Headlines for May 5 - May 11

A Stand For Justice


South Hebron Hills: Israeli military prolongs Amniyr closure
CPT has released a video of the evacuation of Amniyr, a Palestinian
village south of Yatta, carried out by the Israeli military on Friday,
May 6. After declaring the area a closed military zone, soldiers and
police used tear gas and sound grenades to chase away the families who
own the land. The previous day at 5 a.m., the military destroyed six
shacks and uprooted 150 olive trees in Amniyr, demolishing all the
structures in the village for the third time in about ten weeks.


EU approves $124 million in aid to PA after Israel blocks transfer of Palestinian funds
According to Reuters, the move was decided on after Israel on Sunday blocked the transfer of 105 million dollars in customs duties and other levies it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, following a deal to reunite the two rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah.


UN chief to Netanyahu: Do not withhold tax revenues from PA



Hamas chief: We will coordinate all decisions regarding Israel with Fatah
Meshal stressed in the interview that "negotiations with Israel, domestic governance, foreign affairs, domestic security and resistance and other field activities" against Israel, would be reached in consensus with the Fatah.


Norway joins ranks supporting unified Palestine



Israeli PM's military attache skips UK visit for fear of arrest
Fearing possible arrest over alleged war crimes charges, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's military attache opted to avoid an official visit to Britain this week.


Israel Stripped 140,000 Palestinians of Residency Rights, Document Reveals
Israel stripped thousands of Palestinians of their right to live in the West Bank over a 27-year period, forcing most of them into permanent exile abroad, a document obtained under freedom of information laws has disclosed.

...Richard Falk, an investigator for the United Nations human rights council, described this as "the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians ... [which] can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing".


Erekat: Israel's cancelation of Palestinian residency is a 'war crime'
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday that Israel's cancelling of the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians, as reported by Haaretz, constitutes a war crime and represents an Israeli attempt to affect the demographic composition of the West Bank.


EU lawmakers pledge to take part in new Gaza flotilla
The flotilla is expected to reach the waters off Gaza in the third week of June, Greek organizer Vangelis Pissias said at a press conference hosted by European Union parliamentarians in Strasbourg.


HEBRON/AL-KHALIL: Settlers attack family home on Shuhada Street
According to the workers and the family, the Israeli military accompanied the
settlers and did nothing to stop the assault on the home. The police were
called, but never came to investigate.



Palestinians to ask UN to stop Israeli tax freeze
The Palestinian leadership on Wednesday voted to ask for United Nations intervention to lift an Israeli freeze on transfers of tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority.


Israeli military demolishes, then evacuates village of Amniyr
On Friday, May 6, the Israeli military declared the area of Amniyr, a
Palestinian village south of Yatta, a closed military zone and chased
away the families who own the land, after demolishing structures and
trees on the land the day before. The demolitions occurred at 5 a.m.
on Thursday, May 5, when the military destroyed six shacks and
uprooted 150 olive trees in Amniyr.


France: Peace talks soon or Palestinian state
French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will support a unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence if peace talks with Israel don't restart by September, dealing a tough setback to Israel's campaign to isolate the incoming Palestinian unity government.

The comments published Thursday – similar to a message from Britain a day earlier – suggest Europe may be inching toward a watershed moment, joining those in favor of recognizing Palestine even if there is no peace deal with Israel.


AL-KHALIL/HEBRON: The dayafter Bin Laden died.
I was in Hebron on September 11, 2001. I remember old men approaching me on the street, eyes full of tears, telling me that God would help me and my fellow citizens. Other Palestinian friends called us, sobbing, as they described what they were watching on TV......I asked a Hebronite friend what most Palestinians in Hebron were saying about Bin Laden's death. Most, he said, do not care. A small minority were upset about the killing. A much larger minority, himself included, thought Bin Laden deserved his fate. A member of the Christian Peacekeeper Teams in Hebron offers Palestinian perspectives that you won't find in mainstream American media


Israel defense minister: Iran won't bomb us
Israel's defense minister says even if Iran develops nuclear arms, it is unlikely to bomb Israel.


Former Mossad chief: Israel air strike on Iran 'stupidest thing I have ever heard'
When asked about what would happen in the aftermath of an Israeli attack Dagan said that: "It will be followed by a war with Iran. It is the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end."


Bin Laden vows no US security in final tape: website
Addressing US President Barack Obama, he said: "America will not be able to dream of security until we live in security in Palestine. It is unfair that you live in peace while our brothers in Gaza live in insecurity."

"Accordingly, and with the will of God, our attacks will continue against you as long as your support for Israel continues," he warned in a message posted on Shamikh1.net, a conduit for Al–Qaeda communications. Wait, I thought they 'hated us for our freedoms'?...


AL-KHALIL: An open letter to Bill Clinton from the Christian Peacemaker Team in
Members of Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron were witnesses in 1997 to the
attacks Israeli settlers made on the Palestinian laborers and USAID engineer
David Muirhead. As you probably know, these attacks and Israeli-imposed curfews
caused the renovations to end up costing U.S. taxpayers twice as much as
projected.


Tony Kushner Denied Honors Over Palestine
This week, the news hit that Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, perhaps best known for his Angels in America, was being blocked from receiving an honorary degree from the City University of New York because of his views on Israel.


Petraeus: Can He Tell It Straight? By Ray McGovern
Iran will continue to loom large as a target for intelligence analysis during Petraeus’s tenure at CIA. What is disconcerting on that front is that Petraeus has been eager to serve up “intelligence” to portray Iran in the worst light. One rather strange but instructive example comes to mind. It involved a studied, if disingenuous, effort to blame all the troubles in southern Iraq on the “malignant” influence of Iran.......

