Sodastream - Zionists Mobilise and then Scatter!

Sussex Palestine Banner

Zionist Counterdemonstrators Aid the Cause of Boycott

Picket grows stronger as Sodastream is isolated

Activist leafletting Sodastream

Sussex Students Come Down to Lend a Hand

Nearly  managed to come to terms with new technlogy!

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Zionist stall is bare - serving no purpose other than to emulate us

The chief Zionist Christian bigot - foulmouthed as well as stupid

Zionist gets his instructions!

Zionists man their bare stall - at a loss for words (& ideas!)

The Zionists had a great idea today.  They mobilised an hour before us, 12 pm.  Unfortunately they got in the way of Sodastream’s trade and then failed to effectivelycounter the actual demonstrators an hour later, they started drifting off whilst our numbers continued growing until they abandoned ship altogether at 3 pm.  The actual picket lasted till 4 pm.

Meanwhile the local Tory MP, whose constituency Sodastream is not in, Hove, has taken up the cudgels on behalf of Israel’s apartheid company, whilst Green MP Caroline Lucas has remained silent.   Mike Weatherley, whose only claim to fame has been to criminalise squatting and get the homeless put in jail, has been active on behalf of Apartheid in Israel, just as his predecessor John Carslisle MP was the unofficial MP for the whites of Pretoria.

Picket grows stronger as Zionists lose heart

Tories who never hesitated to oppose the immigration of Jewish refugees from Nazism just love Israel.  Likewise the Christian bigots who opposed Jewish immigrants (‘send them to Palestine’ was their refrain) turned up in larger numbers than the Jewish Zionists.  In times gone by the same bigots formed the Reich Church in Germany and formed the backbone of anti-Semitism in the USA where they opposed Jewish immigration.  No talk of the Judeo-Christian heritage there.

Apart from Herut thugs who were largely tongue tied except for threats, one blochead threatned me, I met with my old newspaper adversary Gerald Oberman, an extremely polite man, albeit wrong on just about everything.

Zionists are almost invisible as time went on

Zionist tries to get the hang of his camera

The fact of Zionist stupidity

PSC takes over the space in front of Sodastream as the Christian anti-Semites retreat

Not a Customer in Sight

Apart from the Manager -  The Shop is Empty

Storeworker occupies herself sorting the stolen goods

A rare sight - a customer

The Zionists face a dilemma.  The more people they mobilise, the more we mobilise and the fewer customers who want to go even nearer the shop.  As it is virtually everyone who passed expressed their disgust at the shop’s presence and we were inundated with support.  The Zionists decided 3 weeks ago to set up a stall do and what a pathetic affair it is.  Manned by thugs and Christian weirdos, it  serves no obvious purpose.

Today the Argus printed a quite good article including a debate between me and the local Tory MP.  The battle is on and it is essential to ensure that Sodastream doesn’t get a foot hold in Britain.  Choosing Brighton for their greenwash was a big mistake!

Tony Greenstein

Academic Freedom - Israeli Settler Style

Ben Gurion's Politics Department Threatened with Closure for the 'Wrong' Politics

To those of you who believed in all that nonsense about academic freedom in Israel, the fate of Ben Gurion University of the Negev’s Politics Department is instructive.  It began with the support of Professor Neve Gordon for a Boycott of Israel.  Ben Gurion’s American funders presented an ultimatum – sack   Gordon or we will boycott you! 

Then the fascist Zionist group Im Tirtzu began a campaign against any liberal tendencies in Israeli academia and now the department is threatened with closure.

Then an investigation committee was tasked with investigating the department and unlike the religious university of Bar Ilan, where the Politics Department was failing, they recommended closure and the department was forbidden from recruiting another generation of students.  Bear this in mind when the academic boycott comes round again.

A settler university at Ariel on the West Bank has just been established, even though it has no academic credentials worthy of the name.  Ben Gurion University's Politics Department is being closed because it is deemed 'post Zionist'.

Remember this next time you hear Israeli apologists going on about the defence of academic freedom.  In a settler state there is no such thing.

Tony Greenstein

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Dani Machlis for Ben-Gurion U. of the Negev

Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion U., says a vote by Israel's Council for Higher Education to close the department would be a "blow to academic independence."

Fate of Controversial Political-Science Department in Israel May Be Decided Soon

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Be’er Sheva campus. Photo by Eli Hershkowitz

Ben-Gurion U. of the Negev has tried to remedy shortcomings identified in its political-science department, but it is under increasing pressure to shut the department down.

By Matthew Kalman, Jerusalem

A simmering debate over the fate of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has roiled Israeli academe and prompted cries by scholars both here and in the United States that academic freedom is under assault by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

David Saranga, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Ben-Gurion U. of the Negev has tried to remedy shortcomings identified in its political-science department, but it is under increasing pressure to shut the department down.

The long-running dispute over the department may come to a head soon when a resolution to close it will be discussed by Israel's Council for Higher Education, a government body that accredits and oversees colleges in Israel. On October 23, the council will consider a controversial recommendation from its Subcommittee for Quality Assurance to halt student registration at the department, effectively shutting it down, unless it undertakes more changes. The proposal has ignited accusations that the move is motivated more by politics than pedagogy.

"This struggle is not only about Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, but rather it is a struggle of the entire Israeli academic community," Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion, wrote in a letter to the heads of Israeli universities. "The approval of this decision by the Council for Higher Education will constitute a devastating blow to academic independence in Israel."

Dr. Carmi is pressing for a swift rejection of the "extreme" proposal to help dissolve a cloud of uncertainty that has hovered over the department for nearly a year.

Ben-Gurion's troubles in the matter began in November 2010 with the council's appointment of an international committee to evaluate political-science and international-relations departments at eight colleges in Israel, as part of the organization's periodic review procedures. The committee, chaired by Thomas Risse, a professor at the Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science at the Free University of Berlin, reported in its assessment that the departments generally "are doing very well."

But the committee expressed grave misgivings about the standards of teaching at Ben-Gurion, saying it was "concerned that the study of politics as a scientific discipline may be impeded by such strong emphasis on political activism." The committee found the department "weak in its core discipline of political science in terms of number of faculty, curriculum, and research," criticized the university's library resources and its research record, and recommended "major changes toward strengthening its disciplinary and methodological core through both hiring more faculty and altering its study programs."

"If these changes are nevertheless not implemented, the majority of the committee believes that, as a last resort, Ben-Gurion University should consider closing the department of politics and government," the committee stated.

Department faculty members have been criticized for their left-wing views. In 2009, right-wing groups called for the dismissal of Neve Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion, when he announced his support for a boycott of Israeli institutions over Israel's policy toward Palestinians.

Despite its reservations, the university began making the proposed changes to strengthen the department, in consultation with the council and two members of the international committee—Mr. Risse and Ellen M. Immergut, a professor of social sciences at Humboldt-University in Berlin. It updated the department curriculum, expanded the variety of courses, and hired three new faculty members. In July, Mr. Risse and Ms. Immergut applauded the new appointments, expressing hope that the faculty would assist "the department's commitment to building a pluralistic curriculum" while still urging it to "increase its diversity in terms of methods and theoretical orientations in future recruitments."

Meanwhile, the membership of the Council for Higher Education had been replaced, introducing new candidates appointed by the education minister, Gideon Sa'ar, who had publicly criticized the department at Ben-Gurion after a political-activist group issued a report accusing the department of having a "post-Zionist" bias.  

