hospital gate were not reachable by rescue teams, says Abu Ahmed, an ambulance driver. “Each time, I drive through tank shells are fired nearby,” he says while he is a couple of hundred meters from tens of victims bleeding on the road.
Most cases of those killed in Rafah are civilians slain by canon shells that wiped several homes in Hay al-Junina area. Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes fired missiles on several homes in Rafah targeting homes of Abu Suliman, Zorb, Alshaer, and Abu Suliman. The death toll in Rafah in the past 24 hours is now 110 killed and hundreds injured. Medics say there are more bodies they could not reach.
The corpses were taken into vegetables refrigerators in Rafah, which have their own electricity generators. Even burying the dead was full of hazard, as the cemetries in the east of the city have also been under Israeli artillery shelling over the past 24 days.
“We had no option but to put the bodies of tens killed in the refrigerators,” Subhi Radwan, mayor of Rafah told MEE.
Al-Nujjar hospital has only enough beds for a few dozen patients, but evacuation has meant nowhere else to go for victims of the attack.
Radwan says, the war on Rafah is not over, and his staff members are unable to offer any facilities to people on the ground, that includes water and electricity lines which were destroyed by strikes.
“We appeal to the international organizations to step in and help us evacuate injured people lying in the east of Rafah,” he says.
Meanwhile, international groups have tried to help evacuate victims, but to no avail.
Survivors of the 24-hour bombardment said they had seen nothing like it in their lives. They were bombed from the air, sea and ground simultaneously.
“It is terrifying, the Israeli military has gone out of control, they bombed a building of families fleeing and killed 23 innocents,” says Abdelraouf Ayyad, a 33-year old whose home he fled in Hay al-Junina when bombing started 24 hours ago.
“No one is safe; no home, no hospital, no shelter” he says as he runs into Tal al-Sultan to seek shelter at his cousin's house.
Twenty three family members have been killed by Israeli F16 missile, mostly from families that fled bombing in east of the city to the West of Rafah.
Radwan says, there is no other hospital, and now even the Kuwaiti hospital is under canonfire—journalists and rescue teams were forced to leave the area under gunfire.
Ashraf Al Qudra of health ministry appeals to the international community to allow ambulances to evacuate injured people from roads of East of Rafah and Kuwaiti hospital.
“We need safe routes for ambulance to evacuate victims into other hospitals in Khan Younis.”
Israeli tanks could be seen in the east, overlooking Rafah, home of 180,000 inhabitants in the far south border with Egypt.
“There are tens of cases of people bleeding and the hospital is unable to deal with massive number of victims”
Rafah’s massacre occurred two hours into the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire announced yesterday. Hamas and Israel exchanged accusations of breaking the ceasefire. However, Israel insisted on carrying out a military ground operation on the eastern border, despite the truce.
Israel announced one missing soldier during its ground invasion, while Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades say they lost communication with some of their members who were in combat with Israeli troops before the ceasefire started. Qassam Brigades said in a statement that the Israeli soldier was probably killed during in ambush along with Qassam Brigades members.
The death toll across the Gaza strip is 1680 dead and 8500 injured since the war began 27 days ago - the majority are civilians according to the UN. Meanwhile in Israel 3 civilians and 50 soldiers have been killed during the ground attack in Gaza.
Palestinian factions and Israel were expected to travel to Cairo for talks with Egyptian on a long-lasting truce, but the presence of Israeli tanks around the Rafah Crossing point will make this unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Saturday, August 02, 2014
When is Genocide Permissable ? U.S. Congress approves $225 million in emergency funding for Israel’s Iron Dome
A piece published - and then hastily deleted by The Times of Israel (which said it breached editorial guidelines) - last night asking whether a genocide might be permissible if it were the only way of securing peace. Yochanan Gordon builds his case that Israel has a right to defend itself before offering his explosive question:
I will conclude with a question for all the humanitarians out there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly stated at the outset of this incursion that his objective is to restore a sustainable quiet for the citizens of Israel. We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people. If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?
The explainer website Vox has preserved the text, so you can view it here (should you so wish), and suggests why it offers an important lens on the Gaza debate.
