295 Rachel Corrie lawsuit: bulldozer driver's evidence cut short by command of Israeli General

Rachel Corrie lawsuit: bulldozer driver's evidence cut short by command of Israeli General

(1) Wanting Jews not to be the "other"
(2) Sixty years on, the true story of the slaughter of Palestinians at Deir Yassin may finally come out
(3) What Israel means by "Peace" - Joseph Massad's dictionary of Zionist terminology
(4) There are no books, pens, or research resources in Gaza. Israel bombed the University
(5) Rachel Corrie lawsuit: bulldozer driver's evidence cut short by command of Israeli General

(1) Wanting Jews not to be the "other"

From: William Tamblyn <wmtamblyn@yahoo.com> Date: 10.05.2010 08:11 PM

Desch: Bloom misses the historical shift re anti-Semitism

by Michael Desch on May 9, 2010 · 218 comments

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/05/desch-bloom-misses-the-historical-shift-re-anti-semitism.html

Harold Bloom's review of the new Anthony Julius book on Antisemitism in England in the New York Times book Review is a landmark in the increasing absurdity of the whole concept of anti-Semitism.***

To conflate classical anti-Semitism, which was based on the notion that Jews could never be a part of gentile society so they needed to convert, get out, or in the most extreme manifestations be eliminated, with criticism of the actions of the Jewish state and their unquestioning defense by supporters of Israel around the world, misses the major shift. The latter is all about asking Israel and its supporters to be full members of international society by abiding by common standards of decency internationally and domestically to recognize that conflating the interests of your country with that of another is likely to cause problems.*****

In other words, classical anti-Semitism was about making Jews the perpetual "other." Contemporary critiques of Israel and the Israel lobby are motivated in most cases by wanting Jews not to be the "other." This is, in my view, a huge change which should not go unrecognized. The fact that it does, demonstrates how far the debate, even among otherwise very smart people, has deteriorated.

(2) Sixty years on, the true story of the slaughter of Palestinians at Deir Yassin may finally come out
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 11.05.2010 12:48 PM

By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem, Monday, 10 May 2010, The Independent(UK)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/a-massacre-of-arabs-masked-by-a-state-of-national-amnesia-1970018.html

More than one unwitting visitor to Jerusalem has fallen prey to the bizarre delusion that they are the Messiah. Usually, they are whisked off to the serene surroundings of Kfar Shaul psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of the city, where they are gently nursed back to health.

It is an interesting irony that the patients at Kfar Shaul recuperate from such variations on amnesia on the very spot that Israel has sought to erase from its collective memory.

The place is Deir Yassin. An Arab village cleared out in 1948 by Jewish forces in a brutal battle just weeks before Israel was formed, Deir Yassin has come to symbolise perhaps more than anywhere else the Palestinian sense of dispossession.

Sixty-two years on, what really happened at Deir Yassin on 9 April remains obscured by lies, exaggerations and contradictions. Now Ha'aretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper, is seeking to crack open the mystery by petitioning Israel's High Court of Justice to release written and photographic evidence buried deep in military archives. Palestinian survivors of Deir Yassin, a village of around 400 inhabitants, claim the Jews committed a wholesale massacre there, spurring Palestinians to flee in the thousands, and undermining the long-held Israeli narrative that they left of their own accord.

Israel's opposing version contends that Deir Yassin was the site of a pitched battle after Jewish forces faced unexpectedly strong resistance from the villagers. All of the casualties, it is argued, died in combat.

In 2006, an Israeli arts student, Neta Shoshani, applied for access to the Deir Yassin archives for a university project, believing a 50-year embargo on the secret documents had expired eight years previously. She was granted limited access to the material, but was informed that there was an extended ban on the more sensitive documents. When a lawyer demanded an explanation, it emerged that a ministerial committee only extended the ban more than a year after Ms Shoshani's first request, exposing the state to a legal challenge. The current embargo runs until 2012.