Shortcomings Still Seen

The council's subcommittee welcomed the changes at Ben-Gurion but noted that none of the new faculty endorsed a "positivist approach" and determined that the department teaching was still dominated by too much critical theory. It recommended appointing a monitoring committee that would report back by December. Meanwhile, the subcommittee said, registration for the 2013-14 academic year should be suspended.

Dr. Carmi, of Ben-Gurion, described the recommendation as "totally at odds with the evaluation written by the two international members who had been appointed to oversee the process."

Indeed, Mr. Risse and Ms. Immergut strongly objected to the subcommittee's recommendations, noting they had "not been consulted" about the appointment of a new monitoring committee or the proposal to suspend student registration. They pointedly requested to be consulted about future developments and wondered aloud whether their future services would be required at all. "Does the Sub-Committee's recommendation imply that our task is finished or shall we continue?" they asked.

Mr. Risse and Ms. Immergut also reminded the subcommittee that other universities whose departments needed improving were not being pursued with the same vigor. In a similar report on the political-science department at Bar-Ilan University, they had voiced "substantial" criticism and "many concerns" but that university had failed to respond to "our comments to their strategic plan from May 2012."

From its inception, the council's process has been suspected of political bias. Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor of political science at Columbia University, resigned as chairman of the international committee after Ian Lustick, a political-science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was removed for unexplained reasons.

Galia Golan-Gild, a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, another committee member, issued a minority report demurring from several of the committee's conclusions and challenging the demand for a "balance" of views in the classroom as "directly counter to the principle of academic freedom."

"I felt that some of the committee members, with specific political opinions, were trying to find fault with the place," Ms. Golan said. "I felt that things were not being conducted fairly."

Moshe Maor, a political-science professor at Hebrew University who was recently appointed to the Subcommittee for Quality Assurance, said the decision to reinforce the closure sanction was made "because the original threat by the international committee didn't help."

"We don't want to close the department; we want to improve it," Mr. Maor told The Chronicle. "We have a completely professional academic problem, which is embedded in a political context because the department in question is at the center of the political debate in Israel because of the political opinions of its members. But I am forbidden to deal with the political context. I have to follow only professional considerations."

But David Newman, dean of social sciences at Ben-Gurion who was the first chair of the department in 1998, said the council procedure was flawed. "What has happened has discredited the Council for Higher Education in the eyes of a large percentage of Israel's scientific community."

International panel denounces decision to close Ben-Gurion politics department

Committee members, who urged changes at BGU, wonder why Israel's Council for Higher Education decided to take extreme measures and close the department, while it ignored similar criticism of Bar-Ilan University.

By Talila Nesher    | Sep.30, 2012 | 11:45 PM
       
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Be’er Sheva campus. Photo by Eli Hershkowitz Israeli academics sign petition against closing Ben-Gurion University’s Politics Department
By Talila Nesher    | Sep.30,2012 | 11:45 PM

Our nonacademic education council

Haaretz Editorial    | Sep.30,2012 | 11:45 PM

The international committee that recommended a series of changes be made at Ben Gurion University's Department of Politics and Government has denounced a decision by Israel's Council of Higher Education to shut down the department.

The department has been accused in the past of having an "anti-Zionist" bias.

The international committee, headed by Thomas Risse of the Free University of Berlin, called on Ben-Gurion University to hire more faculty members and make other changes. More controversially, it also said it was "concerned that the study of politics as a scientific discipline may be impeded by such a strong emphasis on political activism."

Neve Gordon, a professor at the department, has come under fire for speaking out in support for boycotting Israel.

However, rather than implementing those recommendations, an Israeli Council for Higher Education subcommittee decided to close the department altogether, forbidding it register students as of the 2013-14 academic year.

Two alternative draft proposals, praising the department's progress and not mentioning the possibility of closing it, were set aside. In a letter addressed to the CHE, the members of the international committee wrote that they were not party to the decision to close down the department and questioned the motive behind the move.

The international panel presented a letter, which Haaretz has obtained, accusing the CHE of taking only punitive measures against the Ben-Gurion University department, while ignoring recommendations regarding the political science department at Bar-Ilan University. Moreover, the panel noted that the measures taken against the BGU department were far more extreme than those recommended.

Over the past week, more than 300 faculty members of academic institutions all over Israel signed a petition protesting the CHE subcommittee's decision.

We sense that academic freedom in Israel's higher education system is in severe danger,” says the petition, initiated by Prof. Gilad Haran of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. “Closure of this department constitutes the first instance, but certainly not the last, unless the current trend is halted.”

Other signatories include Prof. Galia Golan, a member of a previous CHE committee that pointed out problems in the department but refused to sign the report because it was influenced by political considerations. Over the years, some of the department's staffers have been labeled radical leftists and accused of calling for an international cultural, academic and political boycott of Israel. Im Tritzu, a group that says it promotes Zionist values, called on the university to “put an end to the [department's] anti-Zionist tilt.”

In wake of the department's closure, Ben-Gurion University has opened a legal proceeding against the CHE. In an unusual move, an attorney for the university sent the CHE a letter in which he charged, "The actions of the sub-committee… were intensifying the disappointing, hard feeling that the subcommittee's position regarding the university's Department of Politics and Government was oppositional, and stems from secret agendas, which are not academically relevant, and which the CHE was not at liberty to consider… especially in light of clause 15 of the Council of Higher Education Law, which defines academic freedom."
The letter goes on to demand the CHE hand over all documentation and data pertaining to the department, accompanied by an explanation regarding the "false accusations made against the university."

An official at the CHE expressed surprise over the university's to "pursue legal action on the backs of taxpayers, instead of acting to correct academically what an international panel of experts required of it."

In contrast to what was written by the international panel, the CHE responded that "pertaining to the issue in Bar-Ilan University, the institution submitted an action plan in accordance with the committee's recommendations and needs to make further changes." Regarding the letter, the CHE said "The sub-committee's work was being done with coordination with the panel of international experts."

Bar-Ilan University responded that "The international committee that checked the departments in all the universities found advantages as well as deficiencies. Actions are being taken to correct them and these actions are being reported to the CHE."

Israeli forces smash Palestinian child’s head to ground near Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa

The Most Moral Occupation in the World

 (Ismael Mohamad / United Press International)
Video:  Ali Abunimah Friday 10/05/2012

Many Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
(APA images)

Israeli policemen charge during clashes with stone-throwing Palestinian
protesters outside Al-Aqsa Mosque on Oct. 5. (Reuters/Ammar Awad)

Never forget – this is the most ‘moral occupation in the world!

Tony Greenstein

A video shows Israeli occupation forces in Jerusalem smashing the head of a Palestinian boy on the ground during a violent arrest, after Israeli troops stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in eastern occupied Jerusalem this morning.

The brief clip shows a boy being dragged by black-clad occupation soldiers. As the boy screams “khalas” – “enough” or “stop” – the soldiers throw him to the ground. One soldier punches the boy in the side of the head, smashing his head into the stone floor.

The video was posted on the YouTube account of QNN, a Palestinian news group that operates on Facebook. QNN identified the child as Hasan al-Afifi of the Bab al-Hadid area of the Old City of Jerusalem. The videographer is identified as Amjad Arafa.