-TELEGRAPH
At least 70 people were killed and 100 were wounded in subsequent Israeli bombardments of Rafah, Palestinian medical officials said. The Palestinian death toll in the current round of fighting has exceeded 1,600, according Gaza health ministry figures.
SOLDIERS DON’T GET KIDNAPPED - THEY GET TAKEN PRISONER
WHEN IS GENOCIDE PERMISSABLE?
"Judging by the numbers of casualties on both sides in this almost one-month old war one would be led to the conclusion that Israel has resorted to disproportionate means in fighting a far less- capable enemy. That is as far as what meets the eye. But, it's now obvious that the US and the UN are completely out of touch with the nature of this foe and are therefore not qualified to dictate or enforce the rules of this war - because when it comes to terror there is much more than meets the eye.
I wasn't aware of this, but it seems that the nature of warfare has undergone a major shift over the years. Where wars were usually waged to defeat the opposing side, today it seems - and judging by the number of foul calls it would indicate - that today's wars are fought to a draw. I mean, whoever heard of a timeout in war? An NBA Basketball game allows six timeouts for each team during the course of a game, but last I checked this is a war! We are at war with an enemy whose charter calls for the annihilation of our people. Nothing, then, can be considered disproportionate when we are fighting for our very right to live.
The sad reality is that Israel gets it, but its hands are being tied by world leaders who over the past six years have insisted they are such good friends with the Jewish state, that they know more regarding its interests than even they do. But there's going to have to come a time where Israel feels threatened enough where it has no other choice but to defy international warnings - because this is life or death.
Most of the reports coming from Gazan officials and leaders since the start of this operation have been either largely exaggerated or patently false. The truth is, it's not their fault, falsehood and deceit is part of the very fabric of who they are and that will never change. Still however, despite their propensity to lie, when your enemy tells you that they are bent on your destruction you believe them. Similarly, when Khaled Meshal declares that no physical damage to Gaza will dampen their morale or weaken their resolve - they have to be believed. Our sage Gedalia the son of Achikam was given intelligence that Yishmael Ben Nesanyah was plotting to kill him. However, in his piety or rather naiveté Gedalia dismissed the report as a random act of gossip and paid no attention to it. To this day, the day following Rosh Hashana is commemorated as a fast day in the memory of Gedalia who was killed in cold blood on the second day of Rosh Hashana during the meal. They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over. History is there to teach us lessons and the lesson here is that when your enemy swears to destroy you - you take him seriously.
Hamas has stated forthrightly that it idealizes death as much as Israel celebrates life. What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?
News anchors such as those from CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera have not missed an opportunity to point out the majority of innocent civilians who have lost their lives as a result of this war. But anyone who lives with rocket launchers installed or terror tunnels burrowed in or around the vicinity of their home cannot be considered an innocent civilian. If you'll counter, that Hamas has been seen abusing civilians who have attempted to leave their homes in response to Israeli warnings to leave - well then, your beginning to come to terms with the nature of this enemy which should automatically cause the rules of standard warfare to be suspended.
Everyone agrees that Israel has the right to defend itself as well as the right to exercise that right. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has declared it, Obama and Kerry have clearly stated that no one could be expected to sit idle as thousands of rockets rain down on the heads of its citizens, placing them in clear and present danger. It seems then that the only point of contention is regarding the measure of punishment meted out in this situation.
I will conclude with a question for all the humanitarians out there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly stated at the outset of this incursion that his objective is to restore a sustainable quiet for the citizens of Israel. We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people. If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?”
- Yochanan Gordon
The Zionist State of Israel Going Off the Rails
The Most Dangerous Moment in Gaza
What happens if this conflict comes off the rails?
AUG 1 2014, 8:31 AM ET
It is too early to say anything definitive about the Hamas decision to apparently break the ceasefire and attack an Israeli position, except that if it is true, as reports indicate, that Hamas militants came through a tunnel and carried underground and back into Gaza a live Israeli captive, then this moment could represent not another terrible, dispiriting incident in a terrible, dispiriting mini-war, but a fairly decisive turning point in which all swords are unsheathed.