Defending its right to keep the documents under wraps, the Israeli state has argued that their publication would tarnish the country's image abroad and inflame Arab-Israeli tensions. Ha'aretz and Ms Shoshani have countered that the public have a right to know and confront their past.

Judges, who have viewed all the archived evidence held by the Israeli state on Deir Yassin, have yet to make a decision on what, if anything, to release. Among the documents believed to be in the state's possession is a damning report written by Meir Pa'il, a Jewish officer who condemned his compatriots for bloodthirsty and shameful conduct on that day. Equally incriminating are the many photographs that survive.

"The photos clearly show there was a massacre," says Daniel McGowan, a US retired professor who works with Deir Yassin Remembered. "Those photos show [villagers] lined up against a quarry wall and shot."

In 1947, the United Nations proposed a partition plan that would divide Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state, with Jerusalem an international city. The Arabs fiercely opposed the plan and clashes broke out as both sides scrambled for territory before the British mandate expired. In April 1948, the Hagana, the predecessor of the Israeli army, launched a military operation to secure safe passage between Jewish areas by taking Arab villages on high ground above the road to Jerusalem.

Irgun and the Stern Gang, breakaway paramilitary groups, drew up separate plans to take the strategic Deir Yassin in a pre-dawn raid on 9 April 1948, even though the villagers had signed a non-aggression pact with the Jews and had stuck to it. What happened next is still under debate. In his book The Revolt, Menachim Begin, a future Israeli prime minister, recounts how the Jewish forces used a loudspeaker to warn all the villagers to leave the village. Those that remained fought.

"Our men were compelled to fight for every house; to overcome the enemy they used large numbers of hand grenades," wrote Mr Begin, who was not present at the battle. "And the civilians who had disregarded our warnings suffered inevitable casualties. I am convinced that our officers and men wished to avoid a single unnecessary casualty."

Mr Begin's account, however, is challenged by the recollections of survivors and eyewitnesses. Abdul-Kader Zidain was 22 years old in 1948, and immediately joined a band of 30 fighters from the village to fend off the surprise Jewish offensive, even though they were clearly outnumbered.

"They went into the houses and they shot the people inside. They killed everybody they saw, women and children," said Mr Zidain, who lost four of his immediate family, including his father and two brothers, in the attack. Now a frail 84-year-old living in a West Bank village, he says he remembers everything as if it were yesterday. Survivor testimonies are supported by Mr Pa'il, whose detailed eyewitness account was published in 1998. Awaiting reassignment, he went to observe the attack as part of his remit to keep the Irgun and the Stern Gang in check.

After the fighting had wound down, Mr Pa'il described how he heard sporadic firing from the houses, and went to investigate. There he saw that the soldiers had stood the villagers in the corners of their homes and shot them dead. A short while later, he saw a group of around 25 prisoners being led to a quarry between Deir Yassin and neighbouring Givat Shaul. From a higher vantage point, he and a companion were able to see everything and take photographs. "There was a natural wall there, formed by diggingy. They stood the prisoners against that wall and shot the lot of them," he said. Mr Pa'il described how Jews from neighbouring Givat Shaul finally stepped in to stop the slaughter.

In the ensuing confusion and anger over the killings in Deir Yassin, both sides released an inflated Palestinian death toll for very different reasons: the Palestinians wanted to bolster resistance and attract the attention of the Arab nations they hoped would help them; the Jews wanted to scare the Palestinians into flight.

After the dust had settled, Mr Zidain and the other survivors counted the missing among them, and concluded that 105 Palestinians had died in Deir Yassin, not the 250 often reported. Four Jews were killed. But the damage was already done. The reports from Deir Yassin led to a total collapse of morale, and many historians regard the incident as the single biggest catalyst for the Palestinians' flight. By UN estimates, 750,000 Palestinians had fled their homes by the end of the 1948 War of Independence, roughly 60 per cent of Palestine's pre-war Arab population.

Mention Deir Yassin these days to most young Israelis and it will fail to register. Not far from the Kfar Shaul hospital, two teenage boys shake their heads at a question on Deir Yassin. Never heard of it, they say.

