Israel said Saturday its troops fatally shot a U.N. official during a West Bank firefight with Palestinian gunmen because Palestinians were firing at troops from inside the U.N. compound and the official had what appeared to be a gun.

The United Nations denied Palestinian gunmen were in the U.N. compound and said the slain official, Iain Hook, was armed only with a cell phone he was using to try to evacuate U.N. staff.

Hook, a British senior manager of UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, was killed Friday in the compound in the Jenin refugee camp — the first senior U.N. official to die in over two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

The dispute over his death was likely to inflame long-strained relations between Israel and the United Nations: While U.N. resolutions paved the way for the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, relations have been poisoned for much of the time since.

"There is no physical danger, neither to Arafat nor to the other people," Peres said Sunday on CNN's Late Edition.

"We don't want to expel him, we don't want to kill him, we don't want to hurt him," he said.

Wednesday, November 20, 2002 (SF Chronicle)
by Charles Burress
Chronicle Staff Writer

In a Berkeley speech greeted by protests, Israel's former Prime Minister Ehud Barak Tuesday warned that a protracted global struggle with terrorism was just beginning.

Before an audience of about 1,000 people at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, Barak also said Mideast peace depended on building a literal fence between Israelis and Palestinians and on an Israeli willingness to negotiate whenever Palestinian violence ceased.

"We're just in the opening chapter of this ordeal," Barak said of worldwide terrorist attacks, predicting that half a generation may pass before peace is achieved. "We have to win this first World War of the 21st century, and we will."

Barak, usually called "dovish" in the Israeli political landscape, has made no secret in recent U.S. comments of his support for President Bush's hard-line stance against Iraq and his belief that war is inevitable.

Some 200 people -- from a wide range of anti-war and Jewish peace organizations -- demonstrated against Barak outside Zellerbach Hall, calling Barak's image as a peacemaker false.

"Ehud Barak is a peace-faker," said Snehal Shingavi, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the groups that organized the protest. Among the several groups represented were the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition and the Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace.

"We've seen the horrors," Ishay Rosen-Zvi told the crowd. Rosen-Zvi, a self-described conscientious objector of the Israeli Army, said he had been jailed for refusing to serve in the military action against the Jenin refugee camp.

He called Barak's appearance in Berkeley "organized and official Israeli propaganda."

At one point, a dozen protesters holding tickets to Barak's speech were evicted from the hall after they removed outer garments to reveal T-shirts covered with the word "LIE" in fluorescent green paint, and a few others were removed later after scattered shouts interrupted him on two occasions.

With tight security screening and large numbers of UC police, the scene was nothing like the demonstration in November 2000, when angry protesters blocked the entrance to a speech by Israel's hawkish former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Berkeley Community Theatre. Netanyahu canceled his appearance.

Barak, who was warmly applauded by the audience, said Israel should continue to deal firmly with violent attacks against it, as the Sharon government is doing. But he said it must also open the door for peace negotiations without preconditions, except the end of violence, and should physically disengage itself from Palestinians through construction of a concrete fence.

Barak, a former Labor Party leader who holds the largest number of decorations in the history of the Israeli military, was a top general who won election to prime minister in 1999 on a peace platform.

In the failed Camp David negotiations with President Bill Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in July 2000, he offered concessions that were not enough for Arafat and too much for Israeli hawks.

In his Berkeley speech, he blamed Arafat for refusing to negotiate Barak's offer of concession, which Barak described as closer to the Palestinian position than the Israeli position, a claim that Jewish peace groups dispute.

Voters soundly defeated him amid renewed violence in February 2001 and elected current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of the Likud party. A second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, occurred after Sharon made a September 2000 tour of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and asserted Jewish claims to the site, which is holy to both Jews and Muslims.

Barak was invited to Berkeley by a pro-Israel campus group, the Israel Action Committee, and his appearance was co-sponsored by the office of UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl.