On its Arabic website, Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency reported:

Israeli occupation forces arrested, today Friday, the Jerusalemite teenager Hasan Afif Hasan al-Afifi (age 17), of Bab al-Hadid in the Old City, after they attacked him. Al-Afifi’s mother told Wafa that her son was arrested during the violent confrontations that occurred at the Al-Aqsa mosque today, and that her son was nowhere near the mosque and did not participate in any activities.

She stated that 15 members of Israel’s special forces attacked her son as he stood outside his house and beat him violently until his blood ran on the ground, and they sprayed her with gas as she tried to defend her son which led to her passing out. She indicated that her son was transferred to the Russian Compound interrogation and detention center in West Jerusalem.

Palestinian children in Jerusalem are frequently targeted by Israeli occupation forces. Some 700 are arrested and detained annually in the city alone and are routinely subjected to cruel, violent and illegal abuses.  

 Israeli occupation forces claimed they stormed the area to break up protests. Earlier, Ma’an News Agency reported:
Storming of al-Aqsa Mosque
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) – Israeli police hurled stun grenades to disperse dozens of protesters who threw stones outside the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, after Friday prayers.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma’an that police entered the compound and fired stun grenades after rocks were thrown at officers at Mughrabi gate.

The report noted that:

Tensions flared this week after police arrested Israeli ultranationalists who tried to hold prayers at the compound, known by Jews as the Temple Mount, as the site of two biblical temples.

Twitter user @BDS4Justice, who visits Al-Aqsa mosque regularly, witnessed, livetweeted and photographed what happened:

Child starved to death after benefits delay

Child Starves To Death in the UK: A Vision of the Future After Welfare Reform

From Inside Housing, 05/10/2012 | By Keith Cooper

If you want to know where 'welfare reform' is leading, then the case of the child of an asylum seeker who died of  hunger is instructive.  Ian Duncan Smith won't be prosecuted for being a child-murderer of course, the Jimmy Saville of the Tory Government.  But we all know that kids are now going hungry as Clegg & co. tell us that however bad things are, without them things would be even worse.

The death of a mother and son in an asylum seeker family has revealed gaps in the benefits system that leaves families with no money. Photograph: Fabio De Paola

 

 And yet New Labour is no alternative either.  They began 'welfare reform' only for the Tories to pick up where they left off.  The need for an alternative has never been clearer yet the different socialist sects are more interesting in recruiting from each other.

Meanwhile the Tory Government ploughs ahead with proposals to scrap crisis loans and Community Care Grants without a word from lapdogs Cable and Clegg.

Tony Greenstein
 The government has been warned it must urgently fix flaws in its support system for successful asylum seekers, after a destitute child starved to death in temporary accommodation in Westminster.

Further tragedies are increasingly likely as more asylum claims are processed while support funding dries up, organisations claim.

Details of the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of ‘child EG’ and the unrelated death of his mother ‘Mrs G’ surfaced in a serious case review and a letter sent to the government by child safety experts at Westminster Council, a flagship Conservative borough.

The case review found that the family had become dependent on ‘ad hoc’ charitable handouts despite a successful asylum claim because of ‘significant problems’ transferring the family from Home Office to mainstream welfare support services.

The family of three was forced to ‘actually become homeless’ before local authorities could offer official help, it added.

The Westminster letter - sent last March but only released to Inside Housing this week - urges Home Office and Department for Work and Pensions officials to review and improve transitional support for successful asylum seekers.

‘Joined up government should be able to manage the transition from one form of public support to another,’ Terry Bamford, chair of Westminster’s Local Safeguarding Children’s Board, wrote in the letter.

Asylum seeker charities this week warned of a deterioration in government support services in the 18 months since the letter was sent.

The Home Office axed its funding for Refugee Integration and Employment Service - which paid for transitional support for successful asylum seekers - last September, they point out.

Judith Dennis, policy officer at the Refugee Council, said the problems highlighted in the review were common.

Daoud Zaaroura, chief executive of the North of England Refugee Service, said the issues raised in Westminster’s letter were unresolved. ‘Without RIES, or something similar, there is a real threat of the tragic case of EG happening all over again.’

Dave Garratt, chief executive of Refugee Action, said the newly appointed immigration minister, Mark Harper, must ‘urgently address the shortfall in resourcing for these essential services’.

‘We are deeply concerned that our caseworkers are seeing increasing numbers of recent refugees who are being forced onto the streets,’ he added.

James Thomas, director of family services at Westminster Council, said it had provided more details of the case to the Home Office at its request.

A spokesperson for the UK Border Agency said: ‘We have already made several improvements to transitional arrangements.’ Organisations housing asylum seekers for the UKBA must now notify local authorities when applications are successful and refugees can remain in UKBA-funded accommodation for one month after a decision. Funding is given to voluntary groups which offer support and advice, the spokesperson added.
What the sector thinks

‘Even when we had funding for RIES, it would take our staff up to two months to secure all of the benefit entitlements for some families.’

Daoud Zaaroura, chief executive, North of England Refugee Service

‘Unacceptable delays in these transition arrangements are all too common, resulting in homelessness and hunger.’

Dave Garratt, chief executive, Refugee Action

‘Delays have left these clients in a precarious situation and largely or entirely reliant on the support of friends, community members and local organisations.’

James Souter, Asylum Welcome

Denied disability benefits after a lifetime of hard work

Stress: James worries how he will pay bills

David Groves - Killed by ATOS

 Hard-working former delivery worker James is denied a lifeline by government cuts
The disability benefit fiasco continues, with the seriously ill and disabled wrongly denied essential help.

Yes, the system needs to change. Those milking it and living off handouts because they can’t be bothered to do a day’s work should be stopped.

But the reality is that the ­assessment brought in by the Government to achieve this simply isn’t working.

Instead, hard-working people who have paid their way, many grafting for decades and paying National Insurance in the belief this would protect them if they became too ill to work, are losing the help they desperately need at the crucial time when they are struggling with serious ill health.

Former delivery worker James Grindle is one. He is in pain, confused and worried about how he and wife Susan will keep up with their bills as his ­Employment Support Allowance has been stopped. James has been suffering stomach and bladder pains for more than a year and has had an operation on his prostate.

He was deemed fit for work after an Atos assessment regarding his eligibility for ESA, despite losing his job after being deemed unfit to work after an Atos medical assessment for his previous employer.

James, 63, from Rotherham, says: “The first assessment lost me my job after saying I was unfit for work. Yet a few months later I was suddenly fit for work. How can that be?

“I am recovering from an operation so couldn’t go out to work at the moment, even if I could find someone who will take me on in my ­condition. I have done 48 years of hard graft and paid my way.

“I stupidly believed that would entitle me to a bit of help if I ever needed it. But now Susan and I are struggling on just her bit of money from the 25 hours a week she does. We are really worried how we will keep on top of things and manage to juggle our finances. The stress and worry is dreadful. It really isn’t doing anything to help me get stronger, which is what will be needed if the Government want me back into work.”James is appealing against the decision with the help of his local Citizens Advice Bureau.

Annette Cassam, of Rotherham and District Citizens Advice, says: “This case raises many questions about how Atos assesses people for fitness for work.

“We accept the assessments were completed for different reasons but can’t understand how the same company can do two assessments on the same person and produce such contradictory results. Mr Grindle is understandably confused about his position. This needs to be looked into.”
James is just one of tens of thousands of people being refused benefits after they have gone through a Work Capability ­Assessment to find out if they are fit for work.

