Emergency demonstration against the demolition of the Palestinian village, Susiya

Sunday 26 July 2015 2-4pm: 

Emergency demonstration against the demolition of the Palestinian village, Susiya, in Occupied Palestine. There have been joint demonstrations by Palestinians and Israeli human rights activists. Let’s make our voice heard in support of them and Susiya’s 340 villagers.

Entrance to the Israeli embassy, Kensington High Street, London W8, nearest tube: Kensington High Street. 

More info on Susiya via Twitter

Total Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza proposed by Israeli Parliament's Deputy Speaker

This seems to have passed below the radar of the mainstream media but it has been reported on mostly zionist sites.  +972 mag reports on it thus:

If you still see daylight between Israel’s current bloodletting and its state-sanctioned policy toward the Palestinians, have a look at what the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, posted on his official website Tuesday. It’s a seven-point tract named, without a hint of irony, “My Outline for a Solution for Gaza.”

And here's the statement in full:

1. Ultimatum – One warning from the Prime Minister of Israel to the enemy population, in which he announces that Israel is about to attack military targets in their area and urges those who are not involved and do not wish to be harmed to leave immediately. Sinai is not far from Gaza and they can leave. This will be the limit of Israel’s humanitarian efforts. Hamas may unconditionally surrender and prevent the attack.
2. Attack – Attack of the entire ‘target bank’ throughout the Gaza Strip with the IDF’s maximum force (and not a tiny fraction of it) with all the conventional means at its disposal. All the military and infrastructural targets will be attacked with no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage’. It is enough that we are hitting exact targets and that we gave them advance warning.
3. Siege – Parallel to the above, a total siege on Gaza. Nothing will enter the Strip. Israel, however, will allow exit from Gaza. (Civilians may go to Sinai, fighters may surrender to IDF forces).
4. Defense – Any place from which Israel or Israel’s forces were attacked will be immediately attacked with full force and no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage’.
5. Conquer – After the IDF will complete the softening of the targets with its aerial and long distance fire-power, it will send in infantry to conquer the entire Gaza Strip, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations.
6. Elimination- The GSS and IDF will thoroughly eliminate all armed enemies from Gaza. The enemy population that is innocent of wrong-doing and separated itself from the armed terrorists will be treated in accordance with international law and will be allowed to leave. Israel will generously aid those who wish to leave.
7. Sovereignty – Gaza is part of our Land and we will remain there forever. Liberation of parts of our land       forever is the only thing that justifies endangering our soldiers in battle to capture land. Subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel. The coastal train line will be extended, as soon as possible, to reach the length of the Gaza Strip. According to polls, most of the Arabs in Gaza wish to leave. Those who were not involved in anti-Israel activity will be offered a generous international emigration package. Those who choose to remain will receive permanent resident status. After a number of years of living in Israel and becoming accustomed to it, contingent on appropriate legislation in the Knesset and the authorization of the Minister of Interior on a case by case basis, those who personally accept upon themselves Israel’s rule, substance and way of life of the Jewish State in its Land, will be offered Israeli citizenship.

Last I heard the UK prime minister, David Cameron, had phoned Netanyahu to offer his full support for Israel's attack on Gaza. Paradoxically this Feiglin guy is currently barred from entering the UK because apparently his racism is too much for even ardent supporters of the Likud like the UK government.

De Klerk ought to know that apartheid is not simply about numbers

But apparently Mr De Klerk doesn't know that if this Jewish Telegraphic Agency headline is anything to go by:

De Klerk: Israel not an apartheid state, but could become one

We know where this is going but let's take a look anyway:

Israel could become an apartheid state without the creation of a Palestinian state, former South African leader F.W. de Klerk said on Israeli television.

 De Klerk, the last president in his country under apartheid, said in an interview Tuesday on Israel’s Channel 2 that it was “unfair” to call Israel an apartheid state now.

In Israel to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa, de Klerk said Israel may have to contend with one state for two peoples.

“The test will be does everybody living then in such a unitary state, will everybody have full political rights?” he said. “Will everybody enjoy their full human rights? If they will, it’s not an apartheid state.

So far, so bad.  Palestinian Arabs within Israel's pre-67 boundaries do not have the same rights as Jews in a variety of areas.  And even if they did, the Palestinians under occupation have endured their inferior status for nearly fifty years now. What will happen in the future to make that apartheid that hasn't been happening these last almost five decades.