Assistant Chancellor John Cummins said the chancellor's office had contributed $10,000 to the event from a $100,000 special fund for a series of events and speakers this school year "on both sides of the issue" in the Middle East conflict. He noted that Columbia University Professor Edward Said, a well-known Palestinian advocate, would speak on campus

Staff writer Joshunda Sanders contributed to this report. E-mail Charles Burress

About Alina: http://www.geocities.com/elsvenjo/FreeAlina.html

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ( news - web sites) came under wall-to-wall criticism at home Monday for the bungled 10-day siege of Yasser Arafat ( news - web sites)'s compound, which was aborted under intense U.S. pressure. "Sharon is leaving behind a colossal failure, the most notable failure since the beginning of his term in office," commentator Hemi Shalev wrote in Maariv.

The Cabinet approved the siege last week in response to a suicide bombing on a Tel Aviv bus in which six people were killed. At the time, it was portrayed as a compromise between Sharon, who was pushing for Arafat's expulsion, and security chiefs who said ousting the Palestinian leader was counterproductive.

"We didn't consider (last week) how much the United States has already started counting down to the strike against Iraq," said Housing Minister Natan Sharansky. "The decision was made in haste, and this is the result."

Tourism Minister Yitzhak Levy also said the decision to besiege Arafat was based on an "erroneous assessments," though he said the siege would weaken Arafat in the long run.

Critics said Sharon failed to take into account that the operation against Arafat would interfere with U.S. efforts to win Arab and U.N. support for a campaign against Iraq.

Sharon also mistakenly thought the siege would force Arafat to seek exile or give up the wanted men, critics said.

Polls showed that Arafat emerged strengthened from the blockade, which temporarily froze efforts by his Fatah movement to force him to share power and appoint a prime minister. More.

An employee takes out files from his destroyed office in the compound of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, after the Israeli army withdrew, in the West Bank City of Ramallah September 30, 2002. Israel licked its political wounds on Monday after ending its siege of Arafat's compound, under White House pressure to avoid upsetting U.S. plans for possible war on Iraq. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen

Witnesses and medical officials said Israeli tanks opened fire at youths lobbing stones and Molotov cocktails at them in the city of Nablus, killing a 10-year-old boy. An Israeli military source said soldiers fired warning shots away from the youths.

A second boy and an Israeli soldier were killed in a fight between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen that raged on after nightfall in central Nablus.

Israeli newspapers criticized Sharon's handling of the siege, with the daily Maariv calling it a "colossal failure."

Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth daily wrote, "The lesson for the future: The key to every Middle East deal is in the hands of Bush, him and only him." More.

The number of Palestinian casualties almost doubled in the second year of the intifada, and the level of violence in the territories has risen sharply, according to a report compiled by the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group and which is due to be published in East Jerusalem Thursday.

According to data compiled by the group and its director Bassam Eid, this was the main feature of the second year of the intifada. Since the start of the intifada 1,888 Palestinians have been killed, 685 of them in the first year ending September 2001, and 1,203 in the past year. The number of children and youngsters below the age of 18 who were killed in the second year rose to 160 from 146. More.

Palestinians and Israeli left-wing groups like Peace Now charge that outposts like Maon, southeast of Hebron, and Rehalim are well known to the government and form part of a continual unofficial expansion of settlements that the Sharon administration has turned a blind eye to.

Successive Israeli governments have said they would permit expansion of settlements to accommodate natural population growth but not allow the formal establishment of new ones as "facts on the ground."

In June, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer promised to dismantle 10 illegal West Bank settlements, including Maon Farm, within 24 hours. Nothing happened.

"More illegal outposts have been established under Sharon than under his predecessor, Ehud Barak, or even (right-wing leader Benjamin) Netanyahu; that says something," said Dror Etkes, coordinator of Peace Now's settlement watch team.

Sharon's newly named infrastructure minister, whose job involves overseeing the settlements, is Effie Eitam of the right-wing National Religious Party. Eitam has proposed that Palestinians who refuse to live under Israeli occupation be expelled to neighboring Jordan, a position that Sharon has backed away from in recent years.