The assessment is part of the Government’s sweeping changes to the benefits system that are meant to make things simpler and fairer, to ensure that only those who are genuinely entitled get the help they need.

But huge numbers of the most vulnerable – those seriously ill and disabled – are being hit hard and left penniless.

Citizens Advice chief executive Gillian Guy said: “Sadly James is not an isolated case.

“We are seeing a lot of very sick and seriously disabled people being wrongly denied ESA and being put through ­enormous additional stress and hardship at a time when they most need support.

“In most cases they have worked and paid into the system all their lives – sometimes over three or four decades – believing this will protect them if they become too ill to work. They are feeling very betrayed and frightened for the future.”
CAB says it has serious concerns about the test used to decide if people are fit for work and the way it’s carried out. In too many cases medicals are rushed, people aren’t listened to, ­information is recorded inaccurately or ignored and medical evidence from the doctors treating people isn’t taken into account.

Gillian adds: “We wouldn’t allow a private contractor to let us down on the Olympics. We can’t allow one to let down disabled people.

“Mistakes by Atos have a human cost and a cost to the taxpayer. Getting medical assessments right first time is absolutely essential to making sure seriously ill and disabled people get the support they are entitled to and cutting the number of unnecessary appeals. Private companies on ­government contracts must be ­accountable to the public. We want to see Atos face a fine for every inaccurate report they produce.”

Emotional

Atos were awarded the contract to carry out assessments from the ­Department for Work and Pensions in 1998 and have just had it renewed through to 2015.

They say they cannot comment on individual cases but the Work Capability Assessment is not to diagnose or treat a medical condition but instead to look at someone’s ability to work. A spokesman said: “We know applying for benefits can be an emotional and difficult time, which is why we do all we can to make the part of the process we’re responsible for as straightforward and comfortable as possible.

“We carry out all assessments within the criteria and policy guidelines set by the Government and do not make any decisions on benefit entitlement.

“The assessment by us forms an important but single part of information used by the department to make its decision on benefit entitlement.”

Fastest-growing problem

CAB advisers helped with more than 97,000 ESA problems between January and March this year – up 71% compared with the same quarter last year, making ESA the fastest-growing advice issue seen in bureaux.

In the same period, CAB recorded an 82% increase in advice about appeals against ESA decisions. Latest official Department of Work and Pensions figures say 38% of appeals against ESA decisions are successful.

CAB advisers estimate the success rate at appeal, where someone receives specialist CAB advice and is ­represented, is 80%.

Double Standards at the BBC

BBC went all the way to the Supreme Court to suppress the Balen Report.  Lying tabloids like the Daily Mail fooled their readers that it was in order to hide its pro-Palestinian bias!

How the BBC Denies the Reality of Israel's Occupation of Jerusalem

 As Sharif Nashashibi wrote, if you make an allegation of BBC Bias Against Israel long enough it sticks.  It is one of the myths of right-wing journalism that the Beeb is biased against Israel.    However there is no evidence for this absurd allegation, quite the contrary.  What Israel’s supporters really mean is that on occasion, rare though it might be, the BBC allows a pro-Palestinian story to slip through.

A good example of this is the former supporter of the British Union of Fascists, our very own splenetic Daily Mail.  The fascists' friend is also a strong supporter of Israel, e.g. Alex Singleton absurd Why won't the BBC come clean over its bias against Israel - a moral country that deserves our support? is a typical example of how an article begins with a conclusion and works backward.

But the coverage of the massacre on the Mavi Marmara and the Panorama’s subsequent ‘exclusive’ – narrated by a the journalistic whore Jane Corbyn, which quoted uncritically from the murderers to whom she was given unqiue access  (unlike Commissions of Inquiry) and the refusal even to air the ad for the Disaster Emergency Committee appeal http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/22/gaza-charity-appeal after Israel’s Nazi-style bombing of Gaza, demonstrates the real bias.

Below is an excellent article by Electronic Intifada’s Amena Saleem on how the BBC even dies the reality of the Occupation in Gaza.

Tony Greenstein

How the BBC denies Israel’s occupation

Amena Saleem
The Electronic Intifada
Glasgow, 28 September 2012

There is international law, and there is the world as Israel and the BBC see it. And if Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its territory, contrary to international law, then it is not for the BBC to dispute this — or so its coverage would have us believe.

In its country profile for Israel, the BBC’s website lists statistics including Israel’s size in square meters, its major languages and its main exports. Shying away from giving a capital, as it does for all other recognized countries featured in such profiles, the BBC’s online editors have opted instead to give Israel a “seat of government” (“Israel profile,” 11 September 2012).

And this seat of government, according to the BBC, is Jerusalem. All of it. This is despite the fact that international law is quite clear that East Jerusalem is Palestinian territory, illegally occupied and annexed by Israel. Israel, however, refuses to accept UN resolutions on Jerusalem and continues to claim it all, undivided, as its own. The BBC, it would appear, is backing Israel up on this.

This is how Israel’s claim to Jerusalem is presented on the BBC website: “Israel profile. Seat of government: Jerusalem, though most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.”

The Israeli government does not recognize Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital, and so the BBC obligingly does not give a capital for Israel in its country profile — noting, instead, in its specially-created “seat of government” category, that “most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.”

The website also runs a profile for “Palestinian territories” and this gives an “intended seat of government.” Under this category, BBC editors have written “Intended seat of government: East Jerusalem. Ramallah serves as administrative capital” (“Palestinian territories profile,” 31 August 2012).

Concealing the truth

There are no difficulties here for the BBC in making a distinction between East and West Jerusalem. Rather, the difficulty for the BBC lies in admitting that Israel occupies the “Palestinian territories.” Nowhere in the profile is the occupation mentioned, and the land is not referred to as the “occupied Palestinian Territories” — the wording used by the United Nations — but simply as Palestinian territories. And of course there is nothing to inform the reader of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Jerusalem from 1947 onwards, and how the division of the city came about.

The UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign challenged the supposedly impartial BBC on its assertion that the whole of Jerusalem is Israeli territory, a falsehood which Israel is keen to propagate in its attempts to create facts on the ground.

The PSC pointed out over a series of email correspondences since July that it would be simple enough for the BBC to add the word “West” to let its audience know that Israel’s seat of government is not in Jerusalem, but in the western half of a divided city. This would also guarantee 100 percent accuracy, surely a priority for a major news organization.

Richard Hutt, complaints director at the BBC, sent a detailed email on 18 September to say: “It seems to me that the current content on the page for Israel acknowledges the Israeli view, but contextualizes it so that it is clear to readers that this is disputed.”

With no hint of irony, Hutt goes on to say, about a page that is subtitled “Facts”: “Although more information would have been helpful, I do not believe that the content would mislead readers as to the basic facts.”

Laughable

Hutt’s defense of the BBC position becomes laughable as he defies logical argument in his attempts to defend inaccuracy in the BBC’s news pages.

Explaining why the BBC refers to “Jerusalem” on the “Israel” profile and “East Jerusalem” on the “Palestinian territories” profile, he says: “I do not think that ‘due’ impartiality in this context would require that the language for one page mirror that of the other.”

Hutt then says he does not think readers would make the assumption that the whole of Jerusalem is Israeli territory from the BBC’s reference to the whole of Jerusalem being Israel’s seat of government.