And then there's the major issue of the people of Palestine who have been forced to leave their homeland since 1947.  Jews from all around the world have more right, under Israel's racist laws, to live in Palestine than the native non-Jewish population who have been forced to leave.  And if we do choose to live there we have more rights there than those who have managed to remain.

Many aspects of Israel's governance within its pre-1967 boundaries qualify for the apartheid label since apartheid is not about the quantity of the unjustly governed but the quality of the governance.  But of course it's chutzpah to describe Palestinians simply as a minority.  Taking all of them together, West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, the bits in between and those in exile, Palestinians are a majority and zionists subject them to minority rule.

Having said all that, the apartheid label has its limitations.  I already mentioned something far worse: it's the ethnic cleansing, stupid!

BBC aims weapon of mass destraction at the Prawer Plan

I was amazed yesterday when I heard a BBC Radio 4 announcer announce an interview with Amal Elsana Alh’jooj.  I'm not sure how long the recording will be on the net but you can hear it certainly for a while here. 

Obviously the big news for many of us regarding the Negev, the Bedouin and the State of Israel is the Prawer Plan so my amazement was based on the fact that the beeb was going to give its listeners a Bedouin perspective on the plan to ethnically cleanse between 40 k and 70 k Bedouin Arabs from their land in the Negev.

Here is Adalah.Org on the plan:

On 24 June 2013, the Israeli Knesset approved the discriminatory Prawer-Begin Bill, with 43 votes for and 40 votes against, for the mass expulsion of the Arab Bedouin community in the Naqab (Negev) desert in the south of Israel. If fully implemented, the Prawer-Begin Plan will result in the destruction of 35 "unrecognized"Arab Bedouin villages, the forced displacement of up to 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel, and the dispossession of their historical lands in the Naqab. Despite the Arab Bedouin community's complete rejection of the plan and strong disapproval from the international community and human rights groups, the Prawer Plan is happening now.

The Prawer-Begin Bill is an unacceptable proposition that entrenches the state’s historic injustice against its Bedouin citizens. Adalah and our NGO partners have been challenging the Prawer Plan before courts, government authorities and the international community, but we need your help to stop what would be the largest single act of forced displacement of Arab citizens of Israel since the 1950s!

Now this is big news for most of us but alas, not for the BBC.  Amal Elsana Alh'jooj spoke about inequality, exclusion, segregation, expulsion but all on a personal level with regard to her own dealings with her own community or the informal, rather than formal, segregation between Jews and Arabs.

Oh I'm sure her work is valuable and important but the BBC here seems to have deliberately distracted attention from a core issue regarding the State of Israel and its native non-Jewish population.  They are under a permanent threat of ethnic cleansing and of course the reason Arabs are a minority within Israel's pre-1967 borders is because of a recent, current and, as we see, on-going ethnic cleansing campaign.  And of course one of the reasons they get away with it is because of the help and encouragement they get from mainstream media organisations like the BBC.

Anyway, give the BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour programme a listen and see what I mean.

Solidarity with Palestinian Day of Rage - Demonstration in London Today 1 August 2013

Hope you will be able to come to this important protest – the JNF’s (Jewish National Fund) $4 billion "Blueprint Negev" project is central to the Prawer Plan: to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Bedouin from the area. For more on the Stop the JNF Campaign see www.stopthejnf.org. Solidarity with Palestinian Day of Rage against the ethnic cleansing Prawer Plan 1 August, 6pm, the Apartheid Israeli Embassy Kensington High Street, W8 5EDhttps://www.facebook.com/events/499609743448821/ Protest at the London Apartheid Israeli Embassy in solidarity with Palestinians on their next "Day of Rage" against the Prawer Plan to ethnically cleanse them.  On 1st August Palestinians will protest again against this racist plan, which was passed its first reading in the Knesset on 25th June. ·         The Plan aims to: confiscate 800,000 dunums of land in the Naqab desert ·         expel over 50,000 Palestinian Bedouins ·         demolish 35 unrecognized villages ·         confine 30% of Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab to 1% of the land
This London protest was at the request of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are organising this day of action: "We call on international solidarity activists to organize demonstrations on the same day in their own cities, and to spread awareness of the biggest impending ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians by Israel since 1948 through writing petitions, sharing information on the Naqab and Prawer Plan, or by any other show of activism." www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/politics/ activism/6787--call-for-action-stop-prawer-plan-.html
On July 15 Palestinians demonstrated from Bir Sabe’ to Jerusalem, West Bank to the Galilee, Haifa to Gaza. Dozens of Palestinians were either injured or arrested since July 15 by the Israeli forces. Throughout the past week protests have been constant within Palestine, with Beirut in Lebanon and Cairo in Egypt also joining in. For further details about the Day of Rage see: https://www.facebook.com/StopPrawerPlan Twitter: #AugustRage #StopPrawerPlan #الغضب_آب  #ريم_لن_برافر For further info on the London protest please contact: 07880 731 865 For further info on the Prawer Plan: "Demolition and Eviction of Bedouin Citizens of Israel in the Naqab(Negev) - The Prawer Plan" http://adalah.org/eng/?mod=articles&ID=1589

