[Middle East News Service comments: The uprooting of the Bedouin village has been covered around the globe. However, an appalling coverage by the Israeli media has meant very little background has been provided. This has been particularly missed in countries like Australia where public consciousness of native title is high. Professor Oren Yiftachel submitted a background article to Haaretz which published on the web only. As agreed with Prof Yiftachel, I forward the translation of the Hebrew article to him. He has tweaked the article by providing additional information as well several new paragraphs.
Prof Oren Yiftachel is a researcher and human rights activist. He teaches political geography and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba. He also represents Bedouin communities in courts and planning forums, and has recently been elected as co-chair of B’Tselem, the Israeli information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
Absolutely recommended reading – Sol Salbe.]
Author: AJDS
There is a petition campaign to the White House to end home demolitions in the Occupied Territories. This is a clearly discriminatory policy and has little do to with security, but lots to do with land grabs.
Since 1967, the Israeli government has demolished over 24,000 Palestinian homes — which families have built on their own land inside the Occupied Territories — in order to:
* Make room for Israeli settlements, businesses or governmental offices;
A long exchange of correspondence with people who should know better last week in advocating the Palestinian cause concerning their ‘crude views about Jews’ led to me wasting too many hours looking at a variety of webites that deal with ‘the Palestine Israel’ problem from the perspective of left organizations and Palestinians organizations. I’ve also seen more comments of a nutty nature than I’d wish too.
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a disturbing visit by Australian kids on the Birthright program to Hebron, where they were fed extremist propaganda,in contravention of Birthright’s own rules about visiting the occupied territories (and what gives a ‘birthright’ to Australian citizens over that of local Palestinians?)
I left phone and email messages for the Australian Union of Jewish Students who run the program to get some clarifications. True to form, no one got back to me.
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a disturbing visit by Australian kids on the Birthright program to Hebron, where they were fed extremist propaganda,in contravention of Birthright’s own rules about visiting the occupied territories (and what gives a ‘birthright’ to Australian citizens over that of local Palestinians?)
I left phone and email messages for the Australian Union of Jewish Students who run the program to get some clarifications. True to form, no one got back to me.
On what’s happening in Israel and the influence of Gliad Atzmon some Palestinian advocates.
Some days, you see the influence of nuttiness on both sides of the separation fence.
Antony Loewenstein recently posted an image of Julie Gillard as the leader of Judeo-Nazi Stormtroopers on his website. The poster had the words: “Australians stand firm against Islam and terrorism!…With our Israeli Allies”. He accompanied it with the words “a regular reader of this site sent this on, exact source unknown, but certainly speaks for itself”. Too ambiguous for words.
This letter was sent by AJDS to the mainstream print media on 7 July 2010.
In a world without recognition of human rights, or humanitarian concerns, or human dignity, or sense of justice, it would be logical, acceptable and valid to treat asylum seekers as badly as possible as a way of discouraging others.
Some in our community think that these sorts of attitudes should underpin the way our federal government deals with the issue of asylum seekers. Some in our parliament think that good public policy necessitates relegating humanitarian considerations to the fringe. After all, how can you discourage asylum seekers if you start by treating them as people in need?
Coteret, an Israeli news site, reports that Australian kids have been taken on a tour of Hebron and shown around by Jewish extremists. Coteret has a full report as well as a video (which has now been taken down from the source website).
This is in contradiction with ‘Birthright’ policy which forbids visits to the occupied territories other than Jerusalem.
Gilad Shalit’s treatment by Hamas since his capture on June 25 2006 as a non-declared prisoner of war without rights of visitation–a hostage–is appalling, and should be condemned and the man set free. It’s a bit like Hamas’ version of Gitmo without any visits and assurances of his well-being. Thus his treatment has been condemned internationally and even the Goldstone Report (yes, the Goldstone report which is otherwise anthematized) said so as well. His cause has become a rallying cry among Jewish communities around the world.