Remember Gaza

Instead of saying ‘sorry’ Israel’s stooges keep pumping out the poison
In January, while Israel's military was pulverising Gaza for 22 days and nights and incinerating its women and children with phosphor bombs, the Liberal Democrat Party in the UK published an article by its Friends of Israel wing, entitled 'Israel has no option but to defend itself against Hamas and Iran'.
According to this, "Israel is fighting in Gaza to stop the firing of rockets at towns and cities well within Israel’s internationally recognised, pre-1967 borders. These rockets are not home-made fireworks; they are sophisticated weapons, which often kill innocent people. They are fired without precision..."

So sophisticated are the rockets, in fact, that only 1 in 400 actually kills somebody. But rockets never were the issue. There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. Yet the illegal Israeli occupation there continues and so does the ethnic cleansing, the land theft, the illegal settlements, the colonization, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the throttling of the economy, the abduction and 'administrative detention' of civilians and the massive block on freedom of movement. There is no let-up in the oppression of West Bank Palestinians who DO NOT fire rockets, and no sign of an end to their misery.

The bloody assault on Gaza therefore has more to do with Israel's ambition to expand its racial dominance in the Holy Land than crude and erratic rocket-fire. Stroppy Hamas and the unflinching Palestinians holed up in Gaza stand in the way of the Grand Plan and must be removed or totally subdued.

Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, said the Jewish State would stretch “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates". At the UN Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947 Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine said in his testimony: "The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon." A map of ‘Greater Israel’ presented by the Word Zionist Organization soon after WWI (see http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story1045.html) shows the geographical extent of Zionist greed. Gaza and the West Bank are totally engulfed by it.
Introduction.

The difficult circumstances in Palestine facing journalists in the occupied West Bank and Gaza forced many media establishments to choose employing local journalists who know the nature of the area, besides minimizing the amount of risks reporters and photojournalists face when covering clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza.
This Essay will focus on Palestinian women photojournalists working within the Palestinian territories; thus excluding hundreds of Palestinian women journalists who are working all over the world after their families became refugees, or forced to exile.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is one of those rare birds who have retained their humanity even after four years in the world’s most powerful job. The architect of the first Arab-Israel peace accord was moved to tears when he visited the ruins of Gaza this month, comparing the condition of the Palestinians to “worse than animals.”

Granted, most Americans are not familiar with the Palestinian way of life, I often wonder what the Israelis themselves think of the people living next door in a permanent hell. Are the Israelis ever moved by the Palestinian suffering, as Carter has been and rest of the world often is? If they are, it is yet to be seen. No matter what happens to the Palestinians and what the rest of the world thinks of their suffering, Israel and its leaders remain as indifferent and as unreasonable as ever. When Benjamin Netanyahu promised his own road map, after President Barack Obama gave him those stony looks in the Oval Office with the world media watching, even the most hardened cynics began nursing hopes of peace.

We thought, maybe, Israel, prodded by its faithful ally and biggest backer, finally has had a change of heart. Maybe, we hoped, it’s finally time for the doves of peace to descend on the Holy Land. Perhaps, the time has come for Palestinians to find themselves a home — even if moth eaten — of their own.

But Israel is nothing if not consistent. Netanyahu did unveil a “road map” in his much-hyped speech but you do not know what to make of it. Having refused to acknowledge the existence of Palestinians all these years, Netanyahu has finally agreed for “peace” and a Palestinian state, if it can be called one. However, his one hand takes back what the other proffers. The “sovereign and independent” Palestine envisaged by Israel will have no military or security forces of its own. It is not permitted to possess or import any weapons. It cannot control its own airspace. And, yes, the borders of this Bantustan will be controlled by the able and efficient forces of the great state of Israel. His Imperial Majesty Netanyahu is kind enough though to grant the future Palestinian state the right to have its own flag and currency. In return, all Israel asks from the Palestinians is the surrender of their rights over their lands and homes in what was once Palestine. They must recognize Israel as the Jewish state and the divine right of Jewish people to the Holy Land. So what if this means the Palestinians can never dream of returning to their homes and lands from which they were driven out or even hope for recompense? In any case, where’s the land and where are the homes that the Palestinians dream of returning to?

It’s all Israel now — greater Israel, from the river to the sea! When will Palestinians grow out of their dreams? How long will they continue to cling to idle hope, year after wasted year, generation after lost generation? After all, it’s been nearly seven decades since the Nakhba?

Political opportunist Nicolas Sarkozy forgot three fundamental lessons when he decided to denounce the burka.

The first one is that men should stay well clear of becoming embroiled in expressing opinions on women’s clothes, unless of course you happen to be called Lacroix, Gaultier, Lagerfeld or Ghesquiere.

This was a lesson learned the hard way by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who was pilloried when he questioned the nikab after asking a female constituent to lift her veil so he could see her face.

Could you imagine him making the same request of any female members of the Saudi royal household during one of his galloping missions to the Middle East?

Foolishly Scotsmen Gordon Brown and John Reid, hailing from a country where men wear pleated skirts and paint their faces blue, then waded in with the grace of a couple of dancing bears.

Even the Bishop of Rochester - a man who wears a pointy hat and a purple dress - chipped in his dislike of the nikab, full face veil or burka.

Of course they were all despatched very quickly by Muslim women in Britain who proved themselves to be anything but oppressed, subjugated creatures. And just to show there's real solidarity across women of faith and no faith, quite a few western feminists expressed their disdain at Straw and co while standing shoulder to shoulder with their Muslim sisters.

The second lesson is try and be sincere if you are taking up a cause. Sarkozy feigned his utmost respect for women by saying he felt the burka represented the unacceptable symbol of women's enslavement - today I can unveil him to be a purveyor of weasel words.

If he really cared about the subjugation of women he would seriously tackle the appalling levels of domestic violence French women suffer at the hands of French men - two million are victims of bullying, violent partners ... a staggering 400 are murdered by their spouse.

So how many women in France actually wear the burka? The answer is a very tiny minority - so much so that when the BBC'’s Emma Jane Kirby went to interview a burka-wearing woman in Paris she couldn’t find a single one!