65th Anniversary of Plan Dalet - Blueprint for the Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians

This is from the Institute for Middle East Understanding:

PLAN DALET -

"Transfer" in Zionist Thinking

• From the earliest days of modern political Zionism, its advocates grappled with the problem of creating a Jewish majority state in a part of the world where Palestinian Arabs were the overwhelming majority of the population. For many, the solution became known as "transfer," a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.


• As far back as 1895, the father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl,wrote: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."


• By August 1937, "transfer" was a major subject of discussion at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland. Alluding to the systematic dispossession of Palestinian peasants (fellahin) that Zionist organizations had been engaged in for years, David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first prime minister in 1948, stated:
  
  

  "You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund's] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arabfellahin." He concluded: "Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale."



• In June 1938, Ben-Gurion told a meeting of the Jewish Agency: "I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."


• In December 1940, Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund's Lands Department, which was tasked with acquiring land for the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, wrote in his diary:
  

  "There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [bedouin] tribe. And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution."

Details of Plan Dalet

• On March 10, 1948, Zionist political and military leaders, including Ben-Gurion, met in Tel Aviv and formally adopted Plan Dalet (or Plan D). The operational military orders specified which Palestinian population centers should be targeted and laid out in detail a blueprint for their forcible depopulation and destruction. It called for:



"Mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:

"Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.

"Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state."



• The Haganah (soon to be Israeli army) launched military operations under Plan Dalet at the beginning of April 1948. Although attacks by Zionist forces against Palestinian population centers actually began a few days after the UN Partition Plan was passed on November 29, 1947, with the adoption of Plan Dalet expulsions accelerated and became systematic, marking a new phase in the conflict in which Zionist and then Israeli forces went on "the offensive," in the words of Israeli historian Benny Morris.


• Following Israel's establishment on May 14, 1948, the new Israeli government set up an unofficial body, the "Transfer Committee," to oversee the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages or their repopulation with Jews, and to prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes. In a report presented to Ben-Gurion in June 1948, the three-man committee, which included the JNF's Weitz, called for the "destruction of villages as much as possible during military operations."

Results

• By the time the state of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, more than 200Palestinian villages had already been emptied as people fled in fear or were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces, and approximately 175,000 Palestinians had been made refugees. By 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees, losing their land, homes and other belongings in what became known as the "Nakba" ("catastrophe"). Their flight was accelerated by massacres such as the one that took place on April 9, 1948, at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, where approximately 100 Palestinian men, women, and children were murdered by Zionist paramilitaries. Today, refugees displaced during Israel's creation and their descendants number approximately 7.1 million people.


• Some 400 Palestinian towns and villages, including vibrant urban centers, were systematically destroyed or taken over by Israeli Jews. Most of them were demolished to prevent the return of their Palestinian residents, now refugees outside of what would become Israel's internationally recognized borders, or internally displaced inside of them.


• Only about 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel, many of them internally displaced people. Although they were granted Israeli citizenship, they were governed by Israeli military rule until 1966, had most of their land taken from them, and continue to suffer widespread, systematic discrimination today.

Controversy Surrounding Plan Dalet

• Over the years, Plan Dalet has been the subject of controversy, with some Israelis and their supporters claiming that it was not in fact a blueprint for expulsion or ethnic cleansing.


• Benny Morris, one of the leading so-called "new historians" of Israel, wrote in his landmark work The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: 1947-1949, that Plan Dalet was "a strategic-ideological anchor and basis for expulsions by front, district, brigade and battalion commanders" providing "post facto a formal persuasive covering note to explain their actions." Morris, a right-wing Zionist ideologically who has at times himself denied there was a premeditated plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, noted that from the beginning of April 1948, there were "Clear traces of an expulsion policy on both national and local levels with respect to certain key districts and localities and a general 'atmosphere of transfer' are detectable in statements made by Zionist officials and officers."


