The film “Targeted Citizen” (15 minutes), produced by filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. With the participation of experts Dr. Yousef Jabareen of the Technion and Dr. Khaled Abu Asbeh of the Van Leer Institute, as well as Adalah attorneys Sawsan Zaher, Abeer Baker and Hassan Jabareen, inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights are eloquently addressed. These interviews are reinforced by the contrasting informality of on-the-street conversations conducted by Palestinian comic duo Shammas-Nahas and punctuated by the hard-hitting rhymes of Palestinian rap trio DAM. The film’s theme song “Targeted Citizen,” written and recorded by DAM especially for Adalah, tells it like it is without missing a beat. DO NOT MISS THE VERY END !
Israel is about to be admitted to an exclusive economic club, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Despite the Government of Israel’s failure to comply with OECD demands and standards, the organization announced in January 2010 that it will “complete” Israel’s membership by 2010 (expected in May). However, the OECD needs consensus to admit a new member state into the organization, so it only takes ONE country’s dissent to stop Israel from joining until it has met international human rights standards. The Israeli Government has yet to comply with the Goldstone Recommendations and until it does, admission to the OECD should be withheld.
We are gathering signatures to be delivered before the OECD Council meeting on May 11, 2010 and then more signatures before the Ministerial meeting on May 28-29.
Please sign the petition and
forward to your friends and colleagues.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) appeals to peoples and governments of OECD member states to defer Israel’s OECD accession until it respects international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people and shows commitment to the fundamental values shared by OECD members. You can read more about the appeal here.
By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | http://www.sabbah.biz
In the run-up to Britain’s general election we’ve heard next to nothing about Middle East policy from the three main party leaders in their much-publicised debates on TV.
They have studiously avoided all mention of the outrage in the Holy Land and the way it impacts so directly on world peace.
The plight of the Palestinian people ever since Britain abandoned its mandate responsibility, and their endless struggle for freedom from Israel’s military occupation, threatens our safety but word of it never passes their lips. And the programme bosses appear to block questions on the subject.
Early in the campaign I received a message from a local Liberal Democrat MP saying: “I urge everyone to get to Norwich and help elect our fantastic candidate Simon W.”
But hang on… before rushing to volunteer I wanted to know just one thing. What was Mr W’s personal stance on Middle East policy and especially Israel’s 43-year illegal occupation of the Holy Land?
Dear Friends of Palestine
On May 15th, an international flotilla of cargo and passenger ships will depart from various European ports and set sail for Gaza. 3 cargo ships will carry over 5,000 tonnes of medical and building supplies, and 5 passenger boats will carry over 600 people.
This flotilla is been led by the IHH charity from Turkey, and is supported by many groups worldwide, including the Free Gaza Movement, Free Palestine Movement, European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza and the Greek and Swedish Boat to Gaza groups amongst others.
In January of this year, IHH was an integral partner with Viva Palestina on the convoy to Gaza, where 500 people in over 200 vehicles successfully broke the siege on Gaza and delivered essential humanitarian aid. Viva Palestina are therefore very proud to announce their involvement with IHH again on this flotilla, and in addition to sending medical and building supplies, a Viva Palestina Coalition team will be on board this historic journey.
The siege imposed on Gaza is now in it’s 4th year. It has created a humanitarian crisis that has left the entire population without sufficient food, water, medicine, electricity, building supplies, clothes, toys, and freedom of movement. 1.5 million people, over half of whom are children, suffer directly because of this siege. Since the attacks on Gaza last year that left over 1,400 people dead, and 50,000 people homeless, no building supplies have been allowed to enter Gaza. 15 months on, people still live in tents and temporary shelter, unable to rebuild their homes.
Viva Palestina, led by George Galloway M.P. have successfully broken the siege on Gaza 3 times with land convoys of aid. Over 1,000 volunteers in 500 vehicles have delivered essential humanitarian aid to the stricken region in the past year. By taking part in this flotilla, Viva Palestina will be bringing much needed humanitarian aid, and attempting to break the siege once more.
