semitism.net

I’m afraid I’ve been too busy to write much - and I still need to get the site spiffed up again. Luckily, there are a lot of terrific blogs out there, and other interesting sources of information. So if you’re looking for an Israel-Palestine news fix, here are a few things to check out…

Haaretz reports that Labor suporters in New York are trying to bring Amir Peretz over for a campaign visit.

Conversations with community activists suggested there is curiosity about Peretz’s opinions on various issues, including relations with the United States. However, people have been disappointed with Peretz’s failing to express his interest to visit New York.
Haaretz has learned that Friends of the Labor Party in New York are looking into bringing Peretz over to introduce himself to the community. The head of the National Committee for Labor Israel, Jerry Goodman, confirmed yesterday that he is trying to promote “an initiative that is still in the idea phase.” That initiative would bring Peretz to New York for two or three days, during which he would address the heads of Jewish organizations and gain some media exposure in the Jewish and general press.

Great idea!

Over at Tikun Olam, Richard has a much-needed post on Israel’s intent to block Palestinians in East Jerusalem from voting in the January legislative elections. Israel is afraid Hamas might win a majority if the elections take place as scheduled. Richard argues:

a Hamas victory would put it to a severe test. Either it would become a governing party willing to make pragmatic decisions to advance national interests; or it would continue, even while governing, to try to be a revolutionary movement of armed struggle. If it attempts the latter option I predict it will fail miserably both as a governing party and as a revolutionary movement. This is essentially the pose that Arafat tried to maintain to his dying day. Didn’t work for him either.

Mary, at peacepalestine, offers a detailed summary of a paper called “America 2020: How the Next Generation Views Israel” from The Israel Project - the new endeavor of Republican Pollster Frank Luntz and PR hack Charles Jacobs, who started a huge controversy at Columbia University last year with his nasty little propaganda film on purported anti-Semitism in the Mideast Studies department. “America 2020″ documents the pervasive decline in support for Israel among college students, including many Jewish students. Mary offers many quotes from the report, including this one:

Virtually every student we interviewed said he or she had drifted away from Israel and toward the Palestinian point of view over the past few years. Most said that ‘learning more about the situation’ (often through the media) had sent them into the Palestinian camp. And talking to a Palestinian face-to-face in a university setting is enough to seal the deal - regardless of how many Jews they encounter.

Luntz, of course, has a strategy to counter the slide in Israel’s popularity on campus. Check out the Mary’s post to learn more.

I was listening to Free Speech Radio News the other night - they did a short and very powerful report on the sonic booms Israel is using to punish Gazans for the rockets being launched at Sderot from their territory. The program is here, if you want to hear it.

Then I came across this report from Laila, who lives in Gaza. From her blog, Raising Yousuf:

I have come to learn to fear the night. I am a grown adult. I am a mother. But yesterday, I am not ashamed to say, I had my mother sleep with me in bed, and we clung to each other like frightened children as Israeli F-16s once again shook the earth we live on.

Exactly 1 second before the dawn call to prayer, it began. My head hurts thinking about them now, so I’m going to make this brief. I have severe migranes now that won’t go away. Yesterday night I developed cramps and nausea. If there was ever a way to expose an entire civlian population to torture, this is it.

These shock waves-these bomb simulations-come out of no where. At night before we slept, i heard the swoops of F-16s in the distance, but I knew that meant there would be no immediate sonic booms, since you cannot hear the planes before they bomb (they are going faster than the speed of sound). That is what is frightening. There is deafening silence, especially in the middle of the night, then BOOOM, your entire house shakes like a mega ton bomb was dropped on it.

Over and over again. Then it stops, and you think that’s the end of it. There are no air raid sirens to signal the beginning or end of the raid, as there was in Lebanon, as there is in Sderot, as there was in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia where I lived during the Gulf War.

It is like a million sledge-hammer carrying banshees hanging over your shoulder, ready to strike anytime.

See also, Diane’s post on Israel’s use of home demolitions to curtail Arab population growth in Jerusalem:

In Jerusalem, Israel turned urban planning into a tool of the government, to be used to help prevent the expansion of the city’s non-Jewish population. It was a ruthless policy, if only for the fact that the needs (to say nothing of the rights) of Palestinian residents were ignored. Israel saw the adoption of strict zoning plans as a way of limiting the number of new homes build in Arab neighborhoods, and thereby ensuring that the Arab percentage of the city’s population – 28.8 in 1967 – did not grow beyond this level. Allowing “too many” new homes in Arab neighborhoods would mean “too many” Arab residents in the city. The idea was to move as many Jews as possible into East Jerusalem, and move as many Arabs as possible out of the city entirely.

Is she quoting some Palestinian propaganda organ? Um, no… Rabbis for Human Rights.

I still can’t believe those students. How can they not love Israel?