More than 200,000 Jews live in the heavily guarded settlements, which have turned the towns and villages where 3 million Palestinians live into unconnected islands. More.

GAZA - Thousands of protesters, some clad in suicide bomber costumes, marched in the West Bank, Gaza and across the Arab world on Friday to mark the second anniversary of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

The demonstrations were held amid seething anger over an Israeli air strike in Gaza City that wounded a number of civilians and drew international censure but failed to kill a Hamas militant at the top of Israel's wanted list.

Palestinians and their Arab brethren elsewhere in the Middle East took to the streets to commemorate the anniversary of a revolt in which at least 1,570 Palestinians and 601 Israelis have been killed. More.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat flashes the victory sign as he walks out of his office after the Israeli army withdrew from his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, September 29, 2002. Arafat said Israel's troop withdrawal from his headquarters was 'cosmetic' and aimed at 'deceiving the world.' (Ammar Awad/Reuters)

Israel licked its political wounds after ending its siege of Yasser Arafat ( news - web sites) under White House pressure to avoid upsetting U.S. plans for possible war on Iraq. Blowing kisses and making a V-for-Victory sign, the Palestinian president emerged from his battered compound on Sunday in the wake of clouds of dust from tanks retreating from a 10-day-old blockade that drew international condemnation.

The pullback was an embarrassing climbdown for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ( news - web sites)'s government, which sent armor roaring into the sprawling West Bank complex on September 19 after back-to-back Palestinian suicide bombings killed seven people in Israel.

Sharon had vowed to end the siege -- his latest attempt to sideline a leader Washington says should be replaced by Palestinians "not compromised by terror" -- only when Arafat turned over 50 suspected militants holed up with him.

"The assessment was that we would be able to isolate Arafat," Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin, a member of Sharon's right-wing Likud party, told Israeli television. "To our great sorrow, we cannot always get everything we want." More.

"The president believes that recent events in and around Ramallah are not helpful toward bringing peace to the region," said the U.S. official, who gave no detail of Bush's message.

The Washington Post newspaper, citing diplomats and other sources, said the Bush administration had told Sharon the continued blockade of Arafat was affecting U.S. Iraq policy. More.

Over one in five Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza (22.5 percent) now suffers from chronic or acute malnutrition. About one in five is anemic. This mass of hungry humanity amounts to a population the size of Minneapolis, about 380,000 kids.

Malnutrition in children makes them more likely to contract life-threatening diseases. It permanently reduces intelligence and vastly increases the rate of attention deficit disorder. Women who were malnourished in their youths have increased rates of premature birth and high blood pressure in pregnancy.

The occupying power in the territories, Israel, enjoys a per capita income of some $17,000 per year, higher than Spain. In contrast, half of Palestinian families must now borrow money just to buy food.

Palestinian terrorists certainly bear a great deal of the blame for this tragedy, insofar as their horrific actions against innocent Israeli civilians have understandably led Israel to close its borders to Palestinian laborers. Unemployment is a prime source of the problem.

Yet, while the scourge of terrorism in Israel has been unspeakable, none of it has been committed by toddlers or infants. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's current lockdown of the entire population of the West Bank is a massive form of collective punishment that has worsened the problem. As the occupying power, Israel cannot escape responsibility for seeing that its colonial subjects are at least fed. More.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday issued a bland appeal to respect a U.N. resolution after the United States blocked a push to single out Israel for ignoring a council directive to end its siege of Yasser Arafat, council diplomats said

Syrian Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe, acting at the request of Arab nations, had called on the council during a closed-door session to summon Israel's U.N. envoy and tell him to respect the council's wishes, the diplomats said.

Instead the council issued a statement calling for "the full implementation" of a resolution it passed on Tuesday, demanding that Israel end its siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. More

The United Nations is accusing Israel of imposing arbitrary taxes on humanitarian relief supplies - including food and medicine - being ferried to Palestinians in occupied territories.

The levies charged by Israel were ''unreasonable and unique'', Peter Hansen, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees, told a meeting of donors Wednesday.