We are calling on our supporters to donate towards the cost of medical and building supplies. Viva Palestina will be purchasing supplies in Turkey that will be loaded onto the IHH cargo ship departing from Istanbul. People can donate towards the cost of materials by clicking on the following link: http://www.vivapalestina.org/donations.htm
You can also follow us on facebook by joining the following Viva Palestina Flotilla group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=238347355199&ref=mf%20
If anyone has any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at: info@vivapalestina.org
I tutor a girl at the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Every Wednesday, I see John: tallish black-haired Irish guy walking around the space near the picnic tables where staff (generally Gazan) have coffee. Tomorrow maybe I will go shake John’s hand. Why? Because of this:
Israeli sources have confirmed that Israel will make an official request to the United Nations for clarification of how an official representative of the United Nations could call for European countries to send ships to Gaza without authorization and prior coordination with Israel. John Ging, the Director of Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has called upon the international community to break the siege on the Gaza Strip by sending ships loaded with desperately-needed supplies to the beleaguered territory.
In an interview with a Norwegian newspaper, Mr. Ging said, “The international community must take responsibility on this issue and embrace practical ways to break the siege, because it is possible to break it.” In urging the world to send ships to the shores of Gaza, he added, “We believe that Israel will not intercept these vessels because the sea is open, and human rights organizations have been successful in similar previous operations proving that breaking the siege of Gaza is possible.”
According to Mr. Ging, Egypt and Israel are responsible for the continuation of the blockade. “How could Israel evade responsibility for the siege, and how could Egypt not agree to show flexibility in order to bring aid to Gaza?” he asked. “It is time for the international community to facilitate assistance by sea as it did in Haiti.”
Officials in Israel were taken aback by the statements and noted that they are unprecedented and very serious. Hebrew radio reported that several overseas aid organizations have taken John Ging’s statement to heart and preparations are already being made to send ships carrying food supplies to Gaza.
I think Ging probably snapped. The Gazan economy is shuddering. There’s too little of the lubrication that normally enables economic systems to run smoothly. Not enough cash, inflated prices, no jobs, no raw materials. And the additional Hamas taxes–necessary, because there’s a dearth of hard cash, a perennial problem that is now at a crisis point–will make the lives of the petty capitalist service providers and merchants that are what’s left of Gaza’s economy much harder. I’m sure Ging knows this and he is probably sick of UN strictures that suggest that he clamp his mouth shut vis-a-vis the illegal siege. Only suggest. Here is the spin: Farhan Haq, a UN spokesman, said, “The United Nations has no plans to use sea routes in Gaza, but will consider all legal options available to bring in assistance and commercial supplies.” Ging didn’t suggest using the sea route, he endorsed it. By endorsing it, he contributed to the flotilla’s symbolic legitimacy. By strengthening the ships’ symbolic legitimacy, Israel will look sillier and sillier when it makes its habitual threats against those amazing ships. Anyway, there are activists on those ships who will be quite willing to sail them into the Israeli bullets that will cross in front of their bows.
BRUSSELS (The Borowitz Report) – In what many are hailing as a breakthrough solution to Greece’s crippling debt crisis, Greece today offered to repay loans from the European Union nations by giving them a gigantic horse.
Finance ministers from sixteen EU nations awoke in Brussels this morning to find that a huge wooden horse had been wheeled into the city center overnight.
The horse, measuring several stories in height, drew mixed responses from the finance ministers, many of whom said they would have preferred a cash repayment of the EU’s bailout.
But German Chancellor Andrea Merkel said she “welcomed the beautiful wooden horse,” adding, “What harm could it possibly do?”
Andy Borowitz
By Maidhc Ó Cathail
2 May 2010
Maidhc Ó Cathail views the evidence indicating that dual loyalty officials in the US administration are funnelling American nuclear secrets not only to Israel, but also to terrorist organizations in order to facilitate a “nuclear 9/11” and a massive US attack against Iran or Pakistan.
”If, as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu admitted, 9/11 was ‘very good’ for Israel, a nuclear 9/11 might be even better. As the spellbinding effects of that traumatic event nine years ago have begun to wear off, and with Americans increasingly questioning the costs of a one-sided alliance [with Israel], it may even be considered necessary.”