"Most Israelis treat the subject with total silence," says Professor McGowan. "They no longer deny it, they just don't talk about it."

The decision on whether that silence will now be broken remains in the hands of Israel's courts. "This was a big and important event in our history here. It was the first village we took and has a lot of meaning in the war that came after," says Ms Shoshani. "We have to deal with our past for our own sake."

(3) What Israel means by "Peace" - Joseph Massad's dictionary of Zionist terminology
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 11.05.2010 05:08 PM

The language of Zionism

The reason for the ongoing "violence" in Israel and Palestine is not on account of Israeli colonialism at all but rather a direct result of mistranslation. Joseph Massad* provides an abridged lexicon of Zionist terminology

http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/05/08/joseph-massad-the-language-of-zionism/

"Colonialism is peace; anti-colonialism is war." This is the unalterable equation that successive Israeli governments insist must determine the basis of all current and future relations between Israeli Jews and the Palestinians. Indeed, the deployment of the rhetoric of peace between Palestinians and Israeli Jews since the 1970s has been contingent on whether the Palestinians would acquiesce in this formula or insist on resisting it. The Oslo Accords were in large measure a ratification of this formula by the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Nonetheless, Palestinian resistance, violent and non- violent, to understanding "colonialism as peace" never fully subsided, even as the Palestinian Authority insisted that it become the law of the land.

The deployment of the rhetoric of peace however was more than anything else a deployment of the rhetoric of the "peace process." In his book about the peace process, William Quandt traces the history of this deployment:

"Sometime in the mid-1970s the term peace process began to be widely used to describe the American-led efforts to bring about a negotiated peace between Israel and its neighbors. The phrase stuck, and ever since it has been synonymous with the gradual, step-by-step approach to resolving one of the world's most difficult conflicts. In the years since 1967 the emphasis in Washington has shifted from the spelling out of the ingredients of 'peace' to the 'process' of getting there... The United States has provided both a sense of direction and a mechanism. That, at its best, is what the peace process has been about. At worst, it has been little more than a slogan used to mask the marking of time."

I disagree partly with Quandt's conclusion, mostly because the "peace process" since 1993 has been a mask for nothing short of Israeli colonial settlement and attempts by the Palestinian people to resist it and by the Palestinian Authority to coexist with it.

As has become clear even to the staunchest believers in the peace rhetoric, the Oslo Accords have not only been the main mechanism by which Israel subcontracted its occupation of the Palestinian people to the Palestinian Authority but also the main instrument through which Israel maintained its colonial control of Palestinian lands. While the occupied territories had been subjected to a different set of military laws since 1967 that governed the Palestinians and their land, the Oslo Accords began to institute the principle of separation, or in South African lingo, Apartheid. It was Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's former prime minister and the ethnic cleanser of the Palestinian population from the cities of Lydda and Ramleh in 1948, who would express Israel's separation principle on 23 January 1995: "This path must lead to a separation, though not according to the borders prior to 1967. We want to reach a separation between us and them." The separation or Apartheid principle will ultimately translate into Israel's construction of the Apartheid Wall, which has already swallowed up more than 10 per cent of West Bank lands and will swallow more once it is completed. Let me remind you here that the South African Apartheid regime itself was not terribly comfortable with the term Apartheid, which means separateness in Afrikaans, and began to replace it since the 1970s with the term "separate development".

But this Israeli separation and colonial appropriation of land was again articulated through the rhetoric of peace. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, Israel has more than tripled its colonial settler population in the West Bank and more than doubled it across the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. Israel continues to confiscate Palestinian lands for colonial purposes and suppresses all Palestinian resistance to its colonial efforts. In 1993, there were approximately 281,000 colonial settlers in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (124,200 in the West Bank, 4,800 in Gaza, and 152,800 in Jerusalem). At the end of 2009, there were approximately 490,000 colonial settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. As of September 2009, there were 301,200 colonial settlers in the West Bank and 190,000 in East Jerusalem. Israeli leaders have maintained that their colonial settlement did not detract from Israel's commitment to peace. On the contrary, Israel is clear that it was the Palestinian Authority who is to blame for the cessation of negotiations. Current Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is not only committed to "colonialism as peace", he, like his predecessors, insists that the Palestinian Authority protests that Israeli colonial settlement must stop for negotiations to begin is nothing short of an imposition of "pre-conditions" for negotiations, which he cannot accept.