Over the last year, UNRWA has been forced to pay more than 2.5 million dollars - of what should be a purely humanitarian budget - in additional port and storage charges.

The taxes are part of a new security regime imposed by Israeli authorities, which have been battling a Palestinian insurgency in the occupied territories since Sep. 2000.

Hansen said the charges, ''which amount to a tax on humanitarian aid'', were being levied by Israel for searching consignments of food and medicine destined for the occupied Palestinian territories. More

In many cases, Americans can be prosecuted for giving money to foreign armies. As we have been told in the case of John Walker Lindh, Americans can give up their citizenship rights by joining a foreign army. But as with many things, there is an exception: Israel. Not only is it allowed to give money to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), it is actually a tax-deductible contribution under US tax laws. More.

Israel confirmed Friday that the top Hamas bombmaker survived an Israeli airstrike aimed at killing him, an operation that wounded 35 bystanders, including 15 children, and drew international criticism. More.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli troops armed with tanks and helicopters stormed into Gaza City early Tuesday, sparking violent clashes with Palestinian gunmen that left three Palestinians dead and 20 injured, hospital officials said.

The incursion, which reached as far as half-mile into Gaza City, was one of the most violent since Israeli forces began a series of operations in the city in April, witnesses said. The soldiers also blew up a metals factory in the city. More.

Breaking its silence, the Bush administration criticized Israel for laying siege to Yasser Arafat in his West Bank headquarters and called for a pullout.

Statements issued Monday by White House and State Department spokesmen said Israel had "aggravated" U.S. efforts to improve security and reform the Palestinian leadership.

At the United Nations Security Council in New York, the United States called for an end to the siege along with punishment of the plotters of Palestinian suicide bombings. Their renewed attacks last week prompted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to move against Arafat. More.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Thousands of Palestinians marched Sunday to protest Israel's siege of Yasser Arafat's headquarters, and Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians who defied curfews. Four Palestinians were killed in the protests and a fifth died later in the day. More.

The White House said Sunday that Israel's assault on Yasser Arafat's compound did not help the Middle East peace process and that Palestinian hopes for an independent state are greatly harmed by suicide attacks.

"Israel's actions in and around the (Arafat compound) are not helpful in reducing terrorist violence or promoting Palestinian reforms," White House spokeswoman Jeanne Mamo said on the third day of the Israeli operation at Arafat's once-sprawling headquarters, where the sole building left standing was the one housing Arafat.

"We urge Israel to continue considering the consequences of its actions on progress" toward reaching goals President Bush has set: Palestinian elections next year, Arafat's removal as leader of the Palestinians and creation of a Palestinian state within three years to exist peacefully with Israel. More.

Israeli tanks tightened their stranglehold on Yasser Arafat's office Sunday, flattening buildings in his devastated compound and sparking curfew-defying marches and clashes that left five Palestinians dead throughout the West Bank.

Palestinian leaders declared a general strike for Monday, appealed to the Arab world for help and called on their people to resist the Israeli operation, which began Thursday after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a Tel Aviv bus, killing himself and six others. More.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Israel planted its flag in Yasser Arafat compound Saturday and demolished more of his besieged offices, prompting thousands of Palestinians to pour into the streets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in protest. Four demonstrators were killed by army fire.

In the largely demolished compound, Israeli threatened several times over loudspeakers to blow up the building where Arafat is holed up - the only one left standing - unless wanted men inside surrendered...

In Ramallah, just a few miles from Arafat's compound, troops fired tear gas and live bullets to disperse hundreds of men, women and children chanting "long live Arafat, long live Palestine." Two protesters were killed by army fire, hospital officials said....

The United States seeks to sideline him and Israel's prime minister reportedly is eager to expel him, held back only by warnings from Israeli security chiefs that such a step could backfire. More.

Israeli officials have told the Palestinians the assault, which was launched after a Tel Aviv suicide attack last week, seeks to isolate Arafat. But Israeli television cited defense officials saying the assault aims to make conditions so unbearable that the Palestinian leader leaves into exile. More.