This is assuming—as seems probable, but not 100 percent certain—that this raid is even what the Hamas leadership wanted (for what it's worth, its leaders, at the moment, seem to be owning this raid, suggesting that they are indeed doubling down in their war on Israel). If the events of earlier today happened as initial reports depict, then Israel will consider this incident an engraved invitation from Hamas to launch something close to a full-scale invasion of Gaza. Here are the factors that could lead Israel to decide to go all-in:
a) The compact between the Israeli army and Israeli parents is simple: You give us your sons, and we will do whatever we can to keep them alive. This includes conducting operations that get other soldiers killed. There will be near-unanimity in Israel that this soldier should be rescued, regardless of price to Israel, or certainly to the Palestinians in Gaza.
b) There is near-unanimity in Israel already that Hamas represents an unbearable threat. Add in the perfidy of a raid conducted after a ceasefire went into effect and near-unanimity becomes total unanimity. The most interesting article I've read in the past 24 hours is an interview with the Israeli novelist Amos Oz, the father of his country's peace-and-compromise movement, who opened the interview with Deutsche Welle in this manner:
Amoz Oz: I would like to begin the interview in a very unusual way: by presenting one or two questions to your readers and listeners. May I do that?
Deutsche Welle: Go ahead!
Question 1: What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?
Question 2: What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?
With these two questions I pass the interview to you.
The point is, if Amos Oz, a severe critic of his country's policies toward the Palestinians, sounds no different on the subject of the Hamas threat than the right-most ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing cabinet, then there will be a national consensus that it is not enough to manage the Hamas rocket-and-tunnel threat, but that it must be eliminated if at all possible. This doesn't mean that the Israeli government wants to see the Hamas government in Gaza replaced. What it could mean is that the Israeli public demands that its leaders ensure them that the tunnel threat, in particular, is neutralized in a decisive way.
c) For Israelis who are immune, unlike Amos Oz, to the criticism of outsiders, the world's inability, or unwillingness, to understand the Hamas threat in the way that Oz (and most everyone else in Israel) understands it suggests that there is nothing Israel can do, short of national suicide, to stop the condemnation of their country. Which, of course, frees Israel, in their minds, to take whatever action it deems necessary to take. In other words, don't be overly surprised by news later today of a massive Israeli army reserve call-up.
More later, alas.
Friday, August 01, 2014
After the last three weeks it is clear which country is in the business of actually wiping other countries off the map: Israel
The RT report below shows UN aerial photos showing entire neighborhoods in Gaza razed by the Israeli military. Over 5,000 building have been destroyed and over 26,000 have been damaged. This is a significant proportion of Gaza’s housing stock, and the Israelis want to make sure that the damage cannot be repaired. As the Gandolfo article makes clear, water sewage treatment plants aren’t working because the Israelis bombed the power station (this was deliberate; they knew exactly where it was). Babies have died in Gaza hospitals because their incubators ceased functioning.
THE COURAGEOUS MAX BLUMENTHAL:
Wiping another Country off the Map: Israel does it to Palestine
By contributors | Aug. 1, 2014 |
1
Back when the warmongers had hopes of ginning up a war between the United States and Iran during the Bush administration, one of their propaganda talking points was the Iran had “threatened to wipe Israel off the map.”
When we look at Gaza’s before and after pictures (below) it becomes clear that the charge is more appropriate to Israel itself.
The late Christopher Hitchens, who went off the deep end at the end of his life, joining with the Neoconservatives in hoping for Iran to be so targeted, was furious with me for questioning this underpinning of the war effort.
I pointed out that there is no such idiom in Persian and that the phrase was a quotation from Imam Khomeini in the 1980s, quoted by then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. What Khomeini had said was “This Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.” Ahmadinejad said he hoped the Zionist enterprise would collapse just as had the rule of the shah in Iran or that of the Soviet Union. Iran’s then president (who is not head of the armed forces) had no authority to order tanks to roll on Israel. There were several countries in between, so Iran cannot attack Israel militarily even if it wanted to. Israeli fighter jets would make mince meat of a conventional Iranian invasion, and anyway Israel has several hundred atomic bombs, which are rather a deterrent.
The argument from Ahmadinejad’s use of the Khomeini quote was based on a bad translation. But it was also a logical fallacy, belonging, I think, to the family of “irrelevant appeals.” The Iranian leadership does not like Zionism or Jewish nationalism, and wishes it would fade away and collapse (“vanish from the page of time”). This rhetorical hatred, however, has nothing to do with military threats. Iran has no air force or navy to speak of and its military budget is in the same ballpark as Norway and Singapore. Equating hateful speech to an intent to launch aggressive warfare is silly.