He argues: “The only grounds I can see for reaching such a conclusion are that the content for the [Palestinian territories] page lists ‘East Jerusalem,’ whereas the reference to Jerusalem on the Israel page is not similarly qualified.”

That is the exact reason given by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to the BBC in its request for the qualifier “West” to be added to “Jerusalem” on the Israel page. Bizarrely, Hutt appears to acknowledge that argument, before concluding that no alteration will be forthcoming.
Defending criminality

Israel’s claim to an undivided Jerusalem is not the only area where BBC terminology privileges Israeli occupation and colonization.

However, just as BBC reporting consistently fails to mention the fact of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, it is similarly coy about spelling out the criminality of its settlement building, despite UN Security Council Resolution 446’s clear definition of settlements as a “serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has not been alone in asking the BBC why, without fail, in all its online reports concerning settlements, as well as in television and radio broadcasts, it uses this line: “The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this” (“Israel anger at S Africa ‘Occupied Territories’ labels,” 22 August 2012).

The line will be found buried at the end, or near the end, of any article about settlements and provides scant context for the preceding content.

What is interesting is the need the BBC feels to use this line. Settlements are not stated categorically as being illegal under international law, simply “considered” to be, and a disclaimer is added — “Israel disputes this” — as though international law is not the last word on what is legal for nations.

Tarik Kafala, the Middle East editor of BBC Online, replied to a Palestinian living in the UK, who had emailed him to question the use of this line. Kafala’s reply, sent in October 2011 and seen by this writer, explains the BBC’s reasoning for its caution, erring on the side of Israel.

“The contention that settlements are illegal … is hugely well founded in international law, but an opinion,” Kafala writes.

And then this: “We also feel that to simply state that the settlements are illegal under international law is potentially misleading. An untutored reader might wonder why, if Israel is so flagrantly breaking the law, such a criminal state is still a member of the UN, a favored ally of the US, a major trading partner of the EU and so on.”
It’s an astounding assertion from a senior BBC editor. It also lays bare the BBC’s policy on reporting on Israel and its daily violations of UN resolutions, Geneva conventions and International Court of Justice rulings. There is a softening, a tempering of the reality, if it is even reported at all, which is rare. An intellectual analysis for the BBC audience of why a “criminal state is still a member of the UN, a favored ally of the US, a major trading partner of the EU” is out of the question.

Such an analysis would require honesty about the political situation, not just in Palestine and Israel, but in the Middle East as a whole, and Kafala’s incredible revelation shows that the BBC is not capable of such honesty.

The resultant dishonesty, and the attempt to keep the truth about Israel’s illegal actions from its audiences, is spread across the whole of BBC programming, from news right through to entertainment.

Not interested in reality

An activist with Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods spent a year in correspondence with the BBC over “Top Gear Middle East Special,” an entertainment program for motoring enthusiasts broadcast on BBC Two in December 2010. It traced a trio well-known to UK TV audiences traveling from Baghdad to Bethlehem in a convertible sports car.

As presenters James May, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond drove through Syria, viewers were given the following information about the occupied Syrian Golan Heights: “For political reasons, this was Syria and is now Israel.”

In reality, the Golan Heights is Syrian territory, illegally occupied and annexed by Israel. UN Security Council Resolution 242 makes this clear and additionally calls for the withdrawal of Israel from the Golan Heights, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

But the BBC isn’t interested in reality when it comes to Israel. What appears to be more important for this publicly-funded UK broadcaster is to shield Israel from criticism of its illegal actions by hiding the truth of those actions from its audiences. In this instance, the BBC was prepared to broadcast an outright lie about the status of the Golan Heights.

Wiped off the map

And to hide the existence of the Palestinian West Bank — where Bethlehem is located — the program used maps which named only Israel. Palestinian land was effectively wiped off the map by the BBC. This mirrors the maps used in Israeli schoolbooks and Israeli tourism guides, which show all the land which was once historically Palestine as being “Israel.” Gaza and the West Bank are not named.

To complete the deception, at no point during the drive to Bethlehem or on arrival did the presenters use the words “West Bank” or “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Instead, viewers were told that the “final border crossing” before arriving in Bethlehem would be from Jordan into Israel. The crossing from Israel into the West Bank, which has to be made in order to reach Bethlehem, was ignored by the BBC, and viewers were left to think that the city is in Israel. There was no indication of the existence of Palestinian land.

It is a narrative that would thrill the Israeli government. To justify its broadcast, the BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee ruled, in December 2011, that, because Top Gear is an entertainment program, there was no requirement to “make the location of Bethlehem explicit.” Why the location of Bethlehem had to remain hidden when the location of every other city visited by the presenters was marked clearly on the maps they used constantly throughout the program was not explained.

Nor was there any explanation for not marking the West Bank on any maps. Instead, the committee said “contrasting shading” used on the maps was sufficient to show the area as being separate from Israel. Why not just name it?

Finally, dealing with the Golan Heights reference, the committee said that it did not believe “the description used in the program was materially inaccurate or misleading, bearing in mind that the requirement [in the BBC’s editorial guidelines] is for due accuracy.”

Due accuracy, according to the guidelines, is accuracy that is “adequate and appropriate to the output.” Because Top Gear is an entertainment program, the level of accuracy displayed was, according to the committee, totally adequate. In other words, it was happy with the BBC broadcasting a falsehood.

Why, when it comes to Israel, can’t the BBC call a spade a spade? Why do the words “West Bank” and “Occupied Palestinian Territories” stick in the throats of BBC presenters, unable to see the light of day even when the presenters in question are standing on that very land? Why, if these are genuine mistakes, can’t the BBC correct them, put “West” in front of “Jerusalem” and admit that Israel illegally occupies the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights?

Rectifying these errors would be far simpler than concocting the tortuous and absurd explanations BBC employees spend so much time on to justify their misleading and biased output. But, then again, when it comes to the BBC and Israel, nothing is rational.

Amena Saleem is active with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK and keeps a close eye on the media’s coverage of Palestine as part of her brief. She has twice driven on convoys to Gaza for PSC. More information on PSC is available at www.palestinecampaign.org.

‘It was like pictures of Babi Yar’ — an Israeli witness to Sabra and Shatila

Babi Yar - the ravine where over 30,000 Jews were murdered

 

Babi Yar

the handiwork of Israel's Phalangist allies

 

Sabra & Chatilla – A Massacre from the Annals of Nazi and Fascist Barbarity

To those who say that at least Israel hasn’t opened up extermination camps for the Palestinians one must agree.  It is however one of the few things they haven’t done.  Sabra and Chatilla, a refugee camp in Beirut where some two thousand defenceless Palestinian refugees were murdered by fascist savages, with knives and guns, who committed the most unspeakable horrors, including castrating young boys, stands as a testament to Israeli civilisation.  That the author of this massacre, Ariel Sharon, was forced to resign as Defence Minister and came back as Prime Minister is no shock.  


It was the share policy of both the ‘socialist’ Zionists and Likud to form an alliance with the Phalangists, the party that was formed by an open admirer of Hitler Pierre Gemayel and named after Franco’s party of the same name (but different spelling).

Israel provided the cover and flares for the Phalangist murderers, having first secured the exist of the PLO fighters.  One more crime of Yasser Arafat was abandoning his people to the tender mercies of the Zionists and therefore leaving those in the camps vulnerable to just such retribution, though even Arafat couldn’t have imagined just what would take place once Israel had entered Beirut.
 