In an attempt to combat what it sees as anti-Israel bias in academe, the Middle East Forum has created a new Web site that lists faculty members it is monitoring and allows students to report on their professors.

Others, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, suggest that the project is "basically a hate Web site" and that posting "dossiers" on faculty members amounts to a blacklist. And some professors who are listed on the site are denouncing it as hateful and inappropriate. More.

The Israeli daily Maariv claims that Tel Aviv has authorised Washington to store ¦enormous quantities² of weaponry in bases in Israel.

The newspaper claims that Israeli Defence Minister Benyamin Ben Eliezer has given the go-ahead for the first consignments to be delivered in the coming days and states that a US official, who remained anonymous, has confirmed the news, saying that the consignments are part of a strategic cooperation agreement with Israel.

Under this agreement, Israel places its bases at the disposal of the USA and shares logistic and intelligence information.

Tens of officers and soldiers from the US Armed Forces are currently at Israeli bases to receive the consignments of weapons, which according to one official, quoted by the newspaper, are "enormous, since Israel is the only country we can trust". More.

The attacks were in retaliation to the U.S. embassy bombings earlier that month in Kenya and Tanzania: events that the U.S. had conclusively linked to bin Laden. The al-Shifa factory was also linked to bin Laden and accused of making chemical weapons. Intelligence reports indicated that bin Laden was a major financier of the plant and was potentially overseeing the production of a chemical known as empta, which is subsequently turned into VX nerve gas, the deadliest such gas in existence. There were also fears in the Clinton camp of imminent deployment, which perhaps fueled what many thought to be a hastily made decision.

What transpired in the weeks following the attack on the al-Shifa factory was a despicable public relations campaign and a digressive situation that could've turned scandalous if the story had been more significant to a broader section of the U.S. population. The Clinton administration, without substantial or adequate evidence, offhandedly destroyed a pharmaceutical factory that supplied more than 50 percent of the drugs to the Sudanese people.

Following the attack, the U.S. then played an immature and inexcusable game of musical evidence; stories were changed or discarded on several occasions, including exactly what the original evidence was justifying the attack, which shifted from one thing to another as soon as someone asked for proof. After this debacle ended, every 'irrefutable' claim made by the government turned out to be untrue. More.

AMMAN, Jordan, Sept. 14 - Of the United States' allies in the Arab world, Jordan, wedged between Iraq to its northeast and Israel to its west, stands to suffer the most from an American attack on Baghdad, diplomats in the region say.

King Abdullah II and his advisers are asking the Bush administration for assurances, including not using Jordan as a base from which to strike Iraq. Jordan is also asking for help to secure a flow of oil, which the country now buys at preferential prices from Iraq, officials said.

Another important request is for Washington to ensure that Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, does not take advantage of a war to push Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan, they said...

A post-Saddam Hussein, American-controlled Iraq could be the source of plentiful and cheap oil for Jordan, said Rob Malley, the director of Middle East affairs for the International Crisis Group, and a member of President Bill Clinton's National Security Council.

A pro-American Iraq would provide a big market for Jordan, not to mention riches to be reaped from the reconstruction of Baghdad, he said. More.

Although the army and Israel's hard-liners have been fighting with the court system to "untie" the army's hands in terms of the tools it can use to fight the intifada, the deportation sets up a precedent with which virtually no one is happy. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the United Nations slammed Israel's move as a war crime. The Geneva Conventions prohibit an occupying power from moving people from one territory to another, but the Israeli court found the West Bank and Gaza were one territory and therefore exempt. More.

Israeli cyber warfare professionals targeted human rights and anti-war activists across the USA in late July and August temporarily disrupting communications, harassing hundreds of computer users, and annoying thousands more.

The Israeli hackers targeted Stephen "Sami" Mashney, an Anaheim, California, attorney active in the effort to raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians. More

Documentary arabfilm.com
Web site Sabra - Shatila.

