Thursday, October 13, 2016

We Need Your Help | Women's Boat & 'Terrorism'? | Jerusalem Train | Palestinian Messi | Letter to Zuma | More ..


www.PalestineChronicle.com -  Oct  13, 2016
   
In This Issue

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Making Our Case, 17 Years On: Palestine Chronicle English and French Lead the Way




Dear Readers, We Need Your Help 
Your support over the last six months has been the prime reason that the Palestine Chronicle continues to allow our readers the opportunity of being at the forefront of Palestine news.
On that note, the last six months were particularly interesting. We were recently 'accused' by the spokesperson by the Israeli Embassy in London of being the second most popular website among supporters of a certain Palestinian resistance faction, were derided by the Jerusalem Post, and were also subject to hundreds of hackers' attacks, which forced us to change servers and heighten our security.
Amidst all this, the Palestine Chronicle prevailed. In fact, we are stronger than ever before, not only in our determination to carry through for as long as it takes to shed light on the suffering of the Palestinians, but our readership has escalated dramatically.
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In fact, we have been a staple on Google's first page searches using keywords such as 'Palestine', among others.
With our dedicated team of four editors, and many writers, covering every day of the week, the Palestine Chronicle is a flagship of independent Palestinian media - unwavering, refusing to be bought, or intimidated and as ever, thought-provoking and innovative.
A few months ago, Palestine Chronicle English was joined by its sister publicationChronique de Palestine - a daily content provider that translates the news and views on Palestine into English and Arabic on Palestine, while also producing own original content.  Together, we are charting a clear course for independent, alternative, courageous media to follow.
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The Chronicle, a non-profit organization, was launched in September 1999. 17 years later, it has evolved into an institution that has contributed tens of thousands of articles related to Palestine, establishing itself as a force to be reckoned amidst the dominant and unfair media bias which has deliberately underplayed and even overlooked and justified the glaring suffering of the Palestinian people for nearly 70 years.
The numerous efforts of the Palestine Chronicle have succeeded only because of the support of our readers everywhere. Your encouragement, distribution of our content and financial support made it possible for us to continue with our work and to take our mission to new heights. This is a necessity that allows our organization to prevail.
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Palestine Chronicle Editors

EDITORIAL

The Convoluted Discourse: Was The Women's Boat to Gaza an Existential Threat?


