The Pope is Catholic and two and two is four

Great headline huh? Well, no. Stating the bleedin' obvious is not a great headline but surely it's no worse than the headline to this Gideon Levy article in Ha'aretz:

Israel doesn't want peace

I assume that Levy isn't responsible for the headlines. But still, what other headline could have been run with the article?

The moment of truth has arrived, and it has to be said: Israel does not want peace. The arsenal of excuses has run out, and the chorus of Israeli rejection already rings hollow. Until recently, it was still possible to accept the Israeli refrain that "there is no partner" for peace and that "the time isn't right" to deal with our enemies. Today, the new reality before our eyes leaves no room for doubt and the tired refrain that "Israel supports peace" has been left shattered.

It's hard to determine when the breaking point occurred. Was it the absolute dismissal of the Saudi initiative? The refusal to acknowledge the Syrian initiative? Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's annual Passover interviews? The revulsion at the statements made by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in Damascus, alleging that Israel was ready to renew peace talks with Syria?

Who would have believed it? A high-ranking U.S. official says Israel wants peace talks to resume and instantly her president "severely" denies the veracity of her words. Is Israel even hearing these voices? Are we digesting the significance of these voices for peace? Seven million apathetic Israeli citizens prove that we are not.

The Pope's Catholic, two and two is four and Israel doesn't want peace.

Abdelhadi's world

One of the reasons I started a blog was because I was a director of Arab Media Watch which, as the name implies, monitors the media for coverage of issues of interest to Arabs. It's quite a professional group with a very well presented and maintained website. I used to monitor the BBC and the Guardian. Well AMW, as a professional group, is rather cautious when it comes to engaging with the enemy and a couple of times I had to modify what I had written for fear of legal action or otherwise causing offence. So here I am, a blogger and in spite of quite a savage hack attack, AMW goes from strength to strength with its chairman, Sharif Nashashibi, appearing on news programmes around the world from time to time.

Anyway, whilst at AMW, I met a Palestinian chap called Abdelhadi with whom I became quite friendly. He now has a blog of his own called "Abdelhadi's World." It's well worth a look at because Abed, as he likes to be called, is quite a news hound and he has an insider view of the Palestinian refugee community together with some valuable insights into the various political movements of the Arab world. It's a not a blog like mine where I simply link, copy, paste and complain. I call it "filtering." He actually finds things out and writes about them or comments on this or that current affair and he still finds time to watch (and blog) the Simpsons.

Linda Grant and the anti-Jewish East End bar

Remember the Jewish east end of London? I was in Brick Lane only today. Well apparently there's a "fashionable bar" where the customers are so anti-Jewish that a Jewish member of staff was asked to remove his Star of David. That's according to Linda Grant in the comments to a yet another zionist whinge in the Guardian's comment is free space about antisemitism on campus in the UK. I know I have already mentioned this in a previous post but bear with me. Here is the comment again:

A few weeks ago, a member of my family who works in a fashionable bar in East London, was asked to take off his star of David by the management because 'some of our customers don't like Jews.'

I told this story to a visiting Canadian on Monday night. He was speechless. When he eventually found his voice, he said that he was unable to contemplate such an incident taking place in Canada and that perhaps the scare stories about anti-semitism in Britain were not as exaggerated as he had previously believed.

I mentioned in the post that if Linda Grant had not got Georgina Henry (the Cif site editor) to ban me I would have liked to ask her the name of the bar. Well according to a commentor here, someone has done just that:

could Linda Grant please tell me the name of this bar in the East End of London because I will go there and openly display a Star of David(even though I am not Jewish) and take subtantial legal action against them if they do as you allege.

Assuming that this bar exists .

I guess the comments will be closing soon but Linda Grant has special privileges on Cif. I'm sure she'll think of something even if it's getting the embarrassing questioner banned. No, her best bet would be to say that she has to preserve the Jewish barman's anonymity because whilst there must be lots of Jewish bar staff throughout the east end there might only be one in this particular establishment. This in spite of the fact that Engage claims to believe that antisemitism should be exposed and confronted and, as the questioner in Cif says, legal action is an option here.

Now here's the rub. The zionists have been making false claims of antisemitism for decades now. Linda Grant has made a claim about an antisemitic incident at her mother's stone-setting and subsequent to that she claimed never to have said, in any form, anything about antisemitism in the UK. That denial was a response to a Rabbi David Goldberg criticising her and Melanie Phillips for exaggerating about antisemitism. In a curious twist to that little spat, Rabbi Goldberg was one of the original signers of the Independent Jewish Voices declaration and it was because Linda Grant couldn't handle my responses to her article criticising IJV that she got Georgina Henry to ban me from Cif. Small world when you're Jewish.