This Israeli position is hardly new. Israeli leaders have always insisted that Israeli colonialism is not only compatible with peace, but that the Palestinian leadership's acquiescence in it will ensure peace, while it was Palestinian resistance to it that causes war and terrorism.

One of the most pressing arguments often made by Israeli leaders since 1948 is how they have always been committed to peace with the Palestinian people and their Arab neighbours only to be rebuffed time and again by them. Israeli leaders from David Ben-Gurion to Netanyahu have insisted that all the wars Israel fought were not of Israel's choosing but imposed on it by Palestinian and Arab rejection of Israel's right to colonise. While Israel is ready to fight all wars, they insist, its preference has always been for peace. Golda Meir had declared in 1969: "We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon -- no alternative." This is not just a question of political propaganda, but also a reflection of Israel's sincere commitment to "colonialism as peace."

Political wisdom in Israel has it that Israeli Jews have prayed and worked for peace for the last 62 years only for their peaceful offers to be turned down by their Arab enemies. What Israelis mean by this is that they have prayed that they could continue to colonise Palestinian lands and also have peace at the same time, but instead they have had to deal with war, terrorism, and resistance to their "peaceful" colonial efforts. It is true that finally one Arab, Anwar El-Sadat, met Israel's extended hand with a peace agreement in 1979, but he was unique in his efforts. It took King Hussein 15 years to follow suit under international pressure. Still even these peaceful agreements have not resulted in normalisation of relations with Arab states or of popular acceptance of Israel by the Arab peoples. The Palestinians while pretending to offer peace to Israel have been proven to be deceptive and not serious about peace at all, as they insist on resisting its colonial efforts. What is Israel to do in this belligerent and "tough" neighbourhood in which it lives? How can it deal with such bellicose people intent on destroying it when all it asks for is peace and security for its colonial settlement?

Just a few weeks ago President Shimon Peres insisted: "I want to say in the name of the state of Israel at large: We do not seek war... We are a nation that yearns for peace, but knows, and will always know, how to defend itself." Even the much maligned Netanyahu also declared a few weeks ago: "We are a peace seeking nation who prays for peace... our one hand is extended in offering peace to our willing neighbours, while the other wields a sword to protect ourselves against those who seek to destroy us."

In order to understand Israel's commitment to peace, we need to understand what it means by that term and its commensurate companion, the term "security". These are key concepts in the language of Zionism. Many of Israel's detractors believe Israel is lying when it insists on peace and security. I will argue that these detractors are wrong. Israel is dead serious about its commitment to peace and is honest when it insists that war is something imposed on it by its enemies. The problem is one of translation. Israel's enemies do not seem to understand the language of Zionism -- and by that I do not mean the Hebrew language! I will translate from Zionism to English one more time: Colonialism is Peace, Anti-Colonialism is War.

I will give you some historical background. On 14 May 1948, Israel's first prime minister Ben-Gurion stated Israel's peaceful intentions in the nascent state's foundational document, The Declaration of Independence. Ben-Gurion announced:

"We appeal -- in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months -- to the Arab inhabitants of the state of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions...We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The state of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East. "

These noble sentiments were uttered while the Israeli army was proceeding with its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and the colonisation of their lands. Indeed by 14 May 1948, Israel's army had already expelled 400,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes. Ben-Gurion was clearly calling on the remaining Palestinians who had not yet been expelled to "preserve the peace" before the army moves to expel them. But the expulsion of the Palestinians was necessary for Jewish colonisation of the country, which could only proceed peacefully once they were expelled.