• In his memoirs, which were censored by the Israeli military but leaked to The New York Times in 1979, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recalled a conversation he had in July 1948 with Ben-Gurion, when Rabin was an officer in the Israeli army, regarding the fate of more than 50,000 Palestinian residents of the cities of Lydda and Ramleh. Rabin wrote:
  

  "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. [Yigal] Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Rabin added, "I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out."

Further Reading

• All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, by Walid Khalidi (1992).


• The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, by Benny Morris (2004).


• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappé (2006).


• Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, by Nur Masalha (1992).


• War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Avi Shlaim and Eugene Rogan (2007).

Same racism different year

There's an article on the Washington Post site headed, Why demographics are still a concern for some Israeli Jews.  Here's a taste:

in Israel, Jewish policymakers are heralding the fact that the country’s Jewish population has passed the 6 million mark for the first time — a historically significant number, they say, because that’s the number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.

“It’s a great joy to know there are more than 6 million Jews in Israel,” Dina Porat, chief historian of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, told the Guardian.

It’s cause for celebration, but the 6 million figure doesn’t entirely put Israeli Jews at ease.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released its own figures this week, predicting that the number of Arabs in Israel and Palestine will equal the number of Jews by 2016 and exceed it by 2020, buoyed in part by the Palestinians’ overall higher birthrate.

All of this of course excludes the millions of Palestinians who have been ethnically cleansed from Palestine altogether.

The State of Israel is the problem

Here's an article I missed during Israel's recent attack on Gaza.  It's by Eamonn McCann in the Belfast Telegraph and it is headed, How destruction of Gaza was planned over six decades ago:

It was written “Imagine that not so long ago, in any given country you are familiar with, half of the entire population had been forcibly expelled within a year, half of its villages and towns wiped out, leaving behind only rubble and stones.

Imagine now the possibility that somehow this act will never make it into the history books and that all diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict that erupted in that country will totally sideline, if not ignore, this catastrophic event.

“Imagine, that is, trying to understand what’s happening between Israel and Gaza today without taking into account how the conflict began.”

The quote is from the introduction to Ilan Pappe’s ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’. Pappe, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa until 2007, is currently a professor at the University of Essex and director of its European Centre for Palestine Studies. He is foremost among Israeli ‘New Historians’ who, since the publication in the 1980s of Israeli and British documents from the period, have radically rewritten the history of the Jewish State’s foundation and the flight of 700,000 Palestinians from its territory.

Pappe argues that the exodus was not a mere by-product of terror and chaos but the result of a deliberate strategy designed to facilitate the consolidation and expansion of the new Jewish State. The key document which he and others cite is Plan Dalet (Dalet is the Hebrew letter D).

Plan Dalet was drafted and distributed to leaders of the Hagannah in March 1948. Its formal adoption reflected the transformation of the clandestine organisation into the core element of a regular army. The drafting “commission” included about a dozen military and political leaders under the chairmanship of Israel’s “founding father” and first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

Four months earlier, in November 1947, the UN General Assembly had voted to divide Palestine into a Jewish State covering 56% of the territory and a Palestinian State on 42% — with the remaining 2%, Jerusalem, designated an “internationalised zone”. The scheme was plainly unfair to the Palestinians. But, backed by the US, the Soviet Union and the other major powers, it was handed down as the consensus view of what’s now called “the international community”.

However, it is clear from the material which has subsequently become available that Zionist leaders of the time saw the UN plan not as a compromise settlement but as a stepping-stone towards their objective of a state based on Jewish religious identity to include all of the “Land of Israel” — the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem as well the territory allocated to Israel. Which meant clearing the Palestinians out.

Pappe quotes Ben Gurion on December 3, 1947: “They can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them.”

It is a striking aspect of contemporary accounts that Zionist military leaders were more open and honest about their intentions than diplomacy might have dictated. Hagannah commander Yigael Yadin told other Zionist groups in January 1948 to give over with the rhetoric about “retaliation”: “This is not what we are doing: this is an offensive and we need to initiate preemptive strikes; no need for a village to attack us (first)”.

