An unlikely-sounding film release — an animation about a massacre detailed from one who was on the side of the co-perpetrators — has been getting attention in Cannes. Waltz With Bashir is about the struggle of the filmmaker and former IDF soldier, Ari Folman, to come to terms with the gaps in his memory surrounding the part he played in the first Lebanese war and the 1982 massacre of thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians in the West Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

Waltz With Bashir Trailer 1m45s

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Appended below are four (in a series of five) links to poignant videos from the excellent Guardian series A Week in Gaza, detailing the impact of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Ghetto on ordinary people. On this 60th anniversary of the Nakba, these heart-rending portraits of Gazans is particularly timely and offers a window into life in Gaza.

As Ali Abunimah, currently in Sydney, has said, Nakba Denial not only exists, but unlike Holocaust Denial still has some mainstream intellectual acceptance. The ongoing plight of the indigenous Palestinians after 60 years deserves our attention and support now more than ever. For our part in Australia, there is a strong campaign to have the Australian Parliament acknowledge the Nakba — please consider lending your support if you are in Australia.

1. The blockade and the smugglers (4.55)
Israel’s fuel blockade has ground Gaza’s infrastructure to a halt. In response, smuggling gangs bring fuel in from Egypt through underground tunnels. Read the rest of this entry »

Thousands of people marched through the streets of London yesterday to show their support for the Palestinian cause. The demonstrators were calling for an end to the siege on Gaza, the right of return for Palestinians, and an end to Israeli occupation. Looks like Neturei Karta were there as well (1:41)

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Hundreds of military checkpoints, and no goods — or people — allowed in or out if you live in the Gaza Ghetto, under brutal siege. Need medical attention and care? Pregnant? Want to visit family? Need to go to work? Get fuel? Too bad. All this operates with Israeli regime impunity, who have been choking Gaza — the world’s largest open-air concentration camp — as well as “exporting” its apartheid model: see, in particular, Naomi Klein.

The graphic above was made by a wise fourteen-year-old (Adam) after hearing stories of the difficulties of life in Abu Dis in Palestine. H/T thanks to DesertPeace, originally sourced from WorldPressNetwork. Read the rest of this entry »

Graphic: Carlos Latuff.

That, of course, is the idea, the result of a deliberate strategy and as a direct consequence of Israel’s prevailing self-definition and worldview. As surely as our cosmology informs our sociology, the abhorrent siege of the Gaza Ghetto continues, the result of the internal logic of Israel’s continued existence as an apartheid expansionist state, producing policies of continued ‘low-intensity’ ethnic cleansing, divide and rule and genocide as Ilan Pappe and others have described. Zaid Khan’s words are worth quoting again:

Nearly 70 years ago, in a small eastern European city, an oppressed and occupied people were under siege, living under atrocious and brutal conditions, lacking food, medicine, electricity, water, and slowly being strangled in the hope they would just disappear.

Warsaw Ghetto 1941 - Gaza 2008. Israel, you are a disgrace.

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Mazin Qumsiyeh of the excellent Wheels of Justice peace initiative has drafted this list furnishing facts about why good people of conscience everywhere will not be celebrating Israel at its 60th anniversary this month, just as apartheid-era South Africa was not accepted or celebrated. There are many more reasons, and he invites people to add to it.

Israeli psychologist and exile Avigail Abarbanel notes, “If a day comes, and I hope it does, when Israelis decide to stop living in denial, they will have to realise that real peace will only come through justice. Justice in this context means one thing, that the ideal of an exclusively Jewish state at the cost of an entire people might have to be abandoned. Only a bi-national state and a right of return for the Palestinian refugees will come close enough to rectifying some of the injustices committed in 1948 and since. Having been ethnically cleansed, this is also what the Palestinians are entitled to under international law and common human decency.“

• Ethnic cleaning and ongoing genocide: Between December 1947 and December 1950, over 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed. Half of the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by underground Zionist forces even before Israel was unilaterally declared a state. Palestinians call these events of the late 1940s the Nakba (Catastrophe).

• The Palestinian refugees are the largest remaining refugee population in the world. Seven million of the ten million Palestinians are refugees or displaced people. They are prevented from returning to their homes and lands even though International law and UN resolutions demand it. Read the rest of this entry »

Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of new book Matai ve’ech humtza ha’am hayehudi? (When and How Were the Jewish People Invented?; Resling, in Hebrew) is sure to provoke some lively debate. In this interview and piece by Ofri Ilani (Shattering a ‘national mythology’, Haaretz), Sand offers a clear-eyed advocacy for the one-state solution and rallies against policies he warns will result in a ‘Kosovo in the Galilee’.

“From the perspective of Zionism,” he posits, “this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation.”

