Wednesday, January 22, 2014

If you don't boycott SodaStream, you support occupation, oppression, Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing and torture, including children, which sometimes leads to death.

There is no gray area, there are no excuses. Everyone who buys SodaStream's products is responsible for the crimes of the Israeli occupation by giving their money in its support.
Problem is that European Union is biased towards Israel and against Palestinians. EU is paying for the occupation with other aid donors and ungrateful Israel frequently destroys the EU paid infrastructure out of spite, yet Israel gets the most favourable trade deals - which it largely gets to write on its own according to EU sources and EU's foreign representative Catherine Ashton has never condemned any action by Israel during her entire tenure.

She only deplores or is concerned. Same Blairite Ashton has also announced that Israel has a de facto veto to EU's Palestine policy, claiming that EU and its member states won't recognize Palestine without Israel's permission. And after all this Israel shrieks madly that EU is biased against it, when it's the pampered outsider getting treated as a favoured insider by the EU. Israel is arrogant, ungrateful and blind.

EU should recognize the pre-1967 lines as borders, hit Israel with sanctions and throw all the trade deals into wastebasket. Perhaps then Israel would understand how much it has taken for granted.

Palestinian boy dreams

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Rosetta was supposed to carry a US miniprobe Champollion along with Philae. Champollion was cancelled in 1996 for lack of funding, but revived as an independent mission to another comet. It would have brought back to Earth first samples from the surface of a comet. The sample-return part was cancelled first and the entire mission was cancelled in 1999 for budgetary reasons.
CRAF was a cometary mission, a sibling craft to Cassini, which was supposed to fly past an asteroid and orbit a comet and send a penetrator to its surface. CRAF was approved in 1990 but cancelled in 1992 after US Congress cut NASA's budget.
NASA's CONTOUR mission was supposed to fly past five comets. It exploded when it left it Earth-Moon system in 2002, probably as a result of a problem with the main engine as contact was lost immediately after it was used first time. Telescopes were able to detect that the probe had disintegrated into several parts.
So US has tried to reach comets and has also successes: Stardust, which was operational from 1999 to 2011, succeeded in flybys of comets Wild 2 and Tempel 1. returning samples from the coma of the former, as did Deep Impact with its flybys of Tempel 1 and Hartley 2. Deep Impact was launched in 2005 and contact was lost in 2013.

1. Typical Zionist nonsense.

Israel is an Apartheid state created through ethnic cleansing and which commits ethnic cleansing today not just against people in occupied territories, but against its own Arab citizens from Negev to Haifa.
There never has been a slave who would have loved his master, yet you Zionists demand that Palestinians should have only warm thoughts of every Zionist who oppresses them with American financial and political support.
Real people don't love those that oppress them, nor those who enable the oppression.

2. The simple fact is that even "progressive" US publications like The Nation tend to act like they are walking on a minefield when it comes to criticism of the Israeli regime and that shows.
The Nation also tends to have the typical American liberal habit of viewing the conflict in Palestine from the Jewish viewpoint, even when criticizing Israel, thus making Palestinians subordinate to Jewish history and Jewish concerns and when the conflict is thus not seen in a neutral but Jewish context, even the most well-meaning writer can't avoid some pro-Israel bias.
Palestinians and other Middle Eastern people like Lebanese who have suffered at the hands of Israel have their own independent history, their own independent existence and their experiences deserve to be viewed on their own terms also, not just as part of Jewish history which always tends to end up involving the Holocaust and then the inclination of viewing Israeli actions with less criticism than if it's ruling ethnic-religious group would not have that experience.

Sunday, January 19, 2014


Kerry's plan is utterly biased, giving Israel what it's leaders wanted still a few years ago - East Jerusalem, almost all illegal settlements, continued control over borders of Palestine and Jordan Valley without any right of return - although now they demand more, as is their habit, moving the goalposts for peace again.

The plan would have no chance in passing in a referendum among Palestinians even on West Bank (as Israel would not allow it being held in East Jerusalem and Hamas probably not in Gaza). It would unlikely to pass in Israel either. If Abbas government would accept Kerry's plan and Israel as a "for Jews only" state - recipe for ethnic cleansing - they would make themselves into Quislings.

Diplomacy to gather international support and pressure until Israel withdraws from the last centimeter of land occupied in 1967 would be a wise path to take. Refugees would again suffer, but at least there would be more land left in West Bank to settle them there.

Thursday, January 02, 2014


The "terrorist" and "man" in question is a 14 year old child and "Rachel's Tomb" has nothing to do with any biblical figures; even the most charitable interpretation is that the origins of the site go to no farther than 4th century CE.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces on the West Bank was in 2013 highest since 2008, 27 killed. Last night an old man, Eid Ali, died of suffocation after inhaling Israeli tear gas in Kafr Quddoum. He's the first Palestinian to be killed by Israel in 2014.
The release of these political prisoners was agreed already in the late 90s. They have spent a decade and a half imprisoned just because Israeli regime doesn't respect the deals it itself makes.
Their release means nothing for chances of the peace. The "West's" toleration of illegal settlement building, Apartheid policies, Gaza siege and the killing of Palestinians by Israel means that there is little chance for peace.
John Kerry's team that is supposedly neutral party in the negotiations is full of AIPAC men, Israeli Lobby members and what Kerry will offer for Palestinians will be so biased on Israel's favour based on leaks that even if Abbas' government is forced to accept it, the Palestinian people will not accept it in a referendum.
Israel's own government will probably fall over the issue as several government parties oppose peace negotiations and even a rump Palestinian state and chances of any realistic peace agreement being passed in a referendum there are close to zero, as support for total ethnic cleansing and annexation of East Jerusalem and West Bank have been around 60 % among adult Israeli Jews according to Israeli polls.