Below is an account by an Israeli member of the Merkava tank batallion of just what happened in Sabra and Chatilla

Tony Greenstein

Thirty years since the massacre in Sabra and Shatila - a personal testimony

 Translation from Hebrew: by Sol Salbe on Sunday, 23 September 2012 at 02:27 ·
[From the Marker Cafe section of the Haaretz Hebrew website]

Thirty years since the massacre in Sabra and Shatila - a personal testimony

For thirty years "S" ran around with this story inside him but he did not share it with a soul. He even refused to cooperate with the researchers for the film Waltz with Bashir, who mange to locate him in his current country of residence. When they told him that his friends had all given their account and mentioned his name, he said that he did not remember anything. He just did not want to talk about it, he felt that he did not have the strength to deal with the memory and did not see the film.

During the last Rosh Hashanah [Jewish New Year, 16-18 Sep 2012 -tr] he had a conversation with his wife about the holiday's customs. The apple and honey, for a sweet new year,  stirred the memory and then the dam broke loose and he told her everything. After that he found the courage to re-enact the whole scene in his mind and share it with some friends, myself included [The person who took it toThe Marker blog.] He wanted to publish it anonymously, "Maybe the virtual anonymity would hide the stain in my soul ..."

S was a soldier in armoured corps. He was 19, a former yeshiva [Jewish seminary]student who left the yeshiva and gave up religion a few months before he was called up. The Sabra and Shatila massacre "gave me shell shock, resulting eventually in the end the army throwing me away from its ranks and my discharge," he says today.

It was Friday afternoon. My company's tanks from the Merkava tank battalion, which is based not far from Jericho, sat on a dirt road that surrounded Beirut Airport. An army truck delivered us the provisions for the holiday including honey, eggs and all kinds of products that we bartered with locals for quality hash. We used Israeli money in the supermarket to buy 7UP which wasn't available in Israel, and lollies and Kent cigarettes which were all much cheaper than back home.

Bashir Gemayel had been assassinated two days earlier and we were told that we were being transferred to another sector. We had to drive the tanks because there was no time to bring the tank transporters. We also got told that in the high rise buildings nearby there were  Palestinians on the verandas who fired on military vehicles travelling along the road.

Our tank  mounted a small hill on the dirt track next to the field and all the provisions that we had stacked  in the turret's basket crashed onto the tank interior. The contents of the egg cartons and jars of honey stained our clothes but we had no time to change our uniforms because we were moving. About two hours later we reached the fence. It was a stone wall three metre high. The commanders were several hundred metres away on the fifth floor of an abandoned building. All the officers were there observing the camp.

An hour or two later, 70 Phalangist troops arrived. They wore smart ironed uniforms and shiny shoes. They had Israeli Galil rifles and brand new combat vests to make us enviable. We had the shortened version of the Galil and shrivelled vests. They were in groups of three, stamping their feet on the ground in some sort of a drill, while their commander was talking with a brigade, or a division, commander who was at the fifth floor vantage point.

It was getting dark and we continued to wait for instructions as to what to do. Those who needed to pee had to use the Merkava's back door of the carriage. Everything in the tank had been closed  in case some Palestinian sniper took a shot at us over the fence. Half an hour later an Israeli bulldozer turned up from  somewhere. Our tanks were adjacent to the wall and we had to move them to give access to bulldozer. We were two Merkava tanks and a paratroopers' halftrack which was parked next to us.

The Phalangists continued with their drills in groups of three while the bulldozer opened gaping hole in the wall. We could only see them through the tank's periscope, we could not  hear them. We left the back door of the tank open as it was pretty stifling with all the eggs, chalot and honey that were strewn all over the floor. Each step we took inside the tank seemed as though we were treading in mud, with yet another egg shell crashed.

After the bulldozer choofed off all the Phalangists lined up in threes for yet another series of drills. Then they entered the camp. We stayed in the tanks. Their commander asked our commander to fire flares over the camp because it was getting dark. Through the back door we started hearing gunshots and lots of screams, especially women's, the crying of children, and in general lots of screaming.

Throughout the night, about every quarter of an hour, the APC next to us fired flares over the camp. The descended slowly in a blinding light, being slowed down by a small parachute. They put out a huge amount of light. When went out they fired the next one.

Not much happened among us, between one  flare and another we fell asleep with our clothes still dribbling with honey and eggs. The tank driver fell asleep on his seat, the gun loader slept under the barrel, the commander crawled towards the back door and fell asleep on the tank's floor, I was a gunner and I slept in my seat with my head resting on the gun's sight. It bent my glasses and they felt   weird.

In the morning we woke up and went outside. there was screaming coming in from all directions. We climbed on top of the tank and saw beyond the wall. At the doorways to the homes their there were all sorts of bodies lying at odd angles. Other soldiers began to yell and we talked among ourselves that they are killing everyone there and what are we meant to do ...

Our company commander, a pilot course dropout who was totally immersed in daydreams, had no clue as to was happening around him. He went to talk to the commanders situated on the fifth floor. He came back and said that they can see it all and it's not our role to interfere. It's a local conflict between the Phalangists and the Palestinians. And in any case they have been reporting what they saw to the senior officers. And at that point there no instruction to take action. So we so we are to sit tight until we get an order.

It was noon and we started to clean and wash the tank.  We washed some of our undershirts and hung them on a makeshift rope tied between two tanks. We had quite a lot of water in containers. The shouting and screaming from over the wall went on with us not knowing what to do.

Waiting for orders ...

At lunch I heard my friend Oren. He stood on his tank and peered over the fence and yelled at the fifth floor, "It's a massacre. They are killing everyone there."

Still we received no instructions.

Then  a young man escaped through a hole in the wall. He was about twenty years old, he seemed slightly older than me - I was 19. He was followed by a Phalangist replete with a new Galil and a new vest. The fellow stood behind me and grabbed me by the shoulders. He was barefoot, wearing shorts and an old torn singlet. He smelt of fear, a smell which was really repulsive and nauseating, something  like a combination of vomit and stale sweat. He spoke to me and wept that the Phalangist wants to kill him and asked me for help. He yelled in English HELP HELP, and  in Arabic, he murmured that the Phalangist has killed them all and now he wants to kill him and I should save him. I embarrassingly looked at the commander and asked him what to do. He smiled and winked at me and said, "Let them do the dirty work," and signalled the Phalangist that he can drag the crying Palestinian from  behind me. He grabbed the fellow by the scuff of his neck and took him for three-four steps. The youth continued to plead and looked at me and the Phalangist and begged us to take pity on him. The Phalangist shot him in the knee. The Palestinian began to scream in pain and dropped to his knees and screamed at us for help. The Phalangist shot another bullet in his abdomen and when he collapsed  in front of him on the ground, his head almost touching the Phalangist's shoes, he fired m another shot in his head and then everything went quiet.

I looked at it in shock. This was the first time I saw death so close-up. The Phalangist disappeared over the wall and back into the refugee camp.

Mercedes cars with press credentials began to arrive. Our commander declared that the area was a closed military zone and it is not open to anyone. I heard them arguing in Hebrew. It was a reporter for Time magazine. He said that they have gathered them all, children, the elderly and women, in a soccer field and were shooting them row by row and we ought to do something.