Significantly, Sand also reaches back into antiquity to argue that exile was a myth, and that the present-day Palestinians are far more likely the descendants of the ancient Semitic people in Judea/ Canaan than the current predominantly Khazarian-origin Ashkenazi populace to which he himself belongs. This is a fascinating read and one hopes his book will be translated and made available in English. Read the rest of this entry »

Alan Ramsey provides an interesting write-up of Wednesday’s parliamentary motion ‘commemorating’ Israel (Blinkers off for the other side of story, SMH). “The whole affair”, he writes, “carefully orchestrated, carefully bi-partisan, lasted just 15 minutes.” Significantly, dissent came not just from a split Labor Party on this issue (most notably from MP Julie Irwin, pictured right, and others who absented themselves during the motion), but also came from the Opposition ranks, with Liberal (right-of centre party in Australia) MP Sussan Ley, pictured left, the only MP to speak up for the Palestinian people in Federal Parliament in this session. The motion was carried on voices and not put to a vote. Ramsey writes:

At 11.58am on Wednesday one half of the Australian Parliament “celebrated” the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. More than a third of that one-half was absent, whatever their reasons. A number of MPs deliberately excluded themselves. Labor’s Kevin Rudd, as the host, did not. He spoke for eight minutes. “Celebrate” was the word Rudd used to begin his remarks. “Congratulations” was the word he used to end them. The Liberals’ Brendan Nelson spoke for seven minutes in supporting the Prime Minister. He concluded: “Shabat shalom forever.”

Nobody else spoke. The whole affair, carefully orchestrated, carefully bi-partisan, lasted just 15 minutes. The press gallery was almost empty. Read the rest of this entry »

In response to PM Rudd’s Motion on Israel’s 60th Anniversary year, many Australians, including this blogger, supported and signed an advertisement that appeared prominently on page 7 of The Australian national broadsheet on Wednesday 12 March. The statement reads:

Not in Our Name

We, as informed and concerned Australians, choose to disassociate ourselves from a celebration of the triumph of racism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the al-Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948. As we write, Israel continues to expand illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem.

Australia and Australians should not give the Israeli people and its leaders the impression that Australia supports them in their dispossession of the Palestinian people. Israel has poisoned our (the West’s) relations with the whole of the Arab and Muslim world. Rather than celebrating the creation of the State of Israel, we should be recognising the people of Palestine, those who were dispossessed, those who lived and died as refugees, those who continue to live and die and suffer at the hands of the State of Israel, and those who will continue to suffer and die in the future until justice is done. Read the rest of this entry »

More visuals added

Courtesy Carlos Latuff, Mr. Fish, David Baldinger, Benjamin Heine, Michael Leunig, Derkaoui Abdellah, Clay Bennett, Egyptian football player Mohamed Aboutrika, Khalil Bendib, T. @ Boomerang, Za3tar.

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(Sgt Don L Maes/AFP/Getty Images)

The Welch Club ups the ante in Lebanon

Bush dispatches a flotilla to the Eastern Mediterranean

by Franklin Lamb

Ein el Helwe Palestinian Refugee Camp
Sidon, Lebanon

By this observer’s count there are no fewer than 8, and perhaps half again that number, of Al-Qaeda inspired, Salafist orientated groups now organizing and operating in Lebanon. Most are represented in one form or another in Ein el Helwe, the largest of Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian Refugee Camps. Teenagers appear to be among their most ardent supporters.

These Islamist groups secretly organize and operate in this and other camps, for the same reason Bill Clinton messed with Ms. Monica Lewinsky: “Because I could”, as Bill finally owned up, when his denials fueled comedy on late night TV. Read the rest of this entry »

After murdering 33 over 60 78 112 (as at 3 March) Palestinians since Tuesday (whose names and family status are rarely mentioned like the Israeli “father of four”, and two others, combatants), the Israeli regime and blight unto nations has now confirmed to the world its genocidal intent against the indigenous Palestinian population: the Deputy Israeli Defense Minister Matan Vilnai has threatened a shoah (holocaust, disaster) against Gazans, telling Israeli Army Radio:

“The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”

This is not about “defence”, of course. Stopping the rockets — which are a response to the occupation, control and strangulation of the Palestinians — could be achieved by talking to the elected government of Gaza, and ending the longest-running military occupation in modern history, and one of the most brutal. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten minute segment from Roy’s documentary ‘We’, in which Roy’s reading of her text is set to video footage.

Quotables from the Israeli government’s current (c)harm offensive

While you may have read about the first, Israeli Minister Sheetrit’s revealing outburst was by no means the only recent one. These are just a few picked up from a couple of news pieces, and seem unfortunately indicative of how the Israeli government public discourse has further degenerated, reflecting its actions on the ground.

• Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit: “We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map“ (see also here; here and here)

• ”We need to topple the Hamas regime,” Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Israel Radio ahead of Barak’s briefing. ”We need to assassinate its leaders without any artificial differentiation between those who wear explosive vests and those who wear diplomatic vests.“

• Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters after the cabinet meeting, “There is no hope for the Palestinian people with Hamas. There is no hope for any kind of peace or the vision of a Palestinian state which includes the Gaza Strip without a real change on the ground.” (read: usual ‘never a partner for peace’ and attempting to dictate who governs and the shape of a future Palestinian state, which is to say, actively preventing one)

• Olmert’s Deputy, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, said he expected Hamas, which seized control in June, to be forced out within the year. “I believe a combination of steps against Hamas in Gaza will bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza,” Ramon said. “It will take a few months, maybe it will take a year.” Hamas sources said Hamas leaders were keeping a low profile, apparently to avoid assassination attempts. Asked who Israel could be targeting, minister Shaul Mofaz said: “Everyone, without exception.” Read the rest of this entry »