A bit of a postscript here. Someone emailed me last night to ask whether I had had any dealings with the Comment is free editor, Georgina Henry! I assembled all of the correspondence and I am still bewildered by just how dishonest Ms Henry was in her "explanation" of why I was banned. Now I've got all the correspondence in one place I'll probably do a post on it. Meanwhile, if anyone else has had a bad experience with comment is free please let me know in the comments here or email me. Thanks

Dershowitz truthful about Finkelstein?

The Chronicle of Higher Education carries news of an attempt to deny tenure at De Paul University to Professor Norman Finkelstein. Needless to say, the dishonest hand of plagiarist and serial liar, Alan Dershowitz, had to be in there somewhere:

Last fall, with Mr. Finkelstein up for tenure, Mr. Dershowitz sent the DePaul law school faculty and members of the political-science department what he described, in a letter dated October 3, as a "dossier of Norman Finkelstein's most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and distortions."

"I hope that this will serve as an introduction and primer to the so-called scholarship that Finkelstein will present this term as he is considered for tenure," Mr. Dershowitz wrote.

Mr. Finkelstein said in an interview on Monday that Mr. Dershowitz had embarked on "this frenetic and relentless campaign to deny me tenure."

"He sent to every member of the law school ... a dossier which came, I think, to about 50 pages, leveling or, I should say, recycling all of the allegations he's been putting forth for the past couple of years. And he sent a copy of that dossier to every member of my department."

The packet included what Mr. Dershowitz's letter called "some of the lies I am absolutely confident that Finkelstein told" on such points as Israeli torture and whether or not Mr. Dershowitz writes his own books.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday with The Chronicle, Mr. Dershowitz confirmed that he had sent the information to "everybody who would read it." He said he had compiled the material at the request of some two dozen DePaul students, alumni, and faculty members who were alarmed at the prospect of Mr. Finkelstein's receiving tenure.

Asked what he hoped to accomplish, he said, "Revealing the truth -- all I'm doing is disclosing the truth."

Dershowitz, revealing the truth? Good one!

Still I suppose we can expect Alf Green and his merry band of zionists at the Engage site to weigh in for Finkelstein. They do fight for academic freedom after all.

Anti-zionism and antisemitism - no relations

Here's an article by Arthur Neslen in the Guardian's misnamed Comment is free space. It's a response to the UK's National Union of Students adopting a definition of antisemitism that first reared its head in Europe via the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC.) The definition clearly - and dishonestly - conflates antisemitism with anti-zionism.

it's actually a bit shocking to discover that the new definition was largely drafted by a pro-Israel advocate who gives talks on how to elide the distinction between anti-Zionism and hatred of Jews. Kenneth Stern is the American Jewish Committee's expert on anti-semitism and in Defining Anti-Semitism, a paper published by Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute, he explained how he developed the working definition "along with other experts" in the second half of 2004.

Significantly, it involved crunching religious and racial hatred of Jews with what he labelled "political" anti-semitism. This latter, he claimed, has been "otherwise known in recent years as anti-Zionism, which treats Israel as the classic Jew". Political anti-semites could thus include, for example, those who "seek to disqualify Israel from equal membership in the community of nations", presumably by means of boycott initiatives. Naturally, comparing Israel to apartheid-era South Africa is also, within Kenneth Stern's framework, "an expression of anti-semitism".....

"Anti-semitism," its report began, "is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred." Such a perception could include stereotypical or dehumanising libels about, for example:

The power of Jews as a collective - such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

But it could also include a litany of lobbyist shibboleths, such as:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (eg, by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour); Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation ... Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis; Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

Jewish peace activists have always balked at this last point, dissociating themselves from war crimes committed in their names. Sadly, Ehud Olmert was not so circumspect when, on July 7, he told the United Jewish Communities that the invasion of Lebanon was "a war fought by all the Jews".

It's truly unbelievable that any union can adopt a definition of antisemitism that confuses a community whose members are linked by an accident of birth with a political movement.

Arthur's article follows one the previous day by a zionist called Mark Gardner titled The Campus Menace. To be honest I didn't read the article and I only knew of it because someone from the States emailed me to say that Linda Grant posted a comment with another anecdote of another antisemitic incident involving another member of her family.