Plan Dalet, then, represented not a new path but the codification and strengthening of a practice already well under way. Anyone wanting to inform their own views of the rights and wrongs of what’s afoot in Gaza today should read Plan Dalet. An English-language text is easily accessible on the internet. The Plan does not call for massacre in so many words. And it can be read (although some of us regard this as rather implausible) as a contingency plan rather than an order for immediate implementation.

Nevertheless, the strategy is clearly outlined and describes with chilling accuracy what, in the event, was about to unfold.

Under the heading, ‘Mounting operations against enemy population centres located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force,’ the Plan calls for the “destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centres which are difficult to control continuously”.

(Who might be the target of mines buried in the debris of previous attack?)

Under ‘Mounting search and control operations’, the Plan recommends “encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it.

In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state”.

It all happened back then exactly as Planned. It’s happened since, again and again and again and again.

It is happening in Gaza today.

The problem does not have to do with “ancient hatreds”, with the belligerence of this side or that or both, or with something wicked in Judaism or Islam or both. The problem is the state of Israel.

Got that?

State of denial

Have a look at this clip by Lia Tarachansky (working title: Seven Deadly Myths) through to the end.



Did you see it to the end? See the bit where she says she needs money for the post-production and all that? You can donate here.

The Soul of Israelis?

Here's a curious headline in the New York Times:

Crackdown on Migrants Tugs at Soul of Israelis

The first paragraph sets the scene for for an article which couldn't be postponed for much longer:

TEL AVIV — One by one, immigration inspectors escorted the migrants out of a dilapidated building into an alley teeming with African-run stores and hair salons. Then, they were led onto a waiting bus, in the first steps on the way to deportation to their native South Sudan.

Israel's treatment of migrants has been in the Israeli media for some time now but then one good thing about Israel is that it doesn't have an Israel lobby. When hasbara cannot speak well of Israel, the hasbaristas rely on silence and this has been the case with Israel and the "infiltrators". So here's the NYT breaking the mould, or is it? The headline alone sticks its neck out for Israel. It suggests that Israel has a moral rather than a practical problem here but it gets worse, look:

Critics say that Israel, a nation largely founded by refugees, lacks a proper immigration policy.

"A nation largely founded by refugees"?  Ok, many, even most early Israelis were refugees but might there be a precedent for the forced removal of people whose ethnicity didn't fit the state's desired profile? If the NYT wrote more about the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, its readers might understand how this "nation founded largely by refugees" can treat refugees so badly.

Greenwash this!

Here's a report just in from Associated Press under the headline, Israeli nixes solar energy for Palestinians:

Electricity from solar panels and wind turbines has revolutionized life in rural Palestinian herding communities: Machines, instead of hands, churn goat milk into butter, refrigerators store food that used to spoil and children no longer have to hurry to get their homework done before dark.

But the German-funded project, initiated by Israeli volunteers, is now in danger. Israeli authorities are threatening to demolish the installations in six of the 16 remote West Bank communities being illuminated by alternative energy, arguing the panels and turbines were installed without permits.

Ah, no permits, I see. But what's this?

At the same time, Israeli officials argue that the Palestinian herders of the southern West Bank are nomads with no legal claim to the lands they squat on.

Which roughly translated means they're Arabs and so can't get permits and because they can't get permits they can't settle and because they can't settle they are nomads and because they are nomads they can't get permits and, oh never mind.

Just so you know, dotted through the piece are references to something called "the peace process".

British company JCB and the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem

From UK charity, War on Want:

TAKE ACTION: STOP JCB EQUIPMENT DESTROYING HOMES IN SILWAN

At 6am on Monday February 13^th, the Israeli authorities demolished the Madaa creative centre and children’s playground in Silwan, East Jerusalem. The demolitions, which will make way for a controversial tourist site, were carried out using UK-made JCB equipment.

WAR ON WANT HAS WRITTEN TO JCB demanding an investigation of the use of JCB equipment to demolish Palestinian homes and communities in Jerusalem. We're asking supporters to show solidarity with Silwan by EMAILING JCB and writing on the JCB FACEBOOK PAGE. 

The playground was the last children’s play area in Silwan, and built with funding from the American NGO MECA for Peace. This demolition comes on top of eviction orders which have been issued to 88 families in the Silwan area. The Silwan district of East Jerusalem now faces the biggest mass evictions since 1967, with over 1,000 people set to be displaced. Any such demolitions are prohibited by the fourth Geneva Convention and therefore illegal under international humanitarian law.