A commander from the fifth floor came down and started yelling at the reporter not to tell him what to do and it's a military zone and that he should not be here. The reporter yelled back at him, that  he has come over just now from the other side of the camp and on the other side let them come in, and everything was covered in blood and it was just horrible what was happening there.

We also began to uneasily ask uneasily what are we to do and what is going on and who are  we waiting for . He said it was a holiday now and that the Chief of Staff, Rafael  Eitan, with in contact with Prime Minister Begin by phone. And perhaps because of the New year holy day he didn't to talk to Begin by phone so for time being there is no ruling and no instructions.

Again  someone came in a Red Cross car and complained to the commander from the fifth floor that the Phalangists were shooting at everyone and not letting the Red Cross take care of the wounded. The commander said he had passes the information on and once a decision has been arrived at we would receive an order to move in. In the meantime it's a Lebanese internal conflict.

Just before the following evening(!) We got told to go in. Most of the Phalangists had already left. We were told to park our tanks in front of one of the buildings there. Someone in a suit came to speak to the commander from the fifth floor. They told us that there was a Mossad agent in the camp and he will give us the signal.

We entered and in every doorway there were bodies, with dripping blood on the stairways. There was a terrible stench of corpses and fermenting blood. We went up to the first floor. The doors were open and every room there were bodies. There were bodies on the beds, on the floor and down the hallways. The corpses were on their back with bullet holes. Women with children and babies leaning on the doors. Every single one of them was dead. Some of the bodies seemed as if they were stabbed with a knife like a sword. Women bereft of clothing or with their dresses half torn, lying on the back with a bullet in the head.

We could not stay there and we went back to the tank. After dark we saw a flashing sign from one of the windows of the basement in the building opposite our parking spot. We passed the message on that we have seen the signal. Along came a jeep. A man got out of the building, hopped into the jeep and they drove off.

The next morning, the whole area was full of journalists. The smell was unbearable, and everywhere there were journalists and radio reporters speaking into their microphone. They sent us to the soccer field. There were rows upon rows of bodies wrapped and covered with blankets and rags. An army tractor dug a trench, shoved the bodies into it and covered them with dirt.

It reminded me of pictures of the Babi Yar massacre at Yad Vashem [Holocaust museum.]

And I do not remember anymore. The timing is all mixed up.

I was nauseous and vomited repeatedly. I wanted to go home and cried like a little kid.

They sent me home. Another friend of mine and I were taken by jeep to Rosh Hanikra [Lebanon-Israel border]. From there we hitched a ride to Nahariya. I do not remember anything from that time. We made it to Jerusalem after a drive of more than ten hours.

I went to my mother's house. I thought that she would be happy to see that I was alive and did not die in the war. I sat there in the kitchen. She sat across from me and said nothing, like asking what I want and what I came for. After a few minutes of silence she asked me if I wanted a drink, and brought me some tap water in a disposable glass. I sat there for a few minutes more I did not know what to tell her and she looks at me and still did not know what she was meant to do. I really wanted her to hug me - perhaps the only time in my life I really wanted someone to hug me. After another fifteen minutes of silence I left her home and went to my sister's place. My sister gave me new clothes and laundered my uniform.

I don't know how long I slept. At night I had a nightmares and I could not close my eyes without seeing bodies fall on me. When I did  fall asleep I dreamt that the pillow was a dead man whom  I was lying on top of, and I got up sweating and screaming. Only during the day I managed to get some sleep with the window open.  In the shade and darkness I just felt scared and sweating and could not sleep. I kept on vomiting and lost weight.

I had a friend in basic training who after basic training left the armoured corps and was transferred to Jerusalem. He told me that every time I come to Jerusalem to I should call him so we go out and talk. I called him. We met and he said that he had a nice sister whom he wanted me meet and invited me to his home for Shabbat.

During the day, I managed to function somehow but once I put on the uniform I began to sweat and get nauseous and vomit.

About two weeks later my commander managed to track me down at my sister's. He convinced me to go back with him and that everything would be fine. I rode in his jeep from Jerusalem to Rosh Hanikra. Once we got to the border I got a bit of a shock, got out of the vehicle and started walking back to whence I came from. I did not want to talk to anyone, just wanted to cry and to be left alone. I screamed at anyone who came near me that I'd shoot them and shoot myself and I just wanted to be left alone.

Somehow I remember being in Jerusalem again my sister's house. At the end of the week I went to my friend Tamir's place. The food was really tasty and his sister never related to me the whole time I was there. She just totally ignored my presence. At night everyone went to bed and I stayed awake in bed. I slept on a mattress next to the kitchen, there was light from the moon and could not sleep.

Later - around 2am - his mother came into my bed naked. I will not go into embarrassing details but I was  her gigolo for the next three years. After three months the military police tracked me down me and arrested me for desertion. They sent me to jail. I wanted to commit suicide but took my shoelaces and there was no way to commit suicide. After a few days in jail I was sent to trial. The judge asked me why I ran away I started crying, I started telling him about everything since Sabra and Shatila. He released me from prison immediately and instructed me to meet Mental Health Officer.

I went back to that woman's house. Every few days I had to go for observations. They admitted me to the mental health unit for a week or so. They thought that I may try to kill myself. Again I went to the woman's place for sex therapy. Again I went to the Mental Health Officer and then I again went back to her house for a month or two.

I slept during the day, and at night I wrote I kept losing weight and vomiting. From time to time I had nightmares but slowly, slowly they disappeared, especially when I slept on. If I woke up and saw the light of day, I could sleep again. If it was dark I would  begin to see the dead walking around. All the bodies that were wrapped in rags would begin to move or jump. Suddenly I would wake up screaming and sweating. But if it was daylight I could fall asleep without a problem. The food at this woman's place was excellent and I spent a good long time there. Her daughter found another boyfriend and left the house. Tamir was discharged from the army and emigrated to the United States. I remained with this woman.

After a few more weeks and meetings with the Mental Health Officer, I got told if I wanted to be discharged  I would need to sign a form stating I can make no claims upon the army now or in the  future. I was happy to sign and receive the discharge papers.

I did not give evidence to the Kahan Commission of Inquiry [into the Sabra and Shatila massacre]. For starters I was a deserter and then they probably thought I was crazy anyway, and my opinion did not count ...

 Not long after that I emigrated and I have been living abroad since 1988. I felt disappointed with way the army treats its own victims. I joined the army with Medical Profile 89 [Close to highest] and was discharged with Medical Profile 21 [Totally disabled]. In other words the change in my Medical Profile while I was in the care of the army, but they made me sign a form that I make no claims upon the army and made my release conditional on the signing of an illegal document, especially considering my poor mental state at the time. I'm happy I came out alive. But I'm sorry for all the  soldiers - some of whom were my friends -  who were killed in a senseless war.

Hebrew original:

Translated by Sol Salbe of the Middle East News Service -

The forgotten massacre

30 years after 1,700 Palestinians were killed at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, Robert Fisk revisits the killing fields

The memories remain, of course. The man who lost his family in an earlier massacre, only to watch the young men of Chatila lined up after the new killings and marched off to death. But – like the muck piled on the garbage tip amid the concrete hovels – the stench of injustice still pervades the camps where 1,700 Palestinians were butchered 30 years ago next week. No-one was tried and sentenced for a slaughter, which even an Israeli writer at the time compared to the killing of Yugoslavs by Nazi sympathisers in the Second World War. Sabra and Chatila are a memorial to criminals who evaded responsibility, who got away with it.