By Ramzy Baroud




The Israeli official narrative regarding its conflict with the Palestinians is deliberately confounded because a muddled up discourse is a convenient one. It allows the narrator to pick and choose half-truths at will, in order to create a falsified version of reality.
For instance, this is part of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the United Nations on September 22:
"Ladies and Gentlemen: Israel fights this fateful battle against the forces of militant Islam every day. We keep our borders safe from ISIS, we prevent the smuggling of game-changing weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, we thwart Palestinian terror attacks in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, and we deter missile attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza."
In just a single paragraph, Netanyahu has chosen to create an alternate reality, despite the fact that: ISIS' main victims, thus far, have been Muslims, never Israelis; Hezbollah, which is embroiled in a sectarian fight in Syria is a Lebanese movement that is also at war with ISIS; the uprising in the West Bank has been largely led by desperate youth who were born under violent Israeli military Occupation and have no trust in their own leadership; Hamas has not lobbed any homemade rockets at Israel since the destructive Israeli war of 2014, which killed 2,251 Palestinians, mostly civilians.
While Netanyahu's statements are not outright lies, the selection of these statements, not keen on dates, devoid of context and lacking in any Israeli accountability or even introspection, makes them simply untrue. Needless to say, utterly confusing as well, especially for those who rarely understand the nature of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors.
The Israeli Prime Minister's language at international forums are quite typical, if not predictable. Not only typical of him as a statesman, but of generations of Israeli leaders, past and present. Former Israeli Prime Minister and President, Shimon Peres, who died late September, mastered this Israeli style, bar none. Although he was the architect of the Middle East's first and only nuclear bomb, he was eulogized by western governments and media, including many in the Left, as a peacemaker, a heroic figure and statesman.
But Peres was the last of the 'founders of Israel' generation. That generation's approach to war and diplomacy was unique and cannot be repeated. They were mostly foreign-born; spoke various languages; followed a unified blueprint in politics and had clear, decisive goals.
In contrast, Netanyahu is the first Israeli Prime Minister to be born in the country, after its establishment on the ruins of Palestine in 1948. His diplomacy is as violent as is his conduct on the ground. He seems fearless insofar as his confidence in his benefactors - namely the United States government, which has recently pledged to Israel another $38 billion dollars in unconditional military aid over the course of ten years.
With no legal or political accountability whatsoever, and with unwavering US backing of Israeli actions, no matter how destabilizing or destructive, Netanyahu's logic, however lacking, will always prevail.
But considering that Israel is achieving precisely its intended goals - expanding its illegal settlements, sustaining its Occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, constantly building up its armament and advancing its strategic interests at the expense of its neighbors, and escaping any possibility of legal culpability, why does it always feel as if Israel is besieged and embattled?
Netanyahu's words give the impression that his country's very existence is imperiled. In fact, this is the same language that is constantly emanating from most Israeli circles - official, media, academic and even ordinary people. This perception has continued even after Israel expanded its borders by occupying the rest of historic Palestine following the disastrous war of 1967; even when Israel claimed massive swathes of Jordanian, Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian territories.
It seems that the stronger Israel becomes, the larger in size and more destructive in its military capabilities, the weaker and more threatened it perceives itself.
Even with their tactless approach to diplomacy, the new generation of Israeli leaders is still pushing the same mantra: that of a besieged country facing an existential threat.
In 2015, following the signing of the Iran nuclear deal between Iran and the US - along with other countries - Israel was denied the central component of its 'existential threat' discourse. With an Iranian 'nuclear holocaust' averted - although never convincingly from the Israeli viewpoint - other imagined threats were pushed to the very top of the Israeli agenda.
Besieged, bombed out and impoverished tiny Gaza maintained its standing as a major cause for alarm and one of the greatest threats to Israel's security. But, strangely, the civil society-led non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), was quickly pushed to the top of the 'existential threat' pyramid.
Modeled around the anti-Apartheid South African boycott movement, BDS aims at isolating the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, and, using non-violent means, ending it.
The language used against Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and others is now being utilized against BDS. In a conference organized by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in New York last month, Israeli Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, called BDS a 'terrorist organization.'
"BDS is the new face of terror," she said. "While in Gaza (terrorists) are digging underground tunnels into Israel, the BDS movement is digging tunnels to undermine the foundations and values of Israel. We have to stop these tunnels as well."
Like Netanyahu, Shaked too claimed to be "fighting Islamic extremism", although BDS supporters come from many countries and profess no particular religion. In fact, many of them are Jewish activists.
Yet, that does not matter. It never did, because the enemy, for now, has to remain "Islamic terrorism", even if it is neither Islamic nor terrorist.
In a response to the Israeli navy interception, arrest and deportation of a group of women who attempted to break the Israeli siege on Gaza by using a small boat, Israel's Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, spun his words to connect the non-violent activists with something else entirely.
"We will not accept any (rocket) fire, any provocation, against the citizens of Israel by whoever it might be, or any attack on Israel's sovereignty. Not rocket fire, and not a flotilla," Lieberman said in an army ceremony on October 07.
The activists atop the boat, included Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mairead Maguire, of Northern Ireland. In Lieberman's logic, Maguire's act to end a decade-long blockade on a poor region is equivalent to the firing of a rocket.
Regardless of the type of criticism Israel faces and the tactics used to end its Occupation of Palestine, Israel will always connect the proverbial dots to produce the same outcome: Israel's existence is at stake, all acts of resistance, however symbolic, are terrorist, and Israel has to do whatever it takes to defend itself from looming destruction by rogue terrorists.
Nonetheless, unlike Shimon Peres and his generation of leaders, the Israeli story as told by Israel's new leaders is no longer selling. Gaza, which is rendered uninhabitable by the United Nations come 2020, hardly threatens the existence of Israel, nor are BDS activists, who demand accountability, vile terrorists. Needless to say, a group of women atop a small boat, carrying a symbolic amount of supplies to impoverished Gaza, were not about to take the Middle East's only nuclear power down.
"The Israeli army then took over the boat. The women showed no resistance as they wanted to emphasize that their mission was peaceful. The women cried because they could not reach Gaza," Al Jazeera reported.
'Terrorists', indeed.