A few weeks ago, a member of my family who works in a fashionable bar in East London, was asked to take off his star of David by the management because 'some of our customers don't like Jews.'

I told this story to a visiting Canadian on Monday night. He was speechless. When he eventually found his voice, he said that he was unable to contemplate such an incident taking place in Canada and that perhaps the scare stories about anti-semitism in Britain were not as exaggerated as he had previously believed.

I'd love to have commented on Arthur's article and I would like to have asked Linda Grant the name of the bar where antisemitism is flourishing so but unfortunately the latter got me banned from posting to the Guardian comments because she claimed that I had posted "libellous material about this newspaper [The Guardian]." Four emails from me later and the site editor deleted Linda Grant's own libellous comment but it's deeply disturbing that an email from a zionist can get a person banned from a space that calls itself Comment is free. When I can be bothered I'll post the correspondence between myself and the Cif site editor.

While I'm away....

Goodness, my hits are down from over 400 a day in November 2006 to 177 now and, I presume, falling . It's the not posting wot duz it. At least I think it's that. There are many reasons why I haven't been posting much for a few months now but the main one is that my pc broke and I've been too busy to get it fixed. I'm off work now and my son's away so here I am on his laptop.

I intend to return to daily blogging soon. What I used to do was get up at 5 am, google "Israel" and see what came up. I also used to get email tips from various people (and I still do) but I hardly check my emails these days. Oh yes, and I used to lift stuff from the Jewish Chronicle from time to time.

All I've done lately is check and approve (or not) the occasional comment on haloscan.

Anyway, while I'm away check out Ernie Halfdram's Bureau of Counterpropaganda. His take on zionism is pretty similar to mine except whereas I think that Israel deserves to be uniquely despised because it is uniquely despicable, he thinks that as a Jew who ought to speak out against the war criminality carried on (and on) in the name of his community.

So, I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging soon. So to the under 177 people who see this post, please tell your friends that normal service will be resumed soon enough.

Thank you.

Israel's use of human shields: HRW weighs in

According to Reuters (though the article carries a Reuters disclaimer), Human Rights Watch has followed B'tselem's lead in condemning the Israeli army's use of Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields:

The Israeli army should immediately cease deliberately endangering Palestinian civilians by forcing them to assist military operations, Human Rights Watch said today. During recent military operations in the Old City of Nablus, Israeli soldiers forced at least three Palestinians at gun point, two of them children, to assist in searching apartments for suspects. International humanitarian law prohibits a party to a conflict from using the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military operations.
"The soldiers' actions fly in the face of the Geneva Conventions, an Israeli high court decision, and the IDF's own prior commitments," said Joe Saunders, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch. "Israel should put an immediate end to this wholly illegal practice which deliberately abuses the immunity to which civilians are guaranteed under international law."

According to testimonies gathered by the Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, on February 25, on the first day of Israel's military operation in the Old City of Nablus, Israeli soldiers forced two cousins, 'Amid and Samah Amirah, ages 15 and 24, to walk at gun point in front of them as they entered and searched nearby homes. 'Amid also described how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used him at his own house at a time when the IDF apparently believed one or more suspects might be inside, as suggested by the fact that soldiers fired shots during the search: "They aimed their weapons at me. One of them pushed me so that I would go into the house first. I went in first, and then the soldiers entered. One of them pushed me to a corner of the room, and then fired into the house. They fired 5-6 shots inside the house. They told me to go into the rooms and then they came in behind me."

The soldiers also forced 'Amid's cousin Samah at gun point to enter all the rooms of a house and later fired live shots into the rooms. AP television cameramen filmed and broadcast part of this incident.

Start dusting off those "blood libel" allegations Israel.

What did Tony Blair know and when?

I'm a bit late with this, I know. It was in Friday's Guardian. I just can't sit down at the pc much these days so my posts (and my hits) are down. Anyway, finally there's been a admission that Israel's bomardment of Lebanon last summer was pre-planned:

Preparations for Israel's war in Lebanon last summer were drawn up at least four months before two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hizbullah in July, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, has admitted.

Ok, we all knew that anyway, many even said so at the time and no one, but no one, believes anything Israel's spokespersons say anymore. The point that interested me most was raised in the Independent thus:

But the report will fuel claims by some international critics of the operation that Israel, and perhaps the US, had for some time decided in favour of a military confrontation with the Lebanese group.