Citing the possibility of a terrorist organization getting hold of a nuclear weapon as the greatest threat to US security, Barack Obama persuaded 46 other countries at the recent Nuclear Security Summit to agree to secure the world’s loose nuclear material. Those leaders who came to Washington might have made done more to avert a nuclear attack, however, if they had asked the US president to account for America’s own loose nukes.
Of course, President Obama may not even be aware of the egregious failure of the United States to secure its nuclear materials and know-how from the predation of its alleged “closest ally”. But since Obama is unwilling to even “speculate” about which country in the Middle East has nuclear weapons, he could hardly be expected to acknowledge how it got them.
read on
Frankie Boyle has lashed out at the BBC, branding them ‘cowardly’ and ‘cravenly afraid of giving offence’ after censuring one of his jokes.
In an angry open letter, the comedian hit back at the BBC Trust for apologising for a gag he felt drew some small attention to the ‘apartheid’ in Palestine.
The corporation’s governing body yesterday issued an apology for the joke Boyle made on Radio 4’s Political Animal two years ago. A listener took their complaint that the gag was anti-Semitic – although appearing on a show hosted by the Jewish Andy Zaltzman – all the way to the top.
They ruled that the gag was a ‘serious’ breach of BBC rules and said: ‘It said: ‘As a result, the committee wished to apologise to the complainant on behalf of the BBC for any offence the remark may have caused him and other listeners to the programme.’
However, Boyle says the Palestinian situation is a suitable topic for satire and defended the joke.
Here is the full text of his response:
Obviously, it feels strange to be on the moral high ground but I feel a response is required to the BBC Trust’s cowardly rebuke of my jokes about Palestine.
As always, I heard nothing from the BBC but read in a newspaper that editorial procedures would be tightened further to stop jokes with anything at all to say getting past the censors.
In case you missed it, the jokes in question are: ‘I’ve been studying Israeli Army Martial Arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back. People think that the Middle East is very complex but I have an analogy that sums it up quite well. If you imagine that Palestine is a big cake, well…that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew.’
I think the problem here is that the show’s producers will have thought that Israel, an aggressive, terrorist state with a nuclear arsenal was an appropriate target for satire. The Trust’s ruling is essentially a note from their line managers. It says that if you imagine that a state busily going about the destruction of an entire people is fair game, you are mistaken. Israel is out of bounds.
The BBC refused to broadcast a humanitarian appeal in 2009 to help residents of Gaza rebuild their homes. It’s tragic for such a great institution but it is now cravenly afraid of giving offence and vulnerable to any kind of well drilled lobbying.
I told the jokes on a Radio 4 show called Political Animal. That title seems to promise provocative comedy with a point of view. In practice the BBC wish to deliver the flavour of political comedy with none of the content. The most recent offering I saw was BBC Two’s The Bubble. It looked exactly like a show where funny people sat around and did jokes about the news. Except the thrust of the format was that nobody had read the papers. I can only imagine how the head of the BBC Trust must have looked watching that, grinning like Gordon Brown having his prostrate examined.
The situation in Palestine seems to be, in essence, apartheid. I grew up with the anti apartheid thing being a huge focus of debate. It really seemed to matter to everybody that other human beings were being treated in that way. We didn’t just talk about it, we did things, I remember boycotts and marches and demos all being held because we couldn’t bear that people were being treated like that.
A few years ago I watched a documentary about life in Palestine. There’s a section where a UN dignitary of some kind comes to do a photo opportunity outside a new hospital. The staff know that it communicates nothing of the real desperation of their position, so they trick her into a side ward on her way out. She ends up in a room with a child who the doctors explain is in a critical condition because they don’t have the supplies to keep treating him. She flounders, awkwardly caught in the bleak reality of the room, mouthing platitudes over a dying boy.
The filmmaker asks one of the doctors what they think the stunt will have achieved. He is suddenly angry, perhaps having just felt at first hand something he knew in the abstract. The indifference of the world. ‘She will do nothing,’ he says to the filmmaker. Then he looks into the camera and says, ‘Neither will you’.
I cried at that and promised myself that I would do something. Other than write a few stupid jokes I have not done anything. Neither have you.
Frankie Boyle
Read more: http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2010/04/30/10922/frankie_boyle%3A_bbc_are_cowards#ixzz0mgR0GtKa
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