It is true that the Zionist movement was predicated on the colonisation of Palestine primarily by European Jews since the 1890s. But many Zionists came to regret that the organisations they set up in the late 19th and early 20th century for the colonial effort were named in ways that are embarrassing today: "The Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association", "The Jewish Colonial Trust", "The Jewish Colonial Bank", or "The Colonisation Department" of the Jewish Agency, among others. In the 1930s they tried to correct some of this as they worried it could be offensive to Palestinians. Indeed, F.H. Kisch, the director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department and the Chairman of the Jewish Agency's Executive in Palestine, proposed a change in Zionism's colonial language. He wrote in his diary in 1931 that he was "striving to eliminate the word 'colonisation' in... connection [to Jewish colonial settlement in Palestine] from our phraseology. The word is not appropriate from our point of view since one does not set up colonies in a homeland but abroad: e.g. German colonies on the Volga or Jewish colonies in the Argentine, while from the point of view of Arab opinion the verb to 'colonise' is associated with imperialism and aggressiveness." Unfortunately for future Israeli strategists, the word would persist in Zionist language, even while Israeli propagandists were insisting that the Zionist movement was an anti-colonial movement not unlike anti-colonial movements in India and Ghana.

But not only would the "C" word persist, so would colonisation of the lands of the Palestinians. After 1948, however, Israel would replace the term to "colonise" with the term to "Judaise", as in its scheme to "Judaise the Galilee" in the 1970s. This notwithstanding, Israel continued to make its case to the world, and to explain its acts through Hasbara, which, as many of you know, means "explanation". Unlike other countries that resort to political propaganda, Israel only offers explanations, Hasbara. For example, Israeli leaders "explained" after 1948 that Israel's colonial actions were peaceful acts. The only reason why there were wars is because Palestinians and other Arabs opposed and resisted these peaceful colonial acts. To cite Golda Meir again, what alternative did Israel have but to fight back those intent on stopping its colonial efforts?

But why would Israel's enemies insist that Zionist and Israeli colonialism, or Judaisation, was not compatible with peace; indeed that it was not equivalent to peace? It is true that Israel expelled three quarter of a million Palestinians by the end of the war it launched against them, but that was in order to establish a peaceful Jewish state. It has refused to repatriate the Palestinian refugees in violation of international law in order to preserve the peace, and it has confiscated their property and the property of those Palestinians who remained in Israel, also in violation of international law, for the sake of establishing peace. It only went to war when it was forced to. On 15 May 1948, five Arab armies intervened to stop its five-month long war on and expulsion of the Palestinian people, but this only proves that the Arabs were the ones who started the war! When it invaded Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967, Israel did so in order to bring about peace. Sure, it began to implant colonial settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the Sinai, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, and yes it annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but all of this was done peacefully. Even when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, Israel called its savage invasion "Peace for Galilee". Israel's language of peace could not have been stressed more strongly.

Another important Zionist term is "security", which is of course linked to peace. By "security" Zionism and Israel have always meant security for Israel's colonial settler project and for its colonial settlements. This could also mean insecurity for the Palestinians at whose expense the colonial settlement proceeds. This, however, is immaterial, as the insecurity to Palestinians is incidental to the meaning of security in the language of Zionism. I believe Ariel Sharon put it best when he declared in 2000 Israel's commitment to peace and security: "I am for lasting peace," he said: "United, I believe, we can win the battle for peace. But it must be a different peace, one with full recognition of the rights of the Jews in their one and only land: peace with security for generations and peace with a united Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people in the state of Israel forever." What this means is that security is actually a synonym for peace and colonialism, just as the opposite of colonialism means anti-colonialism, and the absence of security means anti-colonialism, and therefore war. Let me translate for you one more time: Colonialism is peace is security; anti-colonialism is war is terrorism.

Let me now move to the important formula on which the "peace process" has been based, namely "land for peace". I will suggest to you that the reason why the "peace process" has not been successful is not because of continuing Israeli colonialism, but rather as a result of the perennial problem of translation. What "land for peace" means in the language of Zionism is that Israel will pledge not to colonise some small parts of the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel, with God and America on its side, consider as the rightful lands of the Jews, in exchange for a cessation of Palestinian anti-colonial resistance as war. It is in effect a major Israeli concession and an attempt by Israel to understand the Palestinian language of anti-colonialism.