The world is watching what is happening in Silwan. It is up to us to show the Israeli authorities that the international community condemns any further demolitions or use of intimidation in Silwan. This is critical, since the community in Silwan will be rebuilding the playground and creative centre in time for their Mother’s Day celebrations in March. 

VISIT THE MECA FOR PEACE WEBSITE to write to the Israeli officials responsible for the area condemning the demolitions in Silwan.

Please FOLLOW @SAVESILWAN for action updates and news from Silwan.

And here's the Morning Star.

Against ethnic cleansing, against UEFA whitewashing Israel and against war criminals visiting the UK

And it's all in today's Guardian letters page:

On Thursday Palestinians are protesting about the latest instance of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government. In the Beer Sheba (Beer es Saba) region of southern Israel about 30,000 inhabitants are about to be driven from their homes.

Their villages have been designated "unrecognised" for more than 60 years, making their lands easy prey for confiscation. And while they are refused the same rights as other Israeli citizens to facilities such as running water, schools and hospitals, the Israeli state demands their taxes.

The British government must condemn any move to evict the Palestinian citizens of Israel from their lands, which were documented under the British Mandate as privately owned Palestinian land – not ownerless as the Israeli state now claims.

Geoffrey Bindman QC
Victoria Brittain
William Dalrymple
Ken Loach
Tony Benn
Ahdaf Soueif
Miriam Margolyes
Caryl Churchill
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Linda Riordan MP
Bob Russell MP
Martin Caton MP
Katy Clark MP
Alex Cunningham MP
Julie Hilling MP
John McDonnell MP
Andy Slaughter MP
Dame Jenny Tonge
John Pilger
Leila Sansour
Ghada Karmi
Ilan Pappe
Dr Salman Abu Sitta
Prof Steven Rose
Prof Hilary Rose
Louise Christian
Rodney Bickerstaffe
Bruce Kent
Reem Kelani
Lowkey
Kika Markham
Michael Rosen
Leon Rosselson
Alexei Sayle
Jeremy Hardy
Hugh Lanning, Chair PSC
Keith Sonnet
John Austin
Canon Garth Hewitt
Andy de la Tour

• Those who lead European football must respond to an appeal from Palestinians dismayed at the prospect of Israel hosting Uefa's under-21 tournament in 2013. A state that uses military might to hold sway over land it illegally occupies and exploits, flouts international law and ignores UN resolutions surely forfeits the right to be treated as a member of the community of nations. But western powers continue to embrace Israel as an ally.  

During the 2011 under-21 tournament in Denmark in June, 42 Gazan football clubs, backed by many sporting bodies, wrote to Uefa president Michel Platini calling on his organisation not "to reward Israel for its violent repression of Palestinian rights". We ask Uefa to respond positively to this plea.

Stephane Hessel diplomat
Ken Loach filmmaker 
Michael Mansfield barrister
Miriam Margolyes actor
Nurit Peled Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought joint winner 2001
John Pilger journalist and filmmaker,
Ahdaf Soueif novelist and political and cultural commentator
Jean Ziegler vice-president, advisory committee of the UN human rights council

• The government changes the law and brings out the red carpet to allow alleged Israeli war criminals into the UK (Former Israeli minister to visit UK after change in arrest law, 4 October) but changes the rules to arrest visiting Palestinians whose only "crime" is to campaign for their rights (Palestinian activist was held unlawfully, says high court, 1 October). The Goldstone report, which has been endorsed at the UN general assembly, provides clear evidence of how in its 2008-09 attack on Gaza, Israel was responsible for attacks on children, use of human shields, and use of phosphorous bombs and flachettes in civilian areas. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also documented serious cases of abuse. For William Hague to invite to the UK Israeli leaders who were in government at the time these alleged crimes were committed is a slap in the face for relatives of the 1,400 dead, the 5,000 injured and the many others who suffered due to Israel's Cast Lead attack on Gaza.
Dr Stephen Leah
York

Not bad, not at all bad. Now wait for the balancers....

People move to cut Jordan's ties to Israel

Here's a remarkable piece on the MSNBC news site.

Israel was evacuating its embassy in Jordan on Wednesday in advance of a demonstration promoted on Facebook under a banner "No Zionist embassy on Jordanian territory," The Jerusalem Post reported without citing sources.