The photojournalist is in Lebanon to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacres. He was the first foreign journalist to enter the camps.

Once at Shatilah, Hirokawa tried to enter from its eastern side, but found it was completely sealed by Israeli tanks.

He then tried the southern entrance, where a terrified man approached him saying, "A massacre just happened."

Hirokawa headed on, stumbling over a body in his way. He feared for his life. He heard bulldozers and bombardments. It was about 10:00 a.m.

"I felt I was being watched and targeted for some reason, so I went out and a cannon suddenly blasted next to me. I hid for awhile, then entered the camp from the main entrance and found many, many bodies lying around. Then I started to take pictures," he said. More.

The massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982, when hundreds of civilians were butchered by rightwing militia, remain crucial events in the history of the Palestinian people.

All the witnesses tell more or less the same story. Kemla Mhanna, a Lebanese woman who runs a grocery in the Orsal district said: "All those in our district who stayed were killed. Most of them were Lebanese. When I came back, I saw a pile of corpses. Next to my house, a Palestinian was hanging from a meat hook, split in two like a sheep's carcass. I saw that a first layer of bodies had been thrown into a big ditch, then a layer of sand, then another layer of bodies. I also saw another Lebanese man from Orsal district, Hamad Shamas, one of the few survivors of the massacre there. He was in a shelter when two Israelis came along in a jeep with seven or eight soldiers.

"I am positive the soldiers were Israelis because they wore Israeli uniforms and did not speak Arabic properly. The soldiers told us to get out of the shelter and abused us. They told me to put down the child I was carrying and stand in line with the others. One who spoke good Arabic searched everyone and took one man's money; then they shot at us. I was only wounded in the head and thigh, under a pile of bodies. There were 23 dead. I stayed in a shelter all night. At dawn, the smell of death was all around."

To this day, there has been only one official enquiry, that of the Israeli Commission chaired by Yitzhak Kahan, president of the Supreme Court, published in 1983. It points the finger at the Phalangists and, to a lesser degree, Ariel Sharon. The report first speaks of a grave mistake by Sharon, who failed to exercise supervision and prevent the massacres. It describes it as "puzzling" that Sharon did not in any way make Menachem Begin "privy to the decision to have the Phalangists enter the camps". It concludes that "responsibility has to be imputed to him for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or remedying the danger of massacres". Sharon, it said, bore "personal responsibility" and must draw the personal conclusions. More.

With a history like that, you would expect Ms. Siegel now to be working for the pro-Israeli lobby. But that was not to be because, she explains, "I did things and saw things that other people did not." Her most crucial experience was to visit Beirut during a trip to Europe in 1972. Up to that time she had met only one Arab. "I had been taught that there was no such thing as Palestinian people and I never knew about a land called Palestine. But then I went through the Borj El-Barajneh refugee camp and it was a real mind blower."

Before returning to the U.S., Ms. Siegel visited Israel for the first time. She worked on a kibbutz, traveled to the West Bank and Gaza, and found all this to be a "horrible" experience. "All these religious symbols that I grew up with were being used for very secular, political purposes. It was very hard to find a synagogue in Israel. The people were not observant; it was not a religious state." More.

Ellen: He had joined. He had somehow not left. And he joined us and he was terrified. And he asked for someone to please give him a lab coat. And somebody did. Now the thing was he looked quite Arab, I mean most of these people were from Scandinavian countries; they were very light skinned, they had blonde hair.

Hala: But he looked distinctly different?

Ellen: He of course looked very different. He was asked by the militiaman for his ID card. The Phalangist.the militia man slapped his face with the card, made him take off his lab coat, and then I turned around and the last thing I saw was this young man on his knees begging. And somebody said "Keep walking". And the next thing I heard was a shot and I never looked back to see what happened. As we were walking down Rue Sabra I saw dead bodies lying on the sides of the street. Some were old men and they were shot. The people that I saw, the old men, some of them had been shot point blank in the temple because there was this dried blood spot on the temple. As we moved on we approached a large group of camp residents, mainly women and children that were huddled together. These men in uniform were guarding them and they seemed quite frightened...