While Israel is baffled that colonialism does not seem to mean peace for the Palestinians as it does for Zionism and other colonial languages, it is willing, in the name of cultural relativism, to concede to the Palestinians that it will not colonise some of what they mistakenly believe are their lands, if the Palestinians would only stop their anti-colonialism as war. The problem is that Palestinians also failed to understand what "land for peace" means. For Palestinians, "land for peace" means that Palestinians will be giving up 78 per cent of their own lands to Israeli colonialism in exchange for a cessation of Israeli colonial wars against them and a cessation of Israeli colonial settlement on the remaining 22 per cent of Palestine, including all of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians (and international law with them) believe is their land. This has infuriated the Israelis who insisted that their interpretation of "land for peace" must be the basis for negotiations and not this strange and esoteric, even "anti-Semitic" Palestinian mistranslation which rejects God's mandate and promises to the Jewish people as interpreted by Zionism. Israel has since provided the Palestinian Authority with a Zionist dictionary to avoid future misunderstandings, but to no avail.

The problem of translation was most apparent in the failure of the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000, which resulted in Yasser Arafat's rejection of Ehud Barak's offer. In the language of Zionism, Barak offered Arafat 73 per cent of the West Bank, which could expand in 10 to 25 years to 91 per cent (although some American and Israeli accounts insist that Barak offered 95 per cent of the West Bank). The problem was again one of translation. The West Bank means something different in the language of Zionism from what it means to the Palestinians and international law. The West Bank was the name the Jordanian authorities gave to the Central and Eastern parts of Palestine that they annexed in 1950. This included the small city of East Jerusalem, which was six square kilometres in size when the Israelis occupied it in 1967. In the language of Zionism, the West Bank not only excludes the small city of East Jerusalem but, in fact, also excludes the much-expanded city which the Israelis annexed in 1967 and ratified their annexation in 1980 by expanding its size to 70 square kilometres at the expense of West Bank lands, i.e. they expanded it to almost 12 times its original size. United Jerusalem would be renamed in the 1980s by the Israelis "Greater Jerusalem", and it would be expanded to almost 300 square kilometres by stealing more land from the West Bank. Indeed Greater Jerusalem has come to encompass almost 10 per cent of the West Bank, not to speak of the more recent plan of Metropolitan Jerusalem, whose geographic size is being expanded by the Israelis to encompass possibly as much as 25 per cent of West Bank lands. Moreover, according to Barak's offer at Camp David, the West Bank would be bifurcated by a road from Greater Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, which Israel would close to non-Jews in accordance with its security considerations. This means that 73 per cent of the West Bank means 73 per cent of 75-90 per cent of the West Bank, i.e. 55-65 per cent of what the Palestinians and international law understand by the term West Bank. The Israelis were appalled at Arafat's stinginess. Here was Israel pleading with Arafat that it would continue to colonise anywhere from 35-45 per cent of the West Bank but it would commit no longer to colonise 55- 65 per cent of the West Bank, which in the language of Zionism equals 91-95 per cent of the West Bank, and Arafat still rejected this generous offer. This was clearly a language problem. Let me recap for you: Colonialism is peace is security; anti-colonialism is war is terrorism; Half the West Bank is the West Bank.  ...

Now that I have provided an abridged lexicon of Zionist terminology, I hope it has become clear to everyone that the reason for the ongoing "violence" in Israel and Palestine is not on account of Israeli colonialism at all but rather a direct result of mistranslation. It is essentially a language problem. If some conflict resolution experts could be given the chance to explain to Palestinian leaders that Israel refuses to deal with "extremists" and that it is willing to deal with "pragmatists" and that pragmatism for Israel means accepting the language of Zionism, then this whole sordid affair misnamed the "Palestinian/Israeli conflict" will be over in a jiffy and we can all go home. Sadly, these experts have tried and have been going at it since the 1980s but they cannot seem to break the language barrier completely though they produced some remarkable successes. President Obama is hoping to build on these successes to advance his new "peace plan". This time he seems to have a Palestinian partner in Fayyad who is fluent in the language of Zionism. The problem, however, is that, in contrast with the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian people have never been illiterate in the language of Zionism, but rather too fluent in it to the point of understanding very well how Zionist words translate on the ground.