Though Petraeus’s testimony might strike many of us as a no-brainer, not so for the neocons. They resist any suggestion that Israeli intransigence regarding peace talks on Palestine contributes to the dangers faced by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan or by the American people from possible acts of terrorism at home.


US-Israeli relations: Obama back on top?
President George W Bush, surrounded by neocon advisers who viewed Arabs the same way the Israeli right did, was happy to conflate 9/11 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israelis became us and the Palestinians became al Qaeda. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader who had recognised Israel and worked with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to thwart terrorism, instantly became Osama bin Laden.


War is a Sticky Business by Philip Giraldi
And just to demonstrate that Washington continues to live in a complete fantasy world, wars four and five just might be hovering on the horizon. Last week Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham all called on the Obama Administration to get tough with Syria. They had better check first with their minders in Israel since it is by no means clear whether Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu would welcome the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is, at least, predictable compared to whatever kind of regime would succeed him. And then there is Iran, always the enemy of choice, with a constant drumbeat from Tel Aviv and Washington.


Osama’s Undying Reach by Patrick J. Buchanan
Some yet argue that Osama and al-Qaida attacked us because they hate our freedoms. Why, then, did they fight the Russians? Did they hate the freedoms enjoyed by Soviet citizens in Leonid Brezhnev’s time?

In his 1998 declaration of war, Osama gave three reasons. Americans, he said, had deployed their infidel troops on sacred Saudi soil. Americans were strangling a crushed Iraqi people with murderous sanctions. Americans were enabling Zionists to oppress and rob Palestinian Arabs of their lands. His reasons for attacking us were available online at one point. But most Americans still believe - because they've been willfully deceived by government leaders - that we were attacked because of our freedoms. Lie.


Vanishing American Footprint by Patrick J. Buchanan
Why is America’s footprint shrinking in that part of the world?

First, Americans have never been less popular there, and one demand of every revolution is for a new government, independent of the United States, that will defend the national sovereignty.

Second, we are broke. We can no longer afford the bases. We can no longer afford the wars. We can no longer afford the aid.


Mordechai Vanunu Demands Revoking of His Israeli Citizenship
“I request that you set me free of Israel, since Israel does not want me nor do I want Israel,” he wrote. “I have no interest in Israeli citizenship, I don’t want to go on living here.”


Report: Qatar offering Israel gas
According to the reports, Qatar's Industry and Commerce Minister Hassan Abdulla Fakhro told his Israeli counterpart in a phone conversation that his country was willing to export natural gas to the Jewish state "for an unlimited period of time and below market prices".


The robbery is going off without a hitch
Once again, Israel is showing everyone who the real man is here. It is busy carrying out (yet another ) robbery in broad daylight of $105 million from the Palestinians. And as usual, it is going off without a hitch.


Your Taxes Fund Anti-Muslim Hatred
The poison of this rhetoric was on display a few days ago when a trustee of City University of New York blocked the playwright Tony Kushner, who is Jewish, from receiving an honorary doctorate because of Kushner’s criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The trustee, Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, labeling Kushner “an extremist,” told The New York Times that the Palestinians “who worship death for their children are not human.”


John Bolton: I care about things besides bombing Iran
Bolton is, of course, a single-issue guy. His issue is bombing Iran. That is the only reason why anyone has expressed any interest in him as a candidate: He is the man who promises to bomb Iran. Every foreign policy issue of our time looks like a nail to John Bolton, and his hammer is bombing Iran. John Bolton = Israel-firster and neocon extraordinaire.


Syrian shelling kills 18, evokes 1982 crackdown
The Syrian army shelled residential areas and unleashed gunmen Wednesday, and a human rights group said at least 18 people were killed, including an 8–year–old boy. The shelling of neighborhoods evoked memories of the Assad regime's brutal, 40–year legacy of crushing dissent. No action on the part of America is taken because Israel wants Assad to stay in power, as opposed to the action we took with Libya for its gunning down of protesters.


Ex-Israeli spymaster opposes Iran attack
Former spymaster Meir Dagan told a weekend conference that an effective attack on Iran would be difficult because Iranian nuclear facilities are scattered and mobile, Israeli media reported.

Dagan also cautioned that a strike would be liable to trigger war with Iran and possibly Syria.


Survey of Campus BDS Finds Few Serious Cases
Jewish communal mobilization against BDS has sometimes been overwhelming in its scale and, at times, apparently effective. In April 2010, local offices of the ADL, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Community Relations Council and J Street collaborated with the Berkeley Hillel and Israel’s consul general in San Francisco to devise a lobbying strategy to deprive BDS supporters at Berkeley of the student senate votes needed to overturn a presidential veto of a pro-BDS resolution that had passed days earlier. Intensive joint efforts by the groups succeeded in changing the votes of two senators and causing one to abstain. The attempt to overturn the veto failed.




Amid Syria's turmoil, Israel sees Assad as the lesser evil
"I prefer the political extremism of Assad over religious extremism," says Ayoub Kara, a parliament member from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party. "We don’t want religious extremism on the border."


WikiLeaks: U.S. saw Israeli firm's rise in Latin America as a threat
"Alfaro is increasingly open about his agenda to replace U.S. law enforcement and security support with Israelis and others," the cable said, adding that the move "bodes ill" for quelling narcotics activity and crime in Panama.

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