Hala: What were they speaking to each other, the Phalange and the Israelis? Ellen: I don't know. I can't remember. The point of that story is basically who's in charge. And the Israelis were in charge. Israeli television appeared and the Israelis gave us water and fruit and bread. Nobody asked what happened to us. I'm not aware of anybody saying "What has happened to you". This is important because the Kahan Commission claimed that they didn't know what was going on. More.

A US-financed assessment of the overall malnutrition level among Palestinian children, released this month by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), found that one in five Palestinian children under the age of five now suffers from chronic or acute malnutrition. This astonishing statistic is on par with impoverished nations such as Chad and Nigeria, and actually surpasses rates of child malnutrition in Somalia and Bangladesh. Such figures, the report noted, are "considered an emergency by most humanitarians and public health officials." The report points to Israeli-imposed closures and sieges of major civilian centers as the direct and primary cause. More.

Professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University are circulating petitions calling on their respective institutions to divest themselves of all financial interests in Israel unless Israel: a) withdraws from the occupied territories of Palestine and ceases building new settlements thereon, b) ends the use of torture, as called for by the UN, and c) that some redress be made regarding the "right of return" of Palestinians. They have created a Web site harvardmitdivest.org to facilitate discussion of the issue.

Conscientious Objection Continues to Grow in Israel

Some 463 reserve and noncommissioned officers of the Israeli Defense Forces have signed a letter stating their refusal to fight in the occupied territories of Palestine. Also, according to a radio report, thousands of Israeli young people gathered recently in what was described as a "rave" to protest their government's Palestinian policy.

I am thinking about American Jews, wondering why so many of us have trouble being critical of Israel. I faced this difficulty myself when I first went to Israel in 1971. I was an ardent Zionist, intending to spend my life on a kibbutz in the Galilee and to become an Israeli citizen. Back home, before leaving, I argued almost daily with my mother, an extreme left wing radical, about the Jews' right to a homeland in our historical and therefore inalienable setting. However, once established on my kibbutz on the Lebanese border, I began to notice things that disrupted my complacency. More.

Israeli army supported with Tanks, Bulldozers are confiscating Palestinian at Izbit Salman near Qalqilia, this is near the settlements of Oranit, Onriet, Shi'aare Tikfa, 2 Km from the green line.

This area is a very fertile agricultural area, that supplies many areas in the West Bank with vegitables. an big part of this land is about to be destroyed by the Israeli bulldozers. More.

Apart from these new settlements there are signs on the ground of a continuation of illegal building. The attempts are progressing in a number of ways... The continuation of building, widening and populating the existing outposts.

Peace Now calls upon the Minister of Defense to stand by his word and to dismantle every single illegal building, and to prevent any new initiative.

Statements in the media cannot hide the fact that the outposts have not been dismantled, but instead continue to grow. More

JERUSALEM (AP) - Palestinians on Saturday expressed outrage after an internal army investigation cleared Israeli soldiers who killed 12 Palestinians in three incidents last week, calling it a whitewash. None of those killed carried firearms.

Early in the day, Israeli troops moved into the town of Deir el Balah in the Gaza Strip, arresting six men and destroying two buildings the army said were arms factories. Army vehicles and troops surrounded Deir el Balah under cover of machine gun fire, Palestinian security officials said. More.

JERUSALEM -- The killing of Palestinian children and other civilians in a string of Israeli army operations unleashed unusual criticism Sunday of both the military tactics employed in Israel's war with the Palestinians and the political strategy guiding them.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav wondered aloud if some of his nation's troops had become "trigger-happy" after two incidents in four days prompted statements of regret from the army for the deaths of civilians.