So the US was in on it. Well of course the US was in on it. The US supplied so much of the weaponry. But so much of the weaponry came through the UK. Perhaps it wouldn't surprise anyone if whole chunks of UK airports lie unused just waiting for an American or Israeli contingency but I suspect America, Israel and the UK colluded in this from the beginning.

Leon Rosselson at the Cellar Upstairs

Leon Rosselson is appearing at the Cellar Upstairs tomorrow night - 10 March 2007. The Cellar Upstairs is at the Exmouth Arms, Starcross Street, London NW1 1HR (on the corner of Cobourg Street, near Euston and Euston Square stations). For further details contact Sheila Miller on +44(0)20 7281 7700.

Israel still using human shields in Nablus attack

According to B'tselem in yesterday's Ha'aretz Israel used an eleven year old Palestinian girl as a human shield during its raid on Nablus:

Israel Defense Forces soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian girl as a "human shield" during an operation against militants in the West Bank town of Nablus last week, an Israeli human rights group said on Thursday.

The IDF said it was checking the information from the B'Tselem group, which monitors Israeli actions in the occupied territory. Israeli law bans the military from using human shields.

B'Tselem said the girl, Jihan Daadush, told its interviewers that IDF soldiers had entered her family home and questioned her and her relatives about the whereabouts of gunmen who had fired at them during the raid.

The soldiers, she said, threatened to arrest her unless she led them to a nearby house.

"[A soldier] ordered me to go towards the house," B'Tselem quoted the girl as saying. "Three soldiers walked behind me. When we reached the house, there were a lot of soldiers. The soldiers ordered me to go inside the house and I went inside."

Look familiar?

Jimmy Carter "stands firm"

Cor! this news just in from Ha'aretz is exciting. Under the headline, Carter stands firm on apartheid accusations against Israel:

He said he was not accusing Israel of racism nor referring to its treatment of Arabs within the country. "I defined apartheid very carefully as the forced segregation by one people of another on their own land," he said.

So while he stands firm on his apartheid analogy regarding the West Bank and Gaza, no doubt he stands equally firm on his stated belief that Israel is a "wonderful democracy."

The Song of the Old Communist?

Here's a letter from an old communist chap in today's Guardian:

As an 88-year-old who joined the Young Communist League on leaving school in 1936, graduated into the Communist party of Great Britain a few years later, and remained a member until it ceased to exist in 1991, I am angered by the attacks made on it by John Morrison in his letter throwing mud at Eric Hobsbawm (Review, February 24).

When I left school I came up against Mosley fascism and unemployment. As far as Mosley fascism was concerned, both the Labour party and the bourgeois leaders of British Jewry advised people to ignore it and it would just go away. Only the Communists said British fascism must be resisted. Of unemployment, only the Communists explained that it was inherent in capitalism, which must be replaced by socialism. All this made sense; and I joined.

We believed the Soviet Union to be socialist. It certainly had some features of socialism: social ownership, low rents, a state health service and state education. Yes, we made a terrible mistake over Stalin, and we have paid for it. But is the world a safer place without the USSR? The US and its satellite states, Britain and Israel, are pursuing a long-term policy and programme of "perpetual war" for US domination of the world and particularly the Middle East oil region. And now that the USSR no longer exists, there is no state willing or strong enough to resist that drive.

I am proud to have belonged to a party which created the International Brigade, organised by the worldwide Spanish aid campaign, helped push Churchill to launch the second front and has always been at the forefront of anti-fascism.
Hyman Frankel
London

This reminds me that Leon Rosselson has some gigs coming up which I'll announce later today. Actually, I'd better mention now that he has a gig on Saturday 10 March at the Cellar Upstairs at the Exmouth Arms, Starcross St., London NW1 2HR, near Euston Station. Phone Sheila on 020-7281 7700 for details.

Scots Palestine Solidarity on "Jewishness"

That's a cheeky little headline. It's actually Scottish PSC on Gilad Atzmon but people (including me but excluding him) are sick of seeing him in headlines here. It seems they now regret their hosting of Gilad Atzmon at an event of theirs. This is an excerpt from an article by Mick Napier of SPSC:

Shamir is in perfect solidarity with Gilad Atzmon, and the intense admiration is returned: “What I love about Eisen, Shamir, Blankfort and many others, rather than talking in the name of the Jews they talk in the name of reason and ethics.”* Both Shamir and Atzmon agree that the enemy is not really Zionism itself, but the Jewish essence which creates Zionism. Deriding any notion that Zionism might be a strategic asset of the US and Europe, both see Zionism as inherent in Jewishness, which becomes the main enemy. Shamir uses language that reminds one of the ranting of the person he doesn’t want to “demonise” when he adds in the same article about Gilad Atzmon, that "it is a question of spirit, the Judaic spirit we find at the basis of Zionism."