Note that the current president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, elected last summer, doesn’t engage in over the top rhetoric and so there have been no attempts to demonize him and use him as a pretext for attacking Iran. Iran has the same regime, so the real difference in only that propaganda via ad hominems has become more difficult.
But after the last three weeks it is clear, in any case, who is in the business of actually wiping other countries off the map. The RT report below shows UN aerial photos showing entire neighborhoods in Gaza razed by the Israeli military. Over 5,000 building have been destroyed and over 26,000 have been damaged. This is a significant proportion of Gaza’s housing stock, and the Israelis want to make sure that the damage cannot be repaired. As the Gandolfo article makes clear, water sewage treatment plants aren’t working because the Israelis bombed the power station (this was deliberate; they knew exactly where it was). Babies have died in Gaza hospitals because their incubators ceased functioning.
THE COURAGEOUS MAX BLUMENTHAL:
True US security interests are in the Americas - Not in Israel
Since the beginning of Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip against Hamas, five Latin American countries - Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Chile and El Salvador - have withdrawn their ambassadors to Israel in protest. Meanwhile, Bolivia has dubbed Israel a “ terrorist state" and rescinded its visa-free policy for Israeli travellers, and Chile has suspended free-trade negotiations.
When you see the video above, you may ask yourself how and why these Palestinian communities ended up in Latin America. The video below provides some historic insight :
It is undeniable that these practices within the state in question, Israel, closely parallels that of another state. This latter state has now been condemned to the dustbin of history: the state of apartheid South Africa. Apartheid South Africa had a penchant for attacking its neighbours on a regular basis, occupying other country’s land, and relocating the majority of the population to economically destitute Bantustans. All the while denying people basic rights purely on the basis of an accident of birth: their perceived race. It is for these reasons that a growing proportion of the international community have condemned Israel as an apartheid state which systemically discriminates against Palestinians purely on the basis of their ethnicity, which is no more than an accident of birth.
According to international law, apartheid can be defined as a crime against humanity committed “in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”.
Israel is guilty of gross human rights violations, including: indefinite detention and forcible transfer of peoples, assassination, economic warfare and numerous other actions of systemic domination taken against Palestinians and increasingly against Israeli Arabs in the name of ensuring the supremacy of a state based on Jewish ethnicity.
The state of Israel practices daily economic warfare aimed at preventing one of the already poorest areas in the region from having access to vital humanitarian goods, electricity and even rebuilding infrastructure which was destroyed in a “war”. The same war which the United Nations has described as a deliberate attempt to “humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability”.
In the occupied territories themselves, as Israel continues to support and extend illegal settlements, the system of control implemented there includes “Jewish only settlements”, separate roads and military checkpoints. This, according to the defenders of Israel that supposedly belong to the Sovereign entity of the “Palestinian Authority”.
Thousands of Palestinians, some as young as 12 years old, are indefinitely detained every year under a brutal and authoritarian policy known as “Administrative Detention” in the name of Israel’s National Security. They have no access to legal rights. Since 1967 over 650 000 Palestinians have been “honoured guests” of the Israeli prison system, an average as high as 1 in 4 in the occupied territories. Recently Khadir Adnan, a Palestinian baker and activist, embarked on a 66 day hunger strike after being detained (not for the first time) under the Orwellian policy of Administrative Detention. The policy dates back to British colonial rule.
Khadir managed to force a deal for his release in April, but hundreds more languish behind bars facing torture and humiliation while having their stint in prison indefinitely extended. The courage of people like Khadir shows that even a state possessing (illegally) nuclear weapons and vast military capabilities, backed almost uniformly by the most powerful country on the planet can be defeated by individual acts of bravery.
Taking the bravery of people like Khadir and the example of the international campaign of solidarity that eventually helped bring the South African apartheid state to its knees, as inspiration a group of concerned students at Rhodes have come together to set up Israeli apartheid week on campus in the week of March 5-11. We are hosting this week in conjunction with over 90 cities worldwide and 11 other South African campuses. We aim to both create awareness around the issue, through a program of political education and ensure students get involved in a global campaign to fight for justice and human rights in Palestine.