"The question as to whether the [army] was trigger-happy must be examined," Katsav said during a tour of an Israeli Arab elementary school on the first day of the school year. "If the army reaches the conclusion that this was the case, it will decide what to do.... But it would be hasty to draw conclusions now." More

(AMMAN -- August 27, 2002) -- An Israeli organization has published detailed plans for the "complete elimination of the Arab demographic threat to Israel" by forcibly expelling all Palestinians, including Palestinians in the occupied territories and Palestinian citizens of Israel from the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea within a 3-5 year period.

Gamla, a group founded by former Israeli military officers and settlers, published these recommendations on its website in a nine thousand word manifesto titled "The logistics of transfer," penned by Boris Shusteff last July 3. The mass ethnic cleansing of every Palestinian, the author argues, is "the only possible solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is "substantiated by the Torah." (www.gamla.org.il/english) Gamla receives tax deductible contributions from a New York-based charity that claims that its goal is greater Arab-Jewish tolerance. More.

More than 50,000 demonstrators have turned out in Tel Aviv for a massive peace rally and to demand Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories, Israeli police told AFP Saturday evening.

The organiser of the rally, the Peace Now group, also claimed the protest was the biggest peace demonstration since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000.

"This is the first time since the intifada that we have had such a massive demonstration with people in clear opposition to the government," Peace Now spokesman Arye Arnon told AFP. More.

The United States public may not be nearly as supportive of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as recent actions by Congress and the Bush administration suggest, according to a surprising new poll released in Washington Wednesday. More.

London and Brussels politicians demand UN investigation of Jenin allegations

Israel's international reputation slumped to its lowest point for two decades yesterday, amid condemnation in Britain and Europe of the Israeli army's behaviour at the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin in the West Bank.

There were calls for a United Nations-led inquiry into allegations that the Israeli army carried out a massacre and that its soldiers were guilty of war crimes. Senior politicians lined up in London and Brussels to express outrage. More.

"Jews to Bush and Sharon: End the Occupation Now!" Jewish Voice for Peace. Includes photos of rally at San Francisco Israeli Consulate. More.

"They've defined anything that's Palestinian as terror," she said. "So the Ministry of Education is, in the Israeli government's eyes, terror. So they've destroyed records from the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Health is considered terror. So they've gone after the records of the Ministry of Health."

The army has torn apart houses it says were used as bomb factories, and pummelled security buildings used as bases of operations by Palestinian fighters. Police stations across the West Bank have been turned to rubble, police officers having been killed or arrested. Diana Buttu. More.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Monday that millions of people were "severely impoverished and extremely food insecure" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because of blockades by Israeli forces on routes into the occupied territories.

"Many homes are now without water and electricity, and what little food they have is rotting," according to a special alert from the Rome-based organization issued yesterday, noting that increases in still births by women in the West Bank were an indication that malnutrition was on the rise. More.

Thoughts

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is from Isthmus, April 3, 1992, apparently a newspaper or magazine published in Madison, Wisconsin. "Pull the Plug!" was reprinted in the Winter 1992 issue of "S.E.T. Free: The Newsletter Against Television." Pull the Plug! by Gar Smith In the final analysis, the smartest way to save energy and promote a healthy and wise planet is to unplug the television set completely. A recent study by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst suggests that exposure to television not only subjects viewers to electromagnetic radiation, it also induces measurable amounts of stupidity. Researchers found that the longer test subjects watched TV coverage of the Iraq war, the more they supported the war but the less informed they became. Pro-war couch potatoes were twice as likely as critics to claim (incorrectly) that Kuwait was a democracy; only 31% knew that Israel had an army of occupation in neighboring territories; only 3% were cognizant of Syria's occupation of Lebanon; and only 2% recalled that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait had been prompted by Kuwait's lowering of oil prices and theft of oil drilled from wells in Iraqi territory. In the words of the researchers, "We discovered that the correlation between TV watching and knowledge was a negative one."		We discovered that the correlation between TV watching and knowledge was a negative one. Researchers found that the longer test subjects watched TV coverage of the Iraq war, the more they supported the war but the less informed they became. ...only 2% recalled that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait had been prompted by Kuwait's lowering of oil prices and theft of oil drilled from wells in Iraqi territory.