Griffin-supporter Shamir doesn’t stint in his praise for Atzmon: “Our friends Gilad Atzmon, Paul Eisen and Mary Rizzo are the shining stars of the battle, and they are doing good by defeating the adversary…Gilad takes up the tools of modern philosophical discourse ... to explain our position: why we are against domination by Judaic spirit." In line with Domingo’s “strong and clear voice” asserting that “We must deny the concept of Holocaust without doubt and hesitation,” Shamir gives Gilad a pat on the head, because "Gilad correctly stated that ‘holocaust denier’ is but a Zionist term." Nick “Griffin and of other anti-bourgeois nationalists”, the voices that Shamir says we need, would agree, even though the BNP are attracted to Israel’s militarism and racism. They drool at the Israeli jackboot on the Palestinian neck and one million Israeli/US cluster bombs transported through Scotland and dropped on Arab towns and villages in Lebanon.

This is timely because Gilad Atzmon and co have been rewriting various articles and comments lately with a view to litigation. One of his cohorts recently asked commentors to cool it with the links to known nazis because of the embarrassment this was causing.

It's particularly encouraging that it was someone I believe to be a high profile activist with Respect that pointed me in the direction of Mick Napier's article. Hopefully he will point his SWP comrades in the same direction.

Israel still using human shields?

Here's an article in today's Guardian suggesting that Israel is still using human shields:

The young Palestinian man was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt on a cold winter morning as he walked in front of heavily armed Israeli soldiers on a door-to-door sweep of three apartments in a crowded West Bank neighborhood.

The scene - caught by an Associated Press Television News camera - has raised questions about whether the Israeli army is still using Palestinian civilians during military operations, despite a Supreme Court order barring the practice.

Human rights groups call the tactic a violation of local and international law that places innocent civilians in the line of fire.

I'm not sure if this is the film here on youtube. Check it out anyway.

Ethnically cleansing the West Bank Bedouin

Here's a report in today's Guardian on the ethnic cleansing of Bedouin from their homes in the West Bank:

For the 3,000 Bedouin living here, most from the Jahalin tribe, this presents an imminent crisis. "They came and destroyed my house to protect their wall," said Mr Hassan, 62. "They really don't have enough land already that they had to come and destroy my house? We've lost everything."

Earlier this month the Israeli military destroyed seven huts and tents belonging to Bedouin living near a settlement in Hebron, in the southern West Bank. Another group of Bedouin living further east in the Jordan Valley have been given two months to leave their homes near an Israeli military base and a Jewish settlement.

In each case the Israeli authorities argue the homes have been built without permits, but Palestinians say they are notoriously hard to obtain.

Bedouin culture has been eroded as a result. Refugees from the Negev desert in Israel who crossed after 1948, their grazing land has been squeezed by the growth of Palestinian towns, the rapid emergence of large Jewish settlements and lately the vast concrete and steel barrier. Most Bedouin live on land that under the Oslo accords was supposed to be unpopulated farmland where Israel has civilian and military control. Today most live in primitive shacks, many no longer keep animal herds and they have little in the way of formal land ownership documents. They have become one of the most vulnerable Palestinian communities......

Other Bedouin have also changed and work as construction labourers, many even employed in Ma'ale Adumim, building the settlement that has taken the land they once lived on.

Still, at least they're making a living.

Gulf states to let Israel use their airspace en route to Iran?

I'm not sure how true this is. I was sent the Ha'aretz link by a "David Cohen,"

Three Arab states in the Persian Gulf would be willing to allow the Israel Air force to enter their airspace in order to reach Iran in case of an attack on its nuclear facilities, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasa reported on Sunday.

According to the report, a diplomat from one of the gulf states visiting Washington on Saturday said the three states, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, have told the United States that they would not object to Israel using their airspace, despite their fear of an Iranian response.

Those gulf states, they'll be sponsoring Arsenal Football Club next!

Rally in Trafalgar Square today

It should be starting round about now at Speaker's Corner, Hyde Park and march to Trafalgar Square. This is the Stop the War blurb:

Tony Blair took us to war on Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction. There were none. 655,000 Iraqis, over 3000 US soldiers and 130 British soldiers have died in that illegal war. Now Blair wants to spend up to £76 billion on new Trident nuclear weapons for a ‘defence’ policy based on indiscriminate killing of millions.