ALABAMA ON THE MEDITERRANEAN:
When you see the video above, you may ask yourself how and why these Palestinian communities ended up in Latin America. The video below provides some historic insight :
Ben Fogel says that Israel, as an ‘apartheid’ state, systemically oppresses Israeli and Palestinian Arabs. This, and Israel’s “economic warfare” against Palestinians, is a crime against humanity
Imagine a state prone to attacking its neighbours in clear violation of international law. A state which systemically discriminates against a substantial proportion of the population on the basis of ethnicity. A state which has been illegally occupying supposedly sovereign land for decades, a state which has forcefully relocated millions of people to tiny crops of land in which they are denied access to the outside world and the ability to meaningfully exercise self-determination. A state in which people suffer daily harassment and are forced to produce a pass at regular military checkpoints in order to travel in the land of their birth. A state in which people are excluded from access to work and economic resources purely on the basis of ethnicity, all the while this same state is championed by its defenders as a bastion of Western Civilization and democracy in a hostile region. Does this scenario sound familiar at all?
It is undeniable that these practices within the state in question, Israel, closely parallels that of another state. This latter state has now been condemned to the dustbin of history: the state of apartheid South Africa. Apartheid South Africa had a penchant for attacking its neighbours on a regular basis, occupying other country’s land, and relocating the majority of the population to economically destitute Bantustans. All the while denying people basic rights purely on the basis of an accident of birth: their perceived race. It is for these reasons that a growing proportion of the international community have condemned Israel as an apartheid state which systemically discriminates against Palestinians purely on the basis of their ethnicity, which is no more than an accident of birth.
According to international law, apartheid can be defined as a crime against humanity committed “in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”.
Israel is guilty of gross human rights violations, including: indefinite detention and forcible transfer of peoples, assassination, economic warfare and numerous other actions of systemic domination taken against Palestinians and increasingly against Israeli Arabs in the name of ensuring the supremacy of a state based on Jewish ethnicity.
The state of Israel practices daily economic warfare aimed at preventing one of the already poorest areas in the region from having access to vital humanitarian goods, electricity and even rebuilding infrastructure which was destroyed in a “war”. The same war which the United Nations has described as a deliberate attempt to “humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability”.
In the occupied territories themselves, as Israel continues to support and extend illegal settlements, the system of control implemented there includes “Jewish only settlements”, separate roads and military checkpoints. This, according to the defenders of Israel that supposedly belong to the Sovereign entity of the “Palestinian Authority”.
Thousands of Palestinians, some as young as 12 years old, are indefinitely detained every year under a brutal and authoritarian policy known as “Administrative Detention” in the name of Israel’s National Security. They have no access to legal rights. Since 1967 over 650 000 Palestinians have been “honoured guests” of the Israeli prison system, an average as high as 1 in 4 in the occupied territories. Recently Khadir Adnan, a Palestinian baker and activist, embarked on a 66 day hunger strike after being detained (not for the first time) under the Orwellian policy of Administrative Detention. The policy dates back to British colonial rule.
Khadir managed to force a deal for his release in April, but hundreds more languish behind bars facing torture and humiliation while having their stint in prison indefinitely extended. The courage of people like Khadir shows that even a state possessing (illegally) nuclear weapons and vast military capabilities, backed almost uniformly by the most powerful country on the planet can be defeated by individual acts of bravery.
Taking the bravery of people like Khadir and the example of the international campaign of solidarity that eventually helped bring the South African apartheid state to its knees, as inspiration a group of concerned students at Rhodes have come together to set up Israeli apartheid week on campus in the week of March 5-11. We are hosting this week in conjunction with over 90 cities worldwide and 11 other South African campuses. We aim to both create awareness around the issue, through a program of political education and ensure students get involved in a global campaign to fight for justice and human rights in Palestine.
Benjamin Fogel is a member of the Rhodes University organisation the Students for Social Justice (SSJ). He is also a freelance writer, and regular contributor to Amandla!
ALABAMA ON THE MEDITERRANEAN:
MORE BACKGROUND ON THE HONEST MAN AND HUMANIST- MAX BLUMENTHAL
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