Security forces in Jordan were preparing for the protest, which was scheduled to take place Thursday at the embassy in Amman, Israel's Ynet news reported. Armored vehicles and security officers were stationed at the building, according to the website.


The move comes days after the Israeli Embassy in Cairo was ransacked by hundreds of protesters, forcing the the ambassador to flee the country.


Story: Israeli PM condemns embassy attack in Cairo


Elsewhere in Amman, demonstrators demanded the closing of the U.S. Embassy in Jordan over WikiLeaks cables suggesting covert U.S. plans to turn Jordan into a home for Palestinians.

It was a rare anti-American demonstration in Jordan, a close ally of the U.S.

The 70 activists burned American and Israeli flags in a noisy protest opposite the embassy in Amman on Wednesday.

They chanted, "The people want the Americans out."

Roughly half of the country's 6 million population is of Palestinian origin. With Palestinian-Israeli peace talks stalled, some Jordanians fear Israel may try to deport Palestinians to Jordan.

This week Jordan's King Abdullah II spoke out strongly against using Jordan as a substitute for a Palestinian state, a concept favored by a tiny extremist minority among Israelis.

This is fascinating. Could King Abdullah really be so poorly informed as to speak out against another ethnic cleansing campaign if only a "tiny extremist minority among Israelis" supports the idea?

It's good news that ordinary people in the front line states are severing diplomatic relations with Israel but the fears expressed at the end of this article go to the heart of Israel's existence. Ethnic cleansing is certainly extreme when it happens in most places but in Israel it is considered the norm.

Bedouin have to pay Israel for their own ethnic cleansing

From Ynet:

The state filed a law suit on Tuesday against the residents of the Bedouin village Al-Arakib, claiming that razing the illegal outpost multiple times has cost it NIS 1,790,000 ($527,050).

The law suit comes exactly one year after a major demolition operation destroyed the town. The residents have been marking the anniversary with protests and renewed construction.

Well in the past they've paid with absentee property and with lives so now it's hard cash

Neutrality on Israel?

Two letters in today's Guardian, one following on from a report of the appointment of an "Israel studies professor at Oxford University and the other commending The Guardian for a report on how the Palestinian village of Lifta was ethnically cleansed in the 1940s and is now being lined up for settlement by Jews only:

Derek Penslar (First professor of Israel studies at Oxford vows neutrality, 27 May) says he will strive for political neutrality in a professorship created with a £3m donation from long-standing supporters of Israel. But claims to be politically neutral generally obscure particular political positions since "you cannot be neutral on a moving train" or while riding the back of an angry crocodile. The report shows the difficulty of achieving neutrality by referring to "the Jewish state" as one might refer to the UK as a Christian state or Egypt as a Muslim state, none of which could be seen as politically neutral positions since they elevate the power of one group of citizens above others. States are defined by their borders. So in struggling to achieve neutrality, perhaps Derek Penslar will inform us of his politically neutral position on the borders of Israel.

Tony Booth

Cambridge University

• We commend you for putting Lifta in the news (We will never forget this village, G2, 30 May). Its Palestinian population was attacked and terrorised between Christmas 1947 and February 1948 and forced to leave by Menachem Begin's IZL and Yitzhak Shamir's Stern terror gangs. By February 1948 the village was emptied and its inhabitants were trucked to East Jerusalem. Now, the Israel Land Authority plans to parcel Lifta's private land and sell it to Jewish developers in an attempt to create a luxury enclave for Jews only. The international community must not remain silent in the face of this continued theft of private Palestinian land.

Antoine Raffoul

Co-ordinator, 1948: Lest We Forget

Actually there appeared to be an error in the report on Lifta not mentioned in the letter. See this:

The development plan was approved by the Jerusalem municipality five years ago, but earlier this year the Israel Lands Administration – the state agency that took ownership of Lifta's land under the Israeli law governing property deemed to be abandoned – began marketing the plot to private developers. A legal challenge stayed the tender process, but a decision is due any day on whether to proceed. The proposal is for 212 luxury housing units, expected to be advertised to wealthy expatriate Jews, a chic hotel and shops, and a museum. It suggests that some of the ruins be restored. But Lifta as a sanctuary and de facto heritage site will be lost.

Expatriate Jews? Where might they be? The largest number of expatriate Jews, understood as Jews living away from their country of origin, lives in Palestine. It wasn't me that noticed the error, it was Frank Fisher at the Just Peace UK list.