After 62 years of persistent Israeli colonialism of Palestine, unless President Obama and Israeli leaders understand that colonialism is war and anti-colonialism is peace and that the only viable state project in the area would be one that encompasses all Palestinians and Israeli Jews as equal citizens in it, whatever "peace plan" they offer to the Palestinians will be nothing short of a war plan.

* The writer teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question.

(4) There are no books, pens, or research resources in Gaza. Israel bombed the University
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 11.05.2010 05:08 PM

http://www.countercurrents.org/versey090510.htm

Defying appeal from Gaza students, Atwood set to accept Israeli prize

Kristin Srzemski, The Electronic Intifada, 8 May 2010

On Sunday, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood will accept the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University and her portion of the $1 million payout that goes with it. Meanwhile, a mere 40 miles away, students in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip will stilll be struggling to find the ways and means to continue their educations.

Atwood will be accepting her prize despite a worldwide call -- initiated by the Palestinian Students Campaign for a Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (PSACBI) -- for her to turn down the award. The Canadian author, whose work often reflects issues of colonization, feminism, structures of political power and oppression, will be sharing the literary prize with Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, whose novels question the brutalities of colonial rule and post-colonial dispossession. Ghosh was also asked to turn down the prize, which he has declined to do. ...

"We have no fuel supply in Gaza for student transportation," Ayah Abubasheer of PSCABI wrote in an email on 21 April. "There are no basic supplies or stationery for students in Gaza. Basic materials such as pens, pencils, sharpeners, erasers and so on are not available. And, books? There are no books, research resources or any of the like in Gaza. Israel bombed the Islamic University's labs and student residences during the [winter 2008-09 attacks on Gaza]." ...

(5) Rachel Corrie lawsuit: bulldozer driver's evidence cut short by command of Israeli General

General 'tried to cover up truth about death of Rachel Corrie'

Israeli war hero accused of suppressing testimony that could reveal what really happened to Gaza activist

By Ben Lynfield

Friday, 7 May 2010

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/general-tried-to-cover-up-truth-about-death-of-rachel-corrie-1965623.html

Seven years after the American activist Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, evidence has emerged which appears to implicate Israel's Gaza commander at the time, in an attempt to obstruct the official investigation into her death.

The alleged intervention of Major-General Doron Almog, then head of Israel's southern command, is documented in testimony taken by Israeli military police a day after Ms Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003. The hand written affidavit, seen by The Independent, was submitted as evidence during a civil law suit being pursued by the Corrie family against the state of Israel.

Ms Corrie, who was 23 when she died, was critically wounded when a bulldozer buried her with sandy soil near the border between Gaza and Egypt. The American, wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and carrying a megaphone, was among a group of volunteers from the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement who over a period of three hours on that day had sought to block the demolition by Israel of Palestinian homes.

The Israeli military has maintained that its troops were not to blame for the killing of Ms Corrie and that the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her. It accused Ms Corrie and the ISM of behaviour that was "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous". Three days after Ms Corrie's death, the US state department announced that the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had promised the US President George Bush that the Israeli government would undertake a "thorough, credible and transparent investigation".

But according to a military police investigator's report which has now emerged, the "commander" of the D-9 bulldozer was giving testimony when an army colonel dispatched by Major-General Almog interrupted proceedings and cut short his evidence. The military police investigator wrote: "At 18:12 reserve Colonel Baruch Kirhatu entered the room and informed the witness that he should not convey anything and should not write anything and this at the order of the general of southern command."

