Author: AJDS

Something very strange is going on, where commentary upon commentary replaces what is said.
Goldstone, after the first report in the Washington Post said if more information had been forthcoming, one part his report, concerning a deliberate policy of killing civilians by Israel, would have been different. Good–but Israel at the time, refused to cooperate.
But what of the rest of the report? Is that too ‘disowned’? No.
“I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time.”
Yet the spin doctors have gone crazy. Now what does Btselem have to say, in response, in the Washington Post, where Goldstone wrote about his qualifications to the report’s findings:
“Now Goldstone himself acknowledges that the report was flawed. In a Post op-ed that has created a media storm, he conceded that Israel did not willfully target civilians as a matter of policy. Yet the column, while acknowledging that Israel has opened criminal investigations into the allegations raised, by no means absolves Israel of all the grave allegations regarding its conduct, as official spokespeople rush to conclude.”
It is all too easy to forget this, and start screaming total innocence and total guilt for Hamas.
It is clear that Goldstone has been under incredible personal pressure, which might account for the way he has handled this issue (I suspect that he doesn’t have a team of spin doctors). A full-scale guilt trip had been laid on him, particularly in South Africa. The Forward has a very good discussion of the pressures on him, including the ins and outs of the issue–and the writers still by and large take the Goldstone report very seriously.

This article by an American rabbi probably expresses the sentiments of many people who are accused of being ‘disloyal’ ‘self-denying’ or any number of other pleasant appellations by those who oppose Jews on the left of the Israel/Palestine issue.
“Having just returned from a ten-day human rights trip to Israel and the West Bank, I am faced with the painful and inevitable question: What’s the point? Do the goodwill efforts of North Americans really matter there? Does our solidarity with the beleaguered (and dwindling) Israeli Left have any impact at all?”
Full article

This article by an American rabbi probably expresses the sentiments of many people who are accused of being ‘disloyal’ ‘self-denying’ or any number of other pleasant appellations by those who oppose Jews on the left of the Israel/Palestine issue.
“Having just returned from a ten-day human rights trip to Israel and the West Bank, I am faced with the painful and inevitable question: What’s the point? Do the goodwill efforts of North Americans really matter there? Does our solidarity with the beleaguered (and dwindling) Israeli Left have any impact at all?”
Full article

Ir Amim contains a lot of useful information about the legal status of East Jerusalem, including such things as the use of the law to strip Palestinian rights.
Here is one bit, but view the entire website.
Seventeen days after the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel redrew the boundaries of Jerusalem, annexing 70 km² to the city’s area. The considerations that informed the new boundaries reflected the composition of the planning committee, which included military men and politicians:

Ir Amim contains a lot of useful information about the legal status of East Jerusalem, including such things as the use of the law to strip Palestinian rights.
Here is one bit, but view the entire website.
Seventeen days after the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel redrew the boundaries of Jerusalem, annexing 70 km² to the city’s area. The considerations that informed the new boundaries reflected the composition of the planning committee, which included military men and politicians:

“According to Yesh Din’s data, about 90 percent of complaints filed by Palestinians against Israeli citizens who harm them and their property end without any indictments….The case is one of the most severe cases ever handled by human rights group Yesh Din – the kidnap and assault of a Palestinian 15 year old boy of the West Bank village of Kusra. The boy was kidnapped by two assaulters near the Esh Kodesh outpost. The two offenders battered him, and left him naked, wounded, and bound in an open field.”
From Yesh Din
A settler has now been sentenced to 18 months for kidnapping and torture of that Palestinian youth–there is debate over what appears to be a very light sentence as compared to what a Palestinian would get for the same act.

Why are the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald giving voice to an Islamaphobe?
The Age and SMH have published a velvet-voiced piece by Mark Durie which to those who don’t know better, looks like an accurate portrayal of violence in Islam. There are two key things, however, missing in the article.
First, an acknowledgment that much of the contemporary response of Islam to the West is bound up in a response to centuries of domination and imperialism by the West in parts of the world where Islam has been a majority religion.
And second, what Durie argues is a hardwired violence in Islamic thinking could be equally argued about the intolerance in Christian theology and practice over the centuries (and which still goes on, for example, to justify violence agains ‘communists’ in Latin America by born again dictators. In fact, Muslim fundamentalists argue precisely this.

Keep children of refugees in detention is outrageous and an offense against human rights. Hear about it at Get Up . It has nothing to do with security, but everything to do with dog whistle and lowest common denominator politics.

Dimi Reider on the Israeli +972 blog site. Didi lays it on the line about the hypocrisy of some on the left (including the Israeli left) won’t call a spade a space.
This doesn’t mean that you cannot remain opposed to the Occupation and the disempowerment of Palestinians and all that goes with it. It does mean however, that you cannot support brutal violence and murder from anyone in either community. It hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work now. Many Palestinian organisations have denounced this act, yet the Netanyahu government’s response it to build more homes in the Occupied Territories. And so it goes.