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Person of the Year 2013: Palestinian Hunger Striker Samer al-Issawi


Published Tuesday, December 31, 2013
One can only imagine the looks on the faces of Israeli settlers living in Masharef Mountain, near the Hebrew University that overlooks Issawiya, as they watched the celebrations welcoming back Palestinian prisoner Samer al-Issawi.
Issawi returned victorious to his village despite Israel’s desperate attempts to ban celebrations. The occupation forces delayed his release for about 10 hours last Monday, December 23, and erected military checkpoints near the village, but young men and Palestinian mothers insisted on welcoming their hero.
Following his nine-month hunger strike amid the “battle of the empty stomachs,” Issawi was released along with 1,026 other Palestinians in an exchange for the return of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
He wished to remain loyal to those who lost their lives while planning and conducting the Shalit kidnapping, and didn’t want the Israelis to arrest the liberated prisoners all over again, forcing them to serve the rest of their sentences.
From the first intifada until the mid-1990s, Issawi, born 1979, resisted Israeli occupation by setting settler cars of fire and throwing Molotov cocktails. He told Al-Akhbar that he was careful not to be arrested because he wanted to support his family, since his four brothers – Raafat, Medhat, Firas, and Fadi – were held by the Israelis. But all that changed when his brother Fadi was killed in clashes that erupted in Issawiya, following the Hebron massacre in 1994.
The day Samer saw his brother in a pool of his own blood was the last straw.
Issawi was first arrested in 1998 and sentenced to a year and a half in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail. He was later sentenced to six months in jail for beating up an Israeli soldier, then he was imprisoned again in 2000 for 15 days at the beginning of al-Aqsa intifada. He was later arrested for six months without charges.
“Israeli military attacks escalated during the second Intifada, and we began to hear about airstrikes on Gaza,” said Issawi, revealing that on the first day of his release he joined the ranks of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He formed a five-member cell with friends and conducted 11 shooting operations targeting Israeli vehicles in the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, seven kilometers east of Jerusalem.
These shootings caused material damages and injured one Israeli officer. Once Issawi’s role was revealed, the Israelis hunted him down for a whole year and finally arrested him during the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in Ramallah.
Issawi refused to appear before the Beit Eil military court and rejected the presence of an attorney because he didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of the court. He told the judges that it was more of a traveling circus that the Israelis brought along to every territory they occupied.
Issawi was sentenced to 30 years in jail. He wasn’t surprised. Usually sentences in such cases are life in prison, even though no injuries were caused.
He said he was confident he wouldn’t serve his entire sentence, and told the judge, “I will be out before 30 years.” Ten years later, Issawi was released within the “Loyalty to the Free Men” prisoners’ deal.
Issawi as Art
Occupation forces arrested Issawi again on 7 July 2012. His interrogation continued for 30 days, following which he was accused of planning to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile, the head of Israeli intelligence in the West Bank threatened to send him back to jail to serve the remaining 20 years of his sentence.
Issawi realized that he was in a serious situation. Hence, on July 27, he started returning two of his meals and settling for a simple one of two slices of bread and a spoonful of labneh and jam.
He maintained this diet for 19 days and was transferred to Nafha Prison. On August 24, he started training his body for an open hunger strike. He wrote a letter to prison services and informed them about his escalation. Back then, he settled for a glass of juice or milk or soup until he cut off food completely and started his open hunger strike on September 14, which also included a strike on water from time to time.
Finally, Issawi reached an agreement with the Israelis last April allowing him to return home to Jerusalem within eight months.
Israelis resorted to different tactics to try and exhaust Issawi into giving up his hunger strike. They sent him on prisoners’ buses to courts and moved him from prison to prison, forcing him to wait for hours for his jailers. They demolished his brother Medhat’s house and attacked him and his family in court despite his deteriorating health.
Samer dropped to 99 pounds and suffered attendant health risks. “When I slept on my right side, I felt numb, and the same with my left side. I also couldn’t sleep on my chest because I had a broken bone,” he said.
With His Family
“Every time I heard about Palestinians and freedom-loving people around the world joining this this battle, I forgot my own pain, mainly after the martyrdom of Mahmoud al-Titi and Mohammed Asfour. There was nothing I could offer them, just insisting on the goals that we put together before the hunger strike. I was also moved by young men protesting for the first time in front of Jerusalem Magistrates Court,” he said.
Issawi said, “The anger I saw in the eyes of the jailers after seven months of the hunger strike proved to me that we succeeded in raising the voices of prisoners and revealing Israeli violations of the prisoner swap deal, while preserving Palestinians dignity. All the goals were accomplished and the only thing left was me going back home.”
On the Palestinian official position, Samer said, “Let’s be honest, all of us Palestinians, from the president to common citizens, can’t even move from one region to the other without Israeli authorization. We don’t count on the official position as much as we count on the will of the people to exercise pressure to force politicians to take more serious steps. A Palestinian negotiator can sign a deal, but it would not be applicable on the ground without popular support.”
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/person-year-2013-palestinian-hunger-striker-samer-al-issawi