Stop the War, CND and BMI are calling a national demonstration on 24 February to say no to these insane policies of death and destruction.

JOIN US.

Well, I can't do the march but I might make the rally.

Israel seeks "air corridor" over sovereign Iraq

According to Ha'aretz, Israel wants the way clear for an attack on Iran but who is Israel negotiating with for this corridor?

Israel is negotiating with the United States over permission for an "air corridor" over Iraq should an attack on that country's nuclear facilities become necessary, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

Military authorities would need permission from the U.S. Department of Defense for any such operation

But not from sovereign Iraq.

Israel's apartheid regime, but where?

Another one of those irritating observations, reported in the Guardian, that Israel's regime in the West Bank and Gaza is like apartheid, like the rest of Palestine is an oasis of liberal, or even social, democracy. The headline and article are a tad confusing. The headline, Occupied Gaza like apartheid South Africa, says UN report, refers, as you can see, to Gaza but the comparison with apartheid is about the settlements:

After describing the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, with closed zones, demolitions and preference given to settlers on roads, with building rights and by the army, he said: "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose of such action is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report."

He dismissed Israel's argument that the sole purpose of the vast concrete and steel West Bank barrier is for security. "It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers," he said.

Then we get to Gaza:

Gaza remained under occupation despite the withdrawal of settlers in 2005. "In effect, following Israel's withdrawal, Gaza became a sealed-off, imprisoned and occupied territory," he said.

So Gaza is a Bantustan and the West Bank has an apartheid regime. And Israel "proper?" You'll have to delve into the Guardian's archives for that one.

The compiler of the report for the was John Dugard, a South African law professor who is the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories.

If I had a hat I'd tip it to Justin Horton of, er, Justin Horton fame.

Which Israel?

My friend Dina Turner offers a consumer's guide to Israel in today's Guardian.

Which Israel would ambassador Zfi Heifetz like the Palestinians to recognise (Hamas has not delivered, February 20). The Israel created by the UN in 1948, which comprised 55% of historic Palestine? The Israel after June 1967, which consists of 78% of historic Palestine? The Israel of today, 85% of historic Palestine? Or perhaps the Israel that will be, after it has finished building its illegal barrier and settlements, which will then consist of 90% of historic Palestine?
Dina Turner
Farnham, Surrey

In the same group of three letters, representatives of seven different groups call for the ending of sanctions against the Palestinians and the imposition of sanctions on Israel:

On February 8, Fatah and Hamas issued the Mecca agreement. Palestinians are now working to create a national-unity government to rebuild Palestinian society, which has faced systematic destruction under Israeli occupation (Leaders, February 20). Given the international Quartet is meeting today, the British government must seize this opportunity to overturn its wrong and disastrous position of supporting sanctions against the Palestinians, which have created a humanitarian disaster.

For over a year, our government has been complicit with the European Union, the US and Israel in collectively punishing the Palestinian people, because they did not agree with the result of the Palestinian Authority elections. The EU, previously the largest donor, withdrew its funding to the PA from April 2006. The US also stopped its funding, and the Israeli government has withheld tax revenues collected on behalf of the PA of around $60m a month. A recent report by the Commons international development committee said: "As a result, the Palestinian Authority is facing financial crisis and this is seriously affecting the Palestinian people: 51% of Palestinians are now food insecure and 66% of families are below the poverty line." The report concluded that the withdrawal of aid was counterproductive and threatened the viability of the occupied territories.

The government must end its role in punishing the occupied people, the Palestinians, rather than the occupying nation, Israel. It should ensure the EU resumes its funding of the Palestinian Authority, and that it puts all possible pressure both on the US to resume its aid and on Israel to release the withheld tax revenues.
Betty Hunter
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Louise Richards
War On Want
Ismael Patel
British Muslim Initiative
Deborah Maccoby
ICAHD UK
Majed Al Zeer
Palestinian Return Centre
Caroline Qutteneh
Welfare Association
Dan Judelson
Jews for Justice for Palestinians

See anyone you recognise? Incidentally, if you're not suffering Atzmon fatigue you might like to check out this little article on the AMIN site.

And the last of the three is this call to end the occupation:

After 40 years, the world is still waiting for five simple words from the Israeli government: "We will end the occupation."
Leon Rosselson
Wembley Park, Middlesex

I think it's a bit late for that now Leon.