The commander was a reservist named Edward Valermov. He was in the bulldozer with its driver. In his testimony before he was ordered to stop, he told military police investigators that he had not seen Ms Corrie before she was wounded. Alice Coy, a former ISM volunteer activist who was near Ms Corrie during the incident said in an affidavit to the court that "to the best of my knowledge the bulldozer driver could see Rachel while pushing earth over her body."

Hussein Abu Hussein, a lawyer for the Corrie family, said Major-General Almog's alleged intervention blocked the possible emergence of evidence that could have determined whether Mr Valermov's assertion that he did not see Ms Corrie was reasonable. "Do I believe him? Of course not. There is no doubt this was manslaughter," Mr Abu Hussein said. "First of all we claim the state is responsible for the death of Rachel. And secondly we claim that the investigation was not professional."

"When you, the state of Israel, fail as an authority to perform your function of having a credible investigation, when your standard falls from reasonable, objective standards than you have caused evidentiary damage," Mr Abu Hussein said.

Contacted by The Independent, Major-General Almog, a hero in Israel for his role in the 1976 raid to rescue hostages in Entebbe, Uganda, denied ordering the bulldozer commander to desist from testifying. In 2005, the General narrowly escaped arrest in Britain on a war crimes charge for allegedly ordering the destruction in 2002 of 50 civilian homes in Rafah, where Ms Corrie was later killed. Major-General Almog was tipped off about the warrant and did not disembark at Heathrow, returning instead to Israel on the El Al flight.

Mr Valermov said in his testimony that the bulldozers, manned by two people, were ordered to continue their work despite the presence of the ISM protesters. He said that troops in an armoured personnel carrier threw stun grenades, used tear gas and fired shots towards the ground to scare the protesters away. "It didn't help and therefore we decided to continue the work with all possible delicateness on the orders of the company commander" he said.

The testimony was interrupted after Mr Valermov said the driver of the bulldozer, named only as Yevgeny, said he did not know if Ms Corrie had been harmed by the shovel of the D-9. "It was only when we moved the D-9 backwards that I saw her. The woman was lying in a place where the instrument had not reached. As soon as we saw the harmed woman we returned to the central corridor, stood and waited for orders." The soldier's last statement before the order to stop speaking was: "My job was to guide. The driver cannot guide himself because his field of vision is not large."

Another army document strongly suggests that Major-General Almog opposed the military police investigation. Dated 18 March 2003, a military police investigator petitioning a judge for permission to conduct an autopsy on Ms Corrie's body said that "we arrived only today because there was an argument between the general of southern command and the military advocate general about whether to open an investigation and under what circumstances." The judge granted the request provided the autopsy would be done in the presence of a US diplomat as the Corrie family requested. But the inquest was carried out by Israel's chief pathologist without any US official being there, in apparent violation of the judge's ruling.

Major-General Almog denied halting Mr Valermov's testimony. "I never gave such an order, I don't know such a document. I conducted my own investigation, I don't remember what I found. There were 12,000 terrorist incidents when I was general in charge of southern command. I finished seven years ago, if they want to invite me [to testify] they know the address. I certainly didn't disrupt an investigation, this is nonsense. In all of my service I never told anyone not to testify."

Asked if he gave an order to harm foreign activists interfering with the army's work, Major-General Almog responded: "What are you talking about? You don't know what a general in charge of command is. The general in charge of command has 100,000 soldiers. What are you talking about?''

Moshe Negbi, legal commentator for the state-run Voice of Israel radio, said of Major-General Almog's interdiction: "If a commander prevents a witness from testifying then it is disruption of an investigation, a criminal offence whose penalty is three years imprisonment."

Craig Corrie, Rachel Corrie's father, said the alleged intervention in Valermov's testimony was "outrageous."

"When you see someone in that position taking those steps you not only have to be outraged, you have to ask why is he covering up, what has he done that he needs to take these steps to cover it up?"

An Israel Defense Forces spokesman said: "Any military police investigations are completely independent and cannot be influenced by outside sources." The Israeli state attorneys handling the case declined to be interviewed. The trial is due to resume in September. ...