FILM REVIEW

The Train that Divides Jerusalem - Film Review

By Or Amithttp://www.palestinechronicle.com/train-divides-jerusalem-film-review/

Google works in mysterious ways. You search for something, you find something else instead, and that something leads to something else still, until you've forgotten what you were looking for in the first place.
Recently I searched Google for something relating to Noam Chomsky and found a website that mentions Chomsky's appearance in the 2015 documentary film The Divide. That movie piqued my interest and I searched for it on various torrent sites. Alas, I wasn't able to find it, but one of my searches returned something else: a BBC documentary titled The Train that Divides Jerusalem.
Another Google search revealed the movie had elicited the standard knee-jerk bellyaching from the usual suspects, so I decided to give it a chance. It turned out to be quite good and I recommend it to anyone reading these lines.
The film uses Jerusalem's new light rail line as a framing device for the story of Israel's occupation and "Judaization" of East Jerusalem. Producer-reporter Adam Wishart takes a trip on the train's nine-mile route and stops on the way to study the division lines, both physical and psychological, of this ancient city.
Whether serendipitously or intentionally, Wishart stumbled upon a simple truth: to expose the evils of the occupation and of the people behind it, you don't necessarily have to use photos of dead Palestinian children or footage of destroyed homes and crying mothers.
Another, simpler method consists of shoving a microphone into the faces of Zionist zealots and occupation apologists and allowing them speak freely about their goals and convictions. If the microphone is mightier than the sword, let scoundrels impale themselves upon it.
It works artfully. Wishart begins by following Aryeh King, a man whose raison d'être is the "Judaization of Jerusalem" and Rivka Shimon, who campaigns for the construction of the Third Temple, a messianic pipe dream that is slowly percolating into Israel's mainstream. The two fanatics are almost funny, and if their activism hadn't had flesh-and-blood victims, the two could have made for an entertaining reality television duo.
Lest he be accused of drawing a caricature of the human face of oppression by cherry-picking token nuts, Wishart goes all the way to the top of the occupation pyramid and interviews Nir Barkat, Jerusalem's Likudnik mayor.
After taking us through a journey through the Shuafat refugee camp, an East Jerusalem neighborhood that can best be described as a giant dumpster housing hapless human occupants, and juxtaposing its filth and poverty with the lush elegance of Jewish neighborhoods on the other side of the separation wall, Wishart asks Barkat to comment on Shuafat's neglect. True to the spirit of Israeli right-wing humanitarianism, Barkat responds:
"You know, I want to share something with you when you talk about refugees. There are no Jewish refugees in the world. Not one. If we find them, we bring them and take them home, and help them. It's very unfortunate that there are Arab refugees, that with all the wealth of the Arab world, they haven't found the time and the capital to help the refugees out. The world has to understand that you can throw a few billions of dollars to the problem and find them good homes, not on the account of Israel."
That answer astounds Wishart, but Barkat deserves praise for being able to stuff so much obtuseness, deflection, and thinly-veiled bigotry into one short paragraph. The man's glib callousness is Netanyahu-esque.
Later in the film Barkat is asked about the settlement of Pisgat Ze'ev, which was built on confiscated Palestinian lands right across from Shuafat. Barkat decides to go with a standard narrative of eliminative Zionism:
"I don't get it. In all those places, there was never a Palestinian state. Put a shovel in the ground, and you'll find Jewish roots. So, when people talk about "occupied land", occupied from whom? It's all Jewish! "
In Shuafat, Wishart interviews a Palestinian teenager whose hopes and dreams consist of wanting to be a martyr. Here's a hopeless kid who dreams of death and destruction because all he sees on the other side of that wall is Barkat and his shovel.
Throughout the film, Wishart weaves the stories of Israeli oppression with those of its Palestinian victims.
One Palestinian man whose land was confiscated in order to build the rail says he is not even allowed to build on what little land he has left, because of-you guessed it-security concerns. He got off easy: the parents of sixteen-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir cry as they tell Wishart of how their son was kidnapped and burnt alive by Jewish settlers.
In just under thirty minutes, Wishart manages to offer us a panoramic snapshot of the occupation and the settlements, the occupiers and the occupied, the aggressors and the victims, the ever-expanding Jewish Jerusalem and the fast-shrinking Palestinian one. A city of two tales, with a wall and a rail snaking through it.
As the film and the day are winding down, Rivka Shimon, having concluded a long day of Temple tantrums, settles into the verandah of her Pisgat Ze'ev home, scans the picturesque hills surrounding the settlement and waxes philosophical about the serenity and the clean air. Shuafat is visible a few blocks away, its minatory separation wall an eyesore against this idyllic background.
Asked whether she'd ever visited Shuafat, Shimon flashes a coy smile. "No, of course not," she says. "Even the police don't go there."
- Or Amit is a freelance writer living in Dresden, Germany. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
FEATURED NEWS

Juventus FC Signs 'Palestinian Messi'



Italian football giants Juventus have signed a ten-year-old Palestine soccer wonder boy dubbed the "Palestinian Messi" with the club.
Rashed Al-Hajjawi, who was born in Norway in 2006, was discovered after videos of him playing football went viral. The Series A champions apparently moved quickly to bring the player to their youth academy following interests from several other clubs.
Al-Hajjawi will join the Juve Under-10 team before working his way up the ranks. Although he starts training on Monday, it will be a while before he joins first-team.
Fans have called him "the amazing young wonder kid" and applauded his achievements.
(MEMO, PC)

SELECTED NEWS & VIEWS


The Palestine Chronicle is an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region. The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. To contact the editor, submit an article or any other material, please write to: editor@palestinechronicle.com. For other inquiries write to: info@palestinechronicle.com.

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