Khaled Abu Noor was in his teens, a would-be militiaman who had left the camp for the mountains before Israel's Phalangist allies entered Sabra and Chatila. Did this give him a guilty conscience, that he was not there to fight the rapists and murderers? "What we all feel today is depression," he said. "We demanded justice, international trials – but there was nothing. Not a single person was held responsible. No-one was put before justice. And so we had to suffer in the 1986 camps war (at the hands of Shia Lebanese) and so the Israelis could slaughter so many Palestinians in the 2008-9 Gaza war. If there had been trials for what happened here 30 years ago, the Gaza killings would not have happened."
He has a point, of course. While presidents and prime ministers have lined up in Manhattan to mourn the dead of the 2001 international crimes against humanity at the World Trade Centre, not a single Western leader has dared to visit the dank and grubby Sabra and Chatila mass graves, shaded by a few scruffy trees and faded photographs of the dead. Nor, let it be said – in 30 years – has a single Arab leader bothered to visit the last resting place of at least 600 of the 1,700 victims. Arab potentates bleed in their hearts for the Palestinians but an airfare to Beirut might be a bit much these days – and which of them would want to offend the Israelis or the Americans?

It is an irony – but an important one, nonetheless – that the only nation to hold a serious official enquiry into the massacre, albeit flawed, was Israel. The Israeli army sent the killers into the camps and then watched – and did nothing – while the atrocity took place. A certain Israeli Lieutenant Avi Grabowsky gave the most telling evidence of this. The Kahan Commission held the then defence minister Ariel Sharon personally responsible, since he sent the ruthless anti-Palestinian Phalangists into the camps to "flush out terrorists" – "terrorists" who turned out to be as non-existent as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction 21 years later.

Sharon lost his job but later became prime minister, until broken by a stroke which he survived – but which took from him even the power of speech. Elie Hobeika, the Lebanese Christian militia leader who led his murderers into the camp – after Sharon had told the Phalange that Palestinians had just assassinated their leader, Bashir Gemayel – was murdered years later in east Beirut. His enemies claimed the Syrians killed him, his friends blamed the Israelis; Hobeika, who had "gone across" to the Syrians, had just announced he would "tell all" about the Sabra and Chatila atrocity at a Belgian court, which wished to try Sharon.

Of course, those of us who entered the camps on the third and final day of the massacre – 18 September, 1982 – have our own memories. I recall the old man in pyjamas lying on his back on the main street with his innocent walking stick beside him, the two women and a baby shot next to a dead horse, the private house in which I sheltered from the killers with my colleague Loren Jenkins of The Washington Post – only to find a dead young woman lying in the courtyard beside us. Some of the women had been raped before their killing. The armies of flies, the smell of decomposition. These things one remembers.

Abu Maher is 65 – like Khaled Abu Noor, his family originally fled their homes in Safad in present-day Israel – and stayed in the camp throughout the massacre, at first disbelieving the women and children who urged him to run from his home. "A woman neighbour started screaming and I looked out and saw her shot dead and her daughter tried to run away and the killers chased her, saying "Kill her, kill her, don't let her go!" She shouted to me and I could do nothing. But she escaped."

Repeated trips back to the camp, year after year, have built up a narrative of astonishing detail. Investigations by Karsten Tveit of Norwegian radio and myself proved that many men, seen by Abu Maher being marched away alive after the initial massacre, were later handed by the Israelis back to the Phalangist killers – who held them prisoner for days in eastern Beirut and then, when they could not swap them for Christian hostages, executed them at mass graves.

And the arguments in favour of forgetfulness have been cruelly deployed. Why remember a few hundred Palestinians slaughtered when 25,000 have been killed in Syria in 19 months?

Supporters of Israel and critics of the Muslim world have written to me in the last couple of years, abusing me for referring repeatedly to the Sabra and Chatila massacre, as if my own eye-witness account of this atrocity has – like a war criminal – a statute of limitations. Given these reports of mine (compared to my accounts of Turkish oppression) one reader has written to me that "I would conclude that, in this case (Sabra and Chatila), you have an anti-Israeli bias. This is based solely on the disproportionate number of references you make to this atrocity…"

But can one make too many? Dr Bayan al-Hout, widow of the PLO's former ambassador to Beirut, has written the most authoritative and detailed account of the Sabra and Chatila war crimes – for that is what they were – and concludes that in the years that followed, people feared to recall the event. "Then international groups started talking and enquiring. We must remember that all of us are responsible for what happened. And the victims are still scarred by these events – even those who are unborn will be scarred – and they need love." In the conclusion to her book, Dr al-Hout asks some difficult – indeed, dangerous – questions: "Were the perpetrators the only ones responsible? Were the people who committed the crimes the only criminals? Were even those who issued the orders solely responsible? Who in truth is responsible?"

In other words, doesn't Lebanon bear responsibility with the Phalangist Lebanese, Israel with the Israeli army, the West with its Israeli ally, the Arabs with their American ally? Dr al-Hout ends her investigation with a quotation from Rabbi Abraham Heschel who raged against the Vietnam war. "In a free society," the Rabbi said, "some are guilty, but all are responsible."

Timeline: Sabra and Chatila

14 September 1982

Lebanon's Christian President-elect, Bashir Gemayel, is assassinated by a pro-Syrian militant but his loyalists blame the Palestinians.

16 September 1982

Lebanese Christian militiamen enter camps at Sabra and Chatila to carry out revenge attacks on Palestinian refugees, with occupying Israeli forces guarding the camps and firing flares to aid the attacks at night.

18 September 1982
After three days of rape, fighting and brutal executions, militias finally leave the camps with 1,700 dead.

Rob Hastings

Campaign Against Brighton’s Apartheid Sodastream Store

Week 4 of the Settler’s Stolen Goodstore Picket Fewer Customers Than Ever

The fourth weekly picket against Brighton’s sodastream saw the first appearance of the Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods group.  On the Zionist side were the genocideal and anti-Semitic fundamentalist Christians who believe that the ‘Jews Return’ to Palestine justifies any and every barbarity – all in the name of Christ!

Unfortunately I couldn’t be there this week but the picket, by all accounts, went very well in my absence.  The same Zionists turned up to mouth the same platitudes about ‘anti-Semitism’ so it must have been quite a shock to see Jewish opponents of racism there. 

The Christian Fundamentalists were there too.  They are the same ones who proclaim that Hitler was god’s messenger boy, sent to drive the wicked Jews to Israel!


Their religious theology desires Jews to ‘return’ to Israel in order that the Rapture and the Battle of Armageddon can take place, with the resulting death of the Jewsof course as the chosen ascend to heaven.  Of course all this nonsense is a cover for the material interests of the USA.

In the 1930’s Christian Fundamentalists were prime opponents of German Jewish immigration into the USA.  They were the bulwark of the anti-Semitic KKK, so it’s no surprise that Christians 4 Genocide have transferred their allegiance to the Zionists.  In Germany the same Christians formed the Reich Church under Bishop Muller and sought the approval of Hitler.  In order to effect the 2nd coming of Christ any barbarity and injustice is good enough.


PS:    And to the anonymous Zionist poster to this blog.  Don’t bother.  No anonymous Zionist comments are being let through so you will have to post a name AND valid e-mail address.  I know honesty is hard but there comes a time when you have